Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova; Remember when we used to laugh about Soviets queuing for years to purchase an automobile?
Ford threatens to restrict petrol car sales to meet the UK’s EV targets
Ford boss says ICE prices could rise as it seeks to dodge looming ZEV mandate penalty fines
by: Tom Jervis
9 May 2024Ford could resort to limiting the sales of its petrol cars in the UK, as it struggles to meet the electric car sales targets laid down in the government’s Zero-Emissions Vehicle Mandate.
Introduced at the start of this year, the ZEV mandate requires manufacturers to ensure that a minimum percentage of their overall sales are battery-powered, or face fines of up to £15,000 for every ICE car sold over the limit. This year, the target is set at 22 per cent, however, while EV sales continue to grow due to fleet demand, private buyers are proving reluctant to make the transition and EV targets are looking hard to meet. According to the latest industry figures, fewer than 17 per cent of models registered in April boasted zero-emissions powertrains.
Ford, which currently only has the Mach-E in its EV passenger car line-up, is one of the manufacturers feeling the pressure. The company’s European boss of its ‘Model e’ electric car division, Martin Sander, told the Financial Times’ Future of the Car Summit: “We can’t push EVs into the market against demand. We’re not going to pay penalties. We are not going to sell EVs at huge losses just to buy compliance. The only alternative is to take our shipments of [engine-powered] vehicles to the UK down, and sell these vehicles somewhere else”.
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Read more: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/ford/363114/ford-threatens-restrict-petrol-car-sales-meet-uks-ev-targets
What can I say? Unless we find a way to derail the Western march towards green communism, a system in which the government will dictate what you are allowed to buy and own, Soviet style queues and shortages are exactly what we shall all have to get used to.
Why is this a threat?
Good point. Of course it isn’t a threat. Well, not by Ford. The only threat is by the UK government.
In Henry VIII’s time, they had whipping boys. The idea was that princes (who were above being whipped) had to learn that if they made a mistake, others got hurt. Now here we are in the 21st century with whipping boys again: if you buy an ICE, Ford gets hurt. Since Ford never agreed to take on the job of whipping boy, no wonder they are tellobg the government to take their whio somewhere else.
Incidentally, I wonder if Brits could import their Ford ICEs from, say, Rwanda, at a much lower cost than the 15k penalty. The penalty only appears to apply to UK sales. Ford builds the car, sells it in the Rwanda market, buyer has it delivered in the UK. OK, maybe it would have to go on a ship, but once it’s outside UK territorial waters, Rwanda could tell it to turn round and go back.
Oops, mobile phone finger trouble. telling. whip. But you probably worked it out anyway.
I think this is exactly what will happen UK buyers will by the vehicle abroad and companies will be set up to do personal exports to Uk buyers .
Correct. There was a time in the early 2000s when there was a sector that facilitated buying a car on the Continent at the tax free price in that country – Denmark and Germany were popular – importing it and paying our tax on that purchase price. Tax free prices varied across countries so that the end cost was similar with tax added. Our tax was not so high as Denmark or Germany and so with a good exchange rate it made financial sense. this time I suspect that instead of trying to hinder this process the manufacturers will be happy to provide right hand drive models.
Of course UK based manufacturers could just shut up shop and then supply an importer in the UK who doesn’t make any cars so has no quota. By trying to force something that is much worse than what people willingly buy will inspire a huge backlash and desire to avoid the government rules.
A crisis for the car industry might be just around the corner as while the supply of private virtue-signallers is pretty much exhausted and the government can’t keep shovelling taxpayers cash at buyers, the business fleet market faces trying to shift a whole load of used battery cars onto a market that is refusing to buy them due to the life of the battery. Hertz and Sixt has already seen what the massive writedowns on battery cars has done to them.
Imports of this sort will be banned. The aim is to reduce ICE sales, and it will be done one way or the other.
Because what it means is a shrinkage in total car sales. The quotas oblige a manufacturer to set their ICE car production to match the number of their EV sales. Because EV sales are lower than expected, this means reducing ICE production, and that in turn means reducing total car production.
When car sales fall, that means layoffs and a cascade of lost business all through the economy.
The Greens probably applaud this because they have always wanted to lower or eliminate car use.
Its an unintended consequence. The incentive was supposed to be to increase EV sales so that they were a certain (annually rising) percentage of total car sales. However it also works in reverse, if you can only sell so many EVs, then your incentive is to move ICE sales down so you meet the percentage quotas.
