Ford is the 3rd biggest EV company in the US. The start-ups (Lucid, Rivian, Canoo, etc.) will hold meetings to discuss this change. Switching to NACS could be the difference between their success or slow failure. GM will be GM and simply call this a big mistake until EV sales are affected.
Yeah, roughly the cost of a leaf, better range, and not ugly. They were close to the perfect commuter cars (I very nearly went with the Volt, but went with a model 3 in 2018 instead.).
I test drove a second gen Volt when we were looking for a second car, Wife preferred an SUV but I was in love with the Volt. Wildly cool car that is shockingly fun to drive.
I rented one. My only concern is that it was made by GM, and I've had uniformly negative experiences with them in recent years. It made me think they might be moving in a reasonable direction after all, but they proved that thought wrong in the last month or two. Oh well.
Too bad they couldn't sell the plant + Bolt designs to some other company, like when The Expanse moved to Amazon.
I think there is a hint of strategy here. Bolt was on last-gen tech for GM and killing it made sense to consolidate to the current-gen "Ultium" platform. There's just a lot of timing questions about GM not announcing a proper Bolt successor before killing it.
Also, favoring trucks is quite probably GM worried about Ford's massive US truck fan base and hoping they can outpace Ford's supply chain bootstrapping issues with Ultium, which did have something of a head start (and multiple proven predecessor generations). (It's interesting to compare Ford's stop gap F-150 Lightning/Mach-E on an already announced dead platform and Ford moving to VW's relatively more proven MEB platform as an attempted short-cut around supply chain issues by leveraging VW logistics.)
But yeah, I wish GM would finally announce the remaining "unknown" Ultium models and hope that at least one properly fills the hole left behind by the Bolt.
The thing about trucks is that even if their battery costs are 60% more, they will price the Truck roughly 200% more. Any Ev truck will start in the $60k Range and top $100k. It's a sad misuse of resources that works better for investors.
Too early to tell (as it isn't yet available), but the Chevrolet Equinox EV should basically be a Bolt EUV with a (subjectively) better looking face and more name recognition. Similar range/price.
As far as I can tell Ford is still losing money on every EV sold (while Tesla is making 20% margin). Not sure how much they can grow if they can’t flip to profitable.
Are they still losing money if you take out fixed costs? Or are they "losing money on every EV" in the sense that the first car off a $5B production line is a $5B loss (modulo depreciation schedule)?
Are you basing that on their recent financial report where they showed a $3B loss? That was not an operational cost (cost of sales). It was a capitol cost (infrastructure to build and equip factories). That is not what would normally be thought of as a loss per unit.
Sources online don't say definitively, so it's hard to really know. Ford says a large portion of the loss per unit is engineering costs. They also say the expect positive margins in 2026. I imagine if it wasn't a loss beyond R&D expense they'd proudly proclaim as much, and they aren't.
Ford's ICE division is still quite profitable, so that supports them in the meantime. Why do you assume they "can't flip to profitable" on their (quite young) EV division?
What are their reasons for not being profitable? Is it volume (they need to double volume), or is it the vast inefficiencies in their network (3rd party supplier glut, dealerships, etc). I am not sure a manufacturer with a dealer network and union assembly could ever match price with a no-dealer no-union manufacturer.
>I am not sure a manufacturer with a dealer network and union assembly could ever match price with a no-dealer no-union manufacturer.
Are you saying that Tesla can only make money by having a relatively underpaid workforce? Do you think that's sustainable?
>vast inefficiencies in their network (3rd party supplier glut, dealerships, etc)
Wait, you think the automotive supply chain is inefficient? JIT auto manufacturing is a modern marvel...
Dealers? That's a tough one. Lots to improve, but you can't eliminate customer service. I'm not sure being beholder to the manufacturer is great for consumers, either.
> Wait, you think the automotive supply chain is inefficient? JIT auto manufacturing is a modern marvel...
It's super efficient for a the current high complexity vehicles we have. It really struggles, though, when you deviate from the formula.
This is pretty evident with the earlier ford evs like the ford focus. Where the only way they could get a battery in is by slapping it into the trunk. The skateboard model of evs is WAY more efficient but requires significant retooling. And, at this point, is pretty much all inhouse standards. There's nobody (AFAIK) manufacturing a standard battery pack module. Every EV manufacture has been left to making their own standards there.
That's what has driven up the cost more than anything. Huge portions of the manufacturing line need to retool and that's a long slow processing. In the meantime, companies like telsa were able disrupt by doing the less efficient ground up approach.
As EVs become more common and standardized, this will of course change and tesla's ev manufacturing will end up a liability rather than an asset. But until that happens, they get some pretty nice profit margins that will be hard to beat.
I am not sure this matters. The point is Tesla is making money per EV sold, and Ford is losing money per EV sold. I don't care if the Tesla number is 20% or 14% or 31%... what matters is the more Ford makes, the more they lose - and I don't yet see how they are going to flip that.
