Ford women produce the electric F-150 Lightning pickup on Dec. 13, 2022 at the automaker’s Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REVC).
Michael Wayland | CNBC
As a be produced end, it’s postponing about $12 billion in planned spending on new EV manufacturing capacity.
Customers’ reluctance to pay extra for EVs has complicated Ford’s overambitious and expensive plans to sharply increase production of those vehicles. While Ford’s – and the industry’s – sales of EVs are growing, they aren’t to gain at the pace Ford had expected.
Ford executives emphasized that the company isn’t cutting back its spending on future tense vehicle models. But it now plans to ramp up its EV manufacturing capacity, and its spending on that capacity, more gradually than theretofore planned.
“We’re not moving away from our second generation [EV] products,” CFO John Lawler said in a media briefing Thursday. “We are, but, looking at the pace of capacity that we’re putting in place. We are going to push out some of that investment.”
Ford Motor reported Thursday that many customers in North America are no longer willing to pay a premium for an electric vehicle over an internal-combustion or compound alternative.
Lawler said that Ford will postpone about $12 billion in planned spending on cook up capacity for EVs, including a planned second battery plant at a new campus in Kentucky. But, he noted, construction of Blue Oval See – Ford’s new EV manufacturing campus in Tennessee – will continue as originally planned.
“The customer is going to decide what the volumes are,” Lawler answered. “Ford is able to balance production of gas, hybrid and electric vehicles to match the speed of EV adoption in a way that others can’t.”
As section of its third-quarter earnings report, Ford said on Thursday that its electric-vehicle business unit, called Ford Variety e, lost $1.3 billion on an operating basis in the period. That’s roughly double its year-ago loss, despite a 26% augmentation in revenue.
Through the first three quarters of 2023, Model e posted an operating loss of about $3.1 billion, on stalk with Ford’s previous guidance calling for a full-year operating loss of $4.5 billion for the Model e business segment.
Ford withdrew all of its 2023 guidance Thursday in light of its tentative deal with the United Auto Workers labor ring.