The assumption was that EVs or ICE are just cars, meet the same need, fit the same market segments, and all you need is marketing. In fact, EVs are more expensive to buy, more expensive to insure, suffer from range limitation, take hours to refuel…
Something is going to have to give. And with the pending Labour government, its not going to be the quotas. So it will be production restrictions and layoffs. This is what Ford is threatening. The line is, you keep quotas, we will meet quotas, but we will do it not by increasing EV sales (because we have tried and cannot), but by lowering ICE production.
Are you ready for the consequences? is the implied question. Its a threat all right.
Time to invest in equines.
The elites of the Green Blob want to be carried around in sedan chairs. All you peasant scum need are sturdy sandals.
With Ford losing big money on every EV it sells ($100K per???), It would be ahead to sell ICE vehicles and pay the15K penalty
And who would pay 40k+ for a Ford Puma?
I was making a silly point – I meant Ford would be ahead selling their Puma(?) for 25K and eating the15K penalty. Silly, until you think about what they have to do to sell an EV.
What it’ll likely do is artificially increase the price on internal combustion vehicles by say $15,000 each to cover the fine… cheaper than trying to sell a car that hardly anyone wants
It’d be more inline with Teslas marketing scheme.
Model 3 promised at $35,000 actually cost almost $50,000
It’s worse than they thought-
Ford Lost Over $100,000 Per EV In Q1. Now It’s Reportedly Cutting Battery Orders (msn.com)
I wonder if that’s New Vehicle sales only or previously owned too?
I’m going to take loving care of my V8 until we look like Cuba.
That is my strategy too, unfortunately the malicious nature of socialism now moves against us by banning repairs to vehicles over a certain age. It is likely the Net Zero zealots will actually ban fossil fuel sale not just ban fossil fuel vehicles.
The Oil companies need to get their act together with the auto makers and start defending their legitimate market position.
They could start by removing donations to political parties that advance Net Zero policies.
Me thinks all this banning and other climate lunacy is going to result in a violent reaction.
Close up the auto plants and bus the workers, and the workers of the suppiers’ plants, and all the other businesses depending on them, to parliament to show the government and the opposition their “support” for NetZero!
What do the delusional office jocks think it will do to productivity?
The Great Van Test – To EV or not EV – Part 2 -Transit (youtube.com)
They have no idea how everything they buy finally gets to them.
I love how they mandate everything without thinking anything through, as if it will just magically work out in the end. Simply dictate that everything will have to “be electric” by an arbitrary calendar year, and electricity will somehow continue coming out of your outlet like lightning from Palpatine’s fingers…
I believe it’s wilful tech blindness. They’ve set the agenda, it’s up to the engineers to quit whining and figure out how to implement their directives. By rigorously leaving implementation details to others they can claim their carefully structured plans were betrayed by incompetent techies when it all falls in a heap.
I consider it to be negligence. Politicians don’t have to have technical expertise (although it would be nice if some had) but they ought to have the ability to ask the right questions, get different points of view and arrive at considered conclusions. The bigger the stakes, the more they ought to challenge what they are being told before accepting it. If they don’t do that then they’ve utterly failed to do their job.
We have to be sure that history will point the finger at who was responsible for the collapse of our economies- the politicians too stupid to evaluate idiotic green claims. We can’t let them blame engineers or others. The buck stops with them.
It never seems to. In the world of progressives history always begins today. If it didn’t, they’d have already learned from it and wouldn’t be trying to implement the… “communism and central planning works when the right people do it, and we’re the right people”.
The problem is that the massive amount of damage and destruction these people do to economies, countries, wealth and the deaths they’ll cause from trying to micromanage food production in the name of saving the earth… no one will end up being held accountable. And it is just as likely that once the destruction has been repaired, 100 years from now that same mindset will exist and we’ll have to jump on that ride all over again.
What do the shareholders think? Sue?
Mercedes stopped work on the ‘MB.EA-Large’ EV technology platform
Mercedes-Benz is putting the brakes on investment with a change of course – and is no longer developing its electric platform “MB.EA-Large”, according to a media report. From 2028, the Stuttgart-based company actually wanted to electrify the new generation of its largest saloons and SUVs on the basis of this architecture.
This is what we’re up against:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/657353?reveal_response=yes
I would urge those that can to sign the petition.
