Ford Has Steered Its Former EV Truck and Plant Plans in to a Ditch

Electric pickup trucks are hard, mostly because they need to fill an imaginary, or aspirational use case. More than 99% of the pickup truck miles in the US could be filled by an electric truck with a 150 mile range that people charge at home. But no one will buy that truck because of the desire to take long trips, and potentially tow a long distance.

The driving and ownership experience of electric vehicles is MUCH better, but it is hard to convince buyers to try it out.

>with the Lightning (and the overall EV market) in trouble

What? Global EV sales are up 21% in 2025. Maybe lightning sales are down, but not overall EV sales.

Why did they throw away the Soybean/Hemp car patent, in the 1940s?

Soybean car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean_car

Were they corrupted by oil and war to sell it?

Not surprised.

They pulled back out of the EU and other markets like South America and BYD opened up an assembly plant in Brazil.

Turn back the clock and Ford ruled the EU with saloons like the Escort, Mondeo and later the Focus - they were caught unawares with shift to compact SUV's and had the popular Ecosport but never invested in the product line and it was left to wither and die.

They are teaming up with Renault to use their EV platform to maintain a token presence in the EU but consumers today are smarter and more informed and will not buy badge engineered Fords.

I mean, the