Ford Reports Devastating Losses Thanks to Electric Vehicle Gamble

Star News Network ^ | May 3, 2022 | Thomas Catenacci

[fireman15]

Major U.S. automaker Ford blamed its sizable investment in electric vehicle (EV) company Rivian for its dramatic revenue decline in the first quarter of 2022.

Ford reported revenue of $34.5 billion between January and March, a 5% decline relative to the same period in 2021, and a net loss of $3.1 billion, according to the company’s earnings report released Wednesday. The Detroit automaker said its large investment in Rivian accounted for $5.4 billion in losses during the first quarter.

“A net loss of $3.1 billion was primarily attributable to a mark-to-market loss of $5.4 billion on the company’s investment in Rivian,” Ford said in the earnings report.

Ford maintains a roughly 12% stake in Rivian, CNBC reported in November.

Rivian has posted massive profit losses of its own and its share price has plummeted nearly 70% over the last six months. The value of Ford’s roughly 102 million Rivian shares has fallen from about $17.5 billion to $3.2 billion since November.

In the final three months of 2021, Rivian reported a net loss of $2.5 billion.

Automakers have increasingly turned their attention toward manufacturing electric vehicles as governments push aggressive green energy plans. President Joe Biden has promised to craft policies to ensure 50% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. are emissions-free by 2030 and every addition to the federal government’s 600,000-vehicle fleet is electric by 2035.

However, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe recently suggested that the supply chain for EV batteries is still far behind where it needs to be to achieve many of the goals pushed by Western governments, the WSJ reported.

“Put very simply, all the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years,” Scaringe said last week. “Meaning, 90% to 95% of the supply chain does not exist.”

[rktman]

LOL! Ya know, some mirrors in space could provide you with 24 hour sunshine. Might be costly though. Glad it’s working for you guys. My point was that the truck would be okay for a short time but unless the outage is restored one might not even be able to drive anyplace to re-charge. Guess that gas/diesel generator would be handy then.

[from occupied ga]

Of all of the things we figured out as a species, none of them violated any of the laws of physics. Plus keep in mind that a battery consists of an electron acceptor and an electron donor in clos proximity (or in other terms fuel and an oxidizer in close proximity). Now considering how hard it is to put our a fire in one of the current type lithium cells that have only 1/50 of the energy density of gasoline just think what will happen when if the energy density gets increase by a factor of 5 (something I think is unlikely to ever happen) you now have an incendiary bomb waiting to go off. Gasoline is relatively safe because the fuel is stored separately from the air and only mixed in the engine. If you want an analogy to a really high energy density battery think ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel fuel.

[Fightin Whitey]

Why would Ford be investing in a competitor?

What rich geniuses call being visionary...

What you and I call throwing good money after bad.

[Blueflag]

Play nice.

Our residential solar system has a 10kWh battery on it. Runs the 110v circuits all night if needed.

Sunshine the next day charges the battery again, and powers most of the house usage, depending on cloud cover.

Net: it works quite well, and is silent. Unlike the Generac, which is quiet but far from silent.

I believe in backups for backups. We have solar, two generators, and 2 vehicles with 20 AMP 110v AC outlets.

We will do just fine without mirrors in space.

[rktman]

😂🙌

[bert]

Meanwhile, Tesla is making a lie of all you have posted

[fireman15]

Meanwhile, Tesla is making a lie of all you have posted.

Please be more specific... I have no idea what you are talking about. Tesla has not even been mentioned in the article or the thread that I am aware of.

[rlmorel]

Heh, I would guess there are things that violated the laws of physics as they existed at some time. I am simply one of those people who believes we haven’t discovered all there is to know, that’s all.

I try to keep my mind open if I can.

[from occupied ga]

Your belief or lack thereof in physics as it exists at this time doesn’t change the boundaries that exist on chemical and physical processes. Batteries work by combining an electron acceptor (oxidant) and electron donor (fuel) and getting those electrons to do some work on the way. unlike combustion the process in a battery has to be reversible by forcing electrons to flow backwards in the battery or the battery isn’t any good:

The only two ways to get more energy out of a battery is find something that is more energetic than lithium’s change in oxidation states and yet still can be reversed. There might be something, but no one’s found it yet despite hundreds of researchers looking full time. And the other way is to make the battery bigger. Ie heavier thus decreasing the energy efficiency of the vehicle. I am not now nor will I ever be a fan of EVs they are a solution for which there is no problem.