Well, I would – but I have yet to see any petition achieving anything.
So doing nothing is better? No wonder we are in this predicament.
All governments that mandate Net Zero policies need a firm kick in the ballot box….
The USA and possibly Canada mainstream conservatives have taken a strong stance against Nut Zero, but Britain, Australia and New Zealand its a uniparty priority.
Having said this there is a chance Britain will deliver an upset in this year’s election, if Reform makes a strong showing. In Australia One Nation is getting bigger audiences thanks to tireless efforts to raise awareness people have choices. And in New Zealand, despite Prime Minister Chris Luxon being a complete moron when it comes to Nut Zero, his junior coalition partners have taken a harder line, which may help mitigate some of the damage.
Which is fine if there are realistic alternatives that actually think things through. In the UK, a vote for any party currently represented in Parliament is a vote for the same moronic ‘green’ groupthink. Labour, likely to form the next government’ are even more stupid on this issue (and pretty much everything else) than the current crop of pretend Tories.
As Eric says, Reform must do well to show the Uniparty (LibLabConGreen) in Westminster the public have lost faith in them. We need a new realistic political movement to take over.
Agreed. Big parties think in terms of building broad coalitions. Which means they try to ignore as many of your concerns as they think they can get away with, if doing so allows them to pitch to more people on the left.
The only way to send a message they have gone too far is to forget tactical voting and provide them the only kind of feedback they care about.
Story Tip: Criminalisation of Climate Deniers.
Andrew Doyle became embroiled in a feisty free speech row with environmentalist Jim Dale as the latter demanded climate denial is criminalised.
Speaking on GB News, Dale likened climate denial to flat earth conspiracy theories, arguing they are too dangerous for public discourse.
Andrew took a differing perspective on the matter, asking what Dale expects to achieve by silencing climate change sceptics.
“We’re seeing this day after day”, said Dale.
“Look at the data going around. It’s [climate change] accelerating beyond belief. It’s not a point of view, it’s a fact.”
Andrew countered: “I think a lot of people are concerned with what would be criminalising of an opinion.”
(Dale keeps on making the point that Deniers are in the pay of Fossil Fuel companies (but never, ever, mentions University Departments reliance on ‘alternative funding streams’!)
Dale needs climate affirming care.
The incoming Labour government will probably just shrug and carry on. This is what they’re after, anyway. A world in which only the wealthy can afford personal transport, and everyone else gets by with a nationalised rail service.
Ford has enough problems selling their overpriced pickup trucks now and they want to make their problems worse? If they do follow through there will probably be a huge spike in the price of used ford products.
In the US, Ford sold 761k F150s in 2023. That’s basically the average over the previous 10 years.
In Australia, the Ford Ranger is now the best selling vehicle, replacing the Toyota HiLux which held the spot for almost a decade.
At last you have a choice. We can only get bloated, lower tow capacity “lux” Tacoma’s in the US. Diesel Hiluxes are much burlier, with tow capabilities like my CCLB Z71 diesel Colorado. Even though that pickup tows my Escape 5.0 TA bed hitch great, the Hilux is so much more reliable that if I could get one and get it licensed here, I would sell mine and buy up.
Easier said than done. UK vehicles have the steering wheel on the wrong side so they can’t dump them on the EU or US market.
We’re ending as a second Cuba. But current ICE cars have too much electronics and can’t be easily fixed when older or at a very expensive cost if you need to replace things as the motherboard (or how they call it in cars). An old all mechanical car can always be repaired.
That electronics can be reverse engineered. This is an adapter for a vehicle tachometer I cooked up today for a friend.
I see it’s wrapped in foil. Did you bake it at 350 or 400?
Ha :-). Cheap anti static protection in transport.
It works…just like a faraway cage.
Incoming Carrington event? Wrap your phone in foil…pull the battery first though
“Ford boss says ICE prices could rise…”
Then they won’t be selling many of any kind of cars. New ICE cars are already too expensive for most people. So, the used …. er… uh… preowned ICE cars will see a big rise in value. Maybe I can get big bucks for my 20 year old Toyota Tacoma! (always popular with terrorists in the Middle East)
Reselling an ICE car will just be made illegal. That’s what Canada did with handguns. Inheritors have to turn them over to the police. That’s what nanny-state political parties do once they are in power.
