Posted on 03/28/2023 5:40:57 AM PDT by Red Badger
Ford reported that it’s going to lose $3 billion on electric cars in 2023.
Unlike most automakers, Ford reports its electric vehicle numbers separately, but experts estimate that most car companies are losing similar amounts on the dead end business.
Ford’s investment in Rivian’s electric cars can’t be helping. Last year the startup electric pickup truck maker was spending $220,000 to make the electric vehicles that it sells for $81,000.
That’s bad news for George Soros and for CalPERS: California’s massive public employees retirement fund and a ticking time bomb which owns hundreds of thousands of shares in Rivian.
GM and Ford both project that their electric cars will be profitable in a few years. Ford plans to make 2 million electric cars every year by 2025. That would be impressive considering that Ford only sold 61,575 of them in 2022. It sold 3,624 electric vehicles in Feb 2023.
That’s a long way from 2 million.
GM plans to sell 1 million electric cars by 2025. It sold less than 40,000 in 2022.
Projections like these might make sense if GM and Ford had hot products and untapped market demand. Instead there are too many electric car models chasing a tiny market. Electric car sales have yet to break the million mark. Most of the electric car activity continues to be concentrated in the luxury SUV market which only has so many buyers able to afford them.
Even the “affordable” electric cars, like GM’s Bolt, start at $30,000, and lose as much as $9,000 for the company.
The only way to create demand for electric cars is through government mandates.
After 2035, if you want to buy a new car in California, it’s electric cars or it’s nothing. California’s mandates that fined car manufacturers, forcing them to buy credits from electric car makers like Tesla, financed the electric car industry. By 2035, California will simply eliminate the competition.
New York, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington have also moved to ban the sale of new cars. About a dozen Democrat states have similarly decided to prevent residents from buying cars. Virginia’s House voted to drop its car ban, but the state’s Senate Democrats have kept it in place. Biden has proposed a similar ban nationwide following its adoption by the EU.
By 2040, GM expects to stop making and selling cars on the assumption of such a ban.
George Soros has reportedly lost over $1 billion with his Rivian investment, and his other electric car investments may seem shaky, but in the long term the leftist politicians he has backed are expected to eliminate the competition and clear cars off the roads and highways.
Automakers are spending billions to build electric cars that no one wants and no one can afford because governments have assured them of a captive market. And after all that money flushed down the drain, their lobbyists are aggressively pressuring legislators to impose new bans and keep the existing bans in place. They’ve also been seduced with the promise of subsidies and tax credits that will free them from the pedestrian business of actually turning a profit.
Woke pension funds and party donors have kept the pressure on to see that it pays off.
Detroit’s bet that customers will just accept this as the new normal and just pay higher prices for worse performance is a bad one. The electric car mandates are the work of a Democrat party that is closely tied to a wealthy elite even as Republicans are becoming a working class party. Assuming that half the country will just accept being priced out of the car market when car ownership remains the key to economic and social mobility is as arrogant as it is clueless.
Even assuming that Republicans remain too dysfunctional and outmaneuvered to significantly roll back the leftist agenda, the new car market will drastically shrink. Americans, like Cubans, will desperately work to keep old cars going because for much of the country they will be the only option. The number of illegal cars on the road will dramatically increase. But as brownouts and energy shortages continue to hammer California and other blue states that have also gone all-in on solar and wind power, those will be the only cars that can actually remain on the road.
Woke car companies will have their monopoly handed to them only to find that it’s worthless.
Like their former European counterparts, American automakers will become even more deeply entangled with the government. The inverse spiral of subsidies and sales will climax in bankruptcies. Detroit has failed to innovate and electric car theater is no substitute for actually doing the work to make the cars that people want rather than the ones ad agencies try to make them want.
Letting government mandates instead of consumer demand drive sales is embraced by companies that have given up on even trying to make an appealing product. If electric vehicles were legitimately popular, it wouldn’t take a ban on cars to make them economically viable.
American automakers used to be revolutionary, now they’re the regime.
That’s scary. Here’s something a little more scary: the large raw materials (iron/steel) foundries are all about gone in America. We rely on imports even for US based manufacturing. Our manufacturing Achilles heal is a supply chain that begin in China and other places abroad.
There is NO WAY in hell I would spend $80K for a damn car OMG that is utter insanity!! How in the hell are the insurance companies going to afford insuring these damn things if an accident happens and the batteries are damaged the car would have to be totaled because the batteries ARE THE CAR!{
Imagine if we set it up in the 1920s that we were reliant on Japan for everything, like we are with China. We didn’t become enemies until the mid-1930s.
You can use whatever you want. Buutt. I’ve been using LEDs and CFLs for years. They use less electricity, run cooler and last longer than incandescent. I have one pair of LEDs used for outside porch lights that have run 24/7 since 2013. They burn 24 watts but have the output of 100s. Big money savers. The cheap WM LEDs don’t last long enough to justify the cost imo so I shop around. I have a few CFLs that have been running since 2007.
Because nobody saw this coming.... sigh
The government’s goal is to do away with cars, so everything is working according to plan.
If Taiwan falls, we may have to build cars that way.
When cars are outlawed only outlaws will have cars............. 🤔
Gee, then how does Tesla have such a high profit margin on each car? The problem is likely a combination of old business practices by the legacy manufacturers, union labor, and the dealer model.
You might want to try enterprise car rental sales, most of their cars and trucks are NOT decked out with all the extra options and they usually put them up for sale at 30,000 miles AND they are maintained really well!!! JEEZE no wonder kids are living at home FOREVER!!!
Tesla has no unions, iirc..........
The only thing that makes any sense is that the FedGov has told Ford, GM, et al that much like the big investors out at SVB, the FedGov will cover the losses from the taxpayers. FedGov cannot let the forces of capitalism work their magic if the GND is to prevail.
An aside ... coming out of Home Depot yesterday I saw a bright red Ford Lightning pickup pulling in right next to my truck.
When the owner got out I said “Nice truck ... it’s the first one I had seen moving under it’s own power.”
He asked what I meant to which I said “Oh I have seen several around the neighborhood but they all had dead batteries and were on trailers being towed home.”
He responded with “you think you’re funny, don’t you.” and departed.
His comment makes me think that he has already had to be towed once or more.
No , that’s actually the point.
I can’t use whatever I want.
CFLs sucked because of the color, but LEDs are awesome. Less energy, last longer…make the switch!
That’s my point!
My wife wants a “new” vehicle, that has never been driven before, since she has always had used cars.............
Of those 100,000 EV sold in 2022 by these 2 companies, how many were sold to government agencies?
Saw a motorcycle and a Ford truck collision a couple of weekends ago.
The motorcycle broadsided the aluminum pickup bed and SPLIT IT above the rear fender....................
“I can’t use whatever I want.”
Must live in a Leftist state. There are incandescent lightbulbs in the local stores in FL. They’re also in flea markets and available online.
Being in FL keeping A/C costs down means not running stuff that heats the house. Been running CFLs and LEDs for years. Saves in monthly elec bill.
I’ll take a ‘65 Pontiac.
Superformance sells their cars as “continuation” models, meaning they’re still selling 60s model-year cars.
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