[BereanBrain]

Bullshit fantasy you say? The mistake you made was ASSUMING I meant gravimetric energy density instead of volumetric energy density. Clearly if you READ the post, you would see I was talking VOLUMETRIC, because i was talking about the space a gas tank and engine takes vs the battery. Energy density is expressed in Wh per L usually.

My point is that currently a battery takes about 2x - 2.5x the space in a car as a gasoline tank, for a equivalent range. That is about 1/2 or so the volumetric density.

Yes, if you compare the WEIGHT per mile of range, a 20 gallon tank weighs roughly 160 lbs, while a battery of equivalent range might weigh 1600 lbs (per 100KW pack) or more (10x difference). BUT if you just compare the raw fuel (i.e. LiON storage vs gasoline, it’s more like 50x difference). But LiON converts almost 95-98% to motive force, while a ICE is “industry leading” if it gets 30-38%. Then combine that that 38% efficient engine only makes efficient use on a narrow power band (perhaps 2,000 rpm to 5,800) then you can see that *most* of the energy is given off as useless heat.

This is why an energy storage medium (i.e gasoline) that has a 50 to 100x gravimetric energy density can power a car to about the same range as an ICE with 20 gallon tank.

Here’s another way to think of it...I just paid 4.00$ a gallon to fuel up my tank on my 5.0 Ford Coyote engine in a 2017 Mustang GT. I spent 55 dollars (if it were completely empty i would have spent 64$). The range I get is 384 miles per tank.

Ok, so my friend as i mentioned earlier has a Tesla Model S. It has 402 Miles range. Let’s call it equal to my GT (give the GT a head start).

The model S has a 85KW battery pack that weighs 1,200 lbs. My friend pays .08 cents/KW hour (we live in Texas) when he recharges from home (cost to recharge = 8.5$ vs my 64$). Both cars can go about the same distance.

1,200 lbs battery vs 144 lbs gas tank + 600 lb engine + 275 lbs trans +++.

Oh, and the model s 0-60 time is (depending on type) somewhere between 2.4 and 3.5 seconds....Mustang GT (with Performance Pack) = 4.4

https://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/tesla-0-60-mph-times/
https://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/ford-0-60-mph-times/#accordion-47774

Tinker Bell and Unicorns are kicking your ass.

Facts are stubborn things. It makes no difference how much energy gasoline stores if when the rubber meets the road you get 10% of it.

You see it every day at the strip - some dude pulls up with an expensive build and monster HP and a sleeper car with better tires beats the hell out of him on time.

So, electric is FASTER, BETTER and CHEAPER.

https://www.motortrend.com/features/fastest-cars-0-60-mph?slide=6

Check out the top 10, and then find get the price of each car and compare.

But how can this be, if the Model S is running on Unicorn farts?

Dude, the world has changed. Get used to it.

[rlmorel]

I am a scientist, but I am also a historian, so I understand things like the state of physics before Einstein and after Einstein. In the spirit of that example, I believe that is is **possible** (not certain) that some person not named Einstein may unlock a key to the storage or generation of energy at some point in the future.

Because I believe those things does not mean I am one of those chicken-with-the-head-cut-off types who are squawking that we have to outlaw petroleum based fuels and ban internal combustion engines. I am dead set against this. As a matter of fact, I think those people are ideologically driven mental midgets, when they aren’t intellectually deficient mental midgets.

If I had money to burn, I might buy some electric car more as a hobby or protection against a human induced shortage of petroleum. I lived through those times. I hated that, and that was human induced. We are going to see it again and I am not looking forward to it. But I keep in mind that a shortage of petroleum doesn’t just mean a gasoline shortage, so unlike the idiots on the other side, I don’t think I will blithely be able to plug into a wall outlet and get around it all.

I feel like we are arguing when we shouldn’t be. I think we are on the same side here.

Possibly, the root of that may be that you are likely thinking of batteries in a traditional sense, and I am not. I am 100% in agreement with you that nobody has found a revolutionary way to store energy yet using the standard battery model. I just think that we may find in the future that there is a way to do it we simply don’t know yet.

[from occupied ga]

I wasn’t arguing so much as expressing pessimism as to our government of fools’ solution to the nonexistent problem of man caused global warming. I’m fully convinced that their ultimate goal-is to reduce our ability to move freely by forcing vehicles that are much less practical than the current petroleum fueled standard on us.
Odd that you mentioned being a scientist- I started out with a degree in biochemistry with a heavy side of physical chemistry which is why I’m so hung up on the first and second laws of thermodynamics which apparently no one in the EPA has ever heard of with their impossible CAFE standards. These are two fundamental aspects of our current reality that cannot be violated I got into computer modeling 25 years ago and I know enough about statistics and modeling to know all of this model based climate change is bullsh!t. So I see an artificial austerity getting ready to be rammed down our throats to solve a nonexistent problem and I see EVs as a step toward the austerity that’s planned for us by our self anointed “betters”.
A long winded way of saying that yes something more effective at energy storage than the current batteries may come along, and I am thinking of batteries as the electrochemical things that we have now, but I suspect that the goal isn’t saving the planet or saving transportation energy, but keeping the peasants in their place.

Just as an aside i was returning from FL on the interstate recently and I saw 6 Teslas being hauled to their destination on a diesel truck. Bit of irony there.

[rlmorel]

"...I wasn’t arguing so much as expressing pessimism as to our government of fools’ solution to the nonexistent problem of man caused global warming. I’m fully convinced that their ultimate goal-is to reduce our ability to move freely by forcing vehicles that are much less practical than the current petroleum fueled standard on us..."

In a nutshell, FRiend...:)

[BereanBrain]

One more link for you.

https://insideevs.com/news/584426/tesla-model-s-plaid-vs-mclaren-720s-head-start/amp/

[from occupied ga]

If all I ever drove was a quarter mile on a drag strip Tesla would be OK, but oddly enough I was in Palm Beach - though not at the drag strip - a couple of weeks ago and I drove there 620 miles one way in 9 hours and drove back in 9.25 hours I stopped for gas once each way taking less than 5 min to fill the tank each time plus I had the air conditioning on and had a full cargo load of various stuff plus 4 (total) people in the vehicle. I haven’t raced at a drag strip since 1966, but I make quite a few long distance trips each year. You can keep your EVs. I have no use for them. BTW you know if someone ever manages to make a battery with 1/2 the energy density of diesel fuel ( never happen, but you’re into fantasizing) the battery would be the equivalent of a mixture of diesel and ammonium nitrate.

[from occupied ga]

I gotta say your ability to selectively view reality is second to none. Volumetric is a worthless comparison because the amount of energy needed to move a vehicle directly correlates with the weight. The bigger the battery the heavier the vehicle and the heavier the vehicle the more energy it takes to move it. Now tinker bell and unicorn farts will have to be the ultimate source of energy for battery vehicles if all of the fools plunge us into an electric vehicle transport system BECAUSE the USA does not have the generation capacity to produce the power to charge and keep charging those batteries so hence wind ie unicorn farts and rainbows ie solar. Neither of which is reliable or economical if you take away the government distortion of the marketplace. Plus when I Google ev efficiency I get 85 -90 not 98%

So let’s do an experiment. I’ll drive to Palm Beach again for the 4th of July holiday. I’ll mostly keep to the speed limit because the counties in south ga consider drivers on the interstate a primary source of revenue not because I have any great respect for the logic of the current speed limit. I’ll get there in less than 10 hours maybe as little as 9 depending on the traffic. I’ll have the air conditioning blasting away and I’ll travel with my family and they don’t travel light. So you load up your EV and drive on a 620 mile trip withe the air on full and you vehicle packed to the limit and see how long it takes you.

[BereanBrain]

Yeah, good for you driving 9 hours non-stop. I don’t. It’s not safe. I take a break (driving my ICE) every 2-3 hours. Bathroom, food or coffee, stretch legs. Also, I have a pretty bad back, after 2-3 hours i MUST unfold it.

So, Yes, it’s a generational thing. My parents would drive non-stop from/to even if they had to get up at 4 AM and arrive at 10. Not a fan. I think they were trying to avoid the expense of eating out/hotels, etc. We always packed a lunch. Did not make for a fun vacation trip, I can tell you.

I live in Dallas, and about 2 hours east is a supercharger co-located at an upscale bakery (Collin Street Bakery). I would stop there and charge (and given starting with a full battery in Dallas), it would take 10 minutes to top off. So that’s about the time it takes for bathroom/order coffee, etc.

The app built into *most* EVs will plan your trip. So far, the only two EVs that have a good travel experience are Tesla and Ford (almost). I don’t like the pregnant Taurus renamed Mustang EV FORD did though. Damn it, don’t pollute the Mustang GT brand. (I own a GT).

[BereanBrain]

Ah, did you know that Tesla “re-invented” the AC to make it more efficient?

Too long Detroit did not care about efficiency (burn a 20W lamp for taillights, not use an efficient AC compressor, Power Steering Pump, Water Pump) because it was CHEAP, and after all, Power is free, right?

So, Yes, my friend WHO LIVES IN DALLAS where we have 60-90 100 degree days a year, runs his AC on high. What makes MORE of a difference at speed is wind resistance. In fact, even in an ICE car, if you have an efficient (scroll based, not rotary) AC pump, you will get LESS MPG by rolling your windows down and driving 65 MPH than with the AC on.

You are UNEDUCATED on the power generation facility vs car usage.
As you may be aware, TESLA is the largest manufacturer of EVs.
They also have huge factories, using huge amounts of energy.
They also SELL Solar Arrays.
So, what if we totaled up ALL the energy consumed by TESLA vehicles during a year, and ADDED the total amount of energy consumed by the manufacturing plants, and COMPARED it to the amount of energy produced in a year by the TESLA solar panels that are installed and running?

https://youtu.be/WJOaTZmg4uM?t=699

BTW, this is a federal filled report. If someone falsifies it, they are going to JAIL.
Sarbanes-Oxley. Look it up.

Your arguments always go to

1) Corner Cases (I want to drive 9 hours nonstop)
2) Name Calling (Unicorn Farts)
3) Half-baked analysis

If you don’t like EVs, DON”T BUY THEM. It’s a free country.
if they don’t work GM, Ford, etc will go out of business which they should have already due to miss-management. (actually FORD is the only one of the majors who have not taken Gov bailouts).

IF you want an eye-opener, Tesla has ~1T market valuation. Some say it’s overpriced. ALL the other major car vendors have ~1T value as well, and yet they produce 95% of the vehicles on the planet. What Gives? Are investors just stupid?

Uh, no. The major vendors (put together as a group) have 2x,3x,5x Debt to their current revenue (not net, revenue). GM (mind you recently infused by serveral rounds of YOUR tax dollars) is still at 1.72 D/R https://finance.yahoo.com/news/debt-significant-obstacle-general-motorss-112224187.html

Debt to Rev Ratio. GM 1.72 Tesla .89

So, Tesla even though it is spending TENS of Billions in new factories AND battery production, is below 1.0....Think about that.

Just because you are electric does NOT mean success. Rivian. Lordstown Motors.
Between those two, Ford, Amazon, GM and others have LOST 20-30B$ at least.
Oh, and don’t forget the hydrogen pyramid scheme of Nickolai Motors.

Dude, there is plenty throw rocks about in EV without having to make shit up.

[from occupied ga]

You obviously have a different philosophy regarding travel. I consider time on the interstate wasted and want to get where im going as quickly as possible. comes from a lifetime of working for a living where vacation days are not to be wasted in taking leisurely automotive trips. And sorry to disappoint you, but I worked in power generation planning and operations for 16 years and I know a neck of a lot more about it than you do. And government reports are generally full of whatever BS is currently the government’s latest fad. What “shit have I made up”? Wind and solar are fads that seriously endanger the country’s energy supply or don’t you remember last winters problems with electricity in Texas. If you like battery rather than fuel fine,let an UNDISTORTED marketplace determine their success or failure. Don’t do like GM and say that the only choice you get in ten years.