But does the same rule apply to the pre owned market? Will used car lots also have to sell more used EVs vs used ICE?
Ford can ration their gas power vehicles all they want. All it will do is drive people to other vehicle manufactures.
What you apparently failed to consider is that the other manufacturers have to adhere to the same mandates that Ford does.
And in that case people in the UK will just take a short trip across the channel, buy a vehicle there, and drive back. This currently is being done by Californians to get around similar laws. For the most part they go to Arizona or Nevada to buy things they can’t in California.
France, Germany, Italy etc all drive on the rhs of their roads.
UK drives on the lhs.
You can take your vehicle across the Channel to tour back & forth between UK and EU, but I doubt you could register your left-hand-drive vehicle for permanent use in the UK.
I spy the usual problem, the mandate is concocted by politicians and bureaucrats who know nothing about economics or the motor industry.
My experience in both France and UK, is lead time for a new car from order to delivery can be 3 to 6 months.
Sales are recorded within a company’s fiscal year, which may not necessarily coincide
with the fiscal year of the tax jurisdiction. Many companies use calendar fiscal year which does not coincide with the UK’s April 6 to April 5 tax year.
The mandats is about sales by manufacturers not dealers. A sale usually is recorded when an invoice is raised. Manufacturers can use dealers as warehouses to store cars until sold, the dealer being invoiced – thus ‘the sale’ – after they sell the car to the consumer.
There is plenty of scope here for manufacturers to run rings round Government, shipping in one fiscal year and invoicing in another, taking back unsold stock, reversing invoices, etc.
And then: it is possible for consumers in the UK to buy RHD cars on the Continent from dealers there – it can even be done on-line – and delivered to the UK. Some people go to Europe, pick up the car and drive it back and then re-register it in the UK.
Like everything else mandated by Government it will be unworkable and encourage enterprising folks to find a work-round. it’s as if people in Governments never heard about the concept of black markets.
Latest UK lunacy is banning petrol motorbikes in 2040.
Car makers can go into the ‘LEASE’ business to potential buyers, and then sell them as USED vehicles after a short period of time. There is a way ‘through’ or ‘around’ every act of government stupidity. CUBA, here we come.
The UK mandate is based on units produced for the UK market so it doesn’t matter whether they are leased or sold.
“Remember when we used to laugh about Soviets queuing for years to purchase an automobile?”
Soviets were easy targets for comedy routines partly because Russia contains 140 million people who mostly stayed in Russia.
According to Google, China has 1,400 million people. Try to find an American academic engineering publication without a paper written by someone born there.
The Ford loss per BEV sold in Q1 2024 was not $132,000 as reported by over excited CNN
They claimed only 10,000 BEV sales when the correct Q1 2024 number was 20,223
Never trust a leftist biased source
The actual loss includes spending on future models not yet on sale.
But so far BEV sales have been half of projections made at the end of 2022.
Even if sales were meeting the projections, there still would be an EV annual loss until after 2026 and later BEV models went on sale.
Recall that Tesla was unprofitable for 17 years while burning through investor’s cash, in spite of very little BEV competition..
The problem is simple, but can not be solved
without outlawing ICEs
A Toyota Corolla sells for $22,050
A Toyota Camry sells for $26,420
A Ford Mustang BEV sells for $32,496 if you can use the $7,500 tax credit
As a finance MBA, I believe this EV “transition” will someday make a great business case study, even better than the old Ford Edsel case study or the New Coke case study.
As a former Ford product development employee for 27 years, I find this to be a sad example of government fascism attacking the private sector, and the corporations barely fighting back.
Unless Nut Zero is stopped, Ford Motor will become Federal Motor and General Motors will become Government Motors.
The actual loss includes spending on future models not yet on sale.
But so far BEV sales have been half of projections made at the end of 2022.
Sounds a lot like the typical pyramid scheme to me…just upside down.
Eventually it will topple over
Whaddya expect?
The greatest democracy is the free market. Supply and demand. People choose what they want and others supply it.
Now we have square peg meet round hole and freedom goes down.
So that’s why Hertz is selling off it’s entire 60000 vehicle Tesla fleet!
Who knew?
Ford says that it will not turn a profit with EVs until 2026. If they keep losing at the present rate of about $1 billion/quarter that would project out to in excess of $10 billion since they took Washington’s bait and jumped into the EV business.
Do it—so we can watch from a sane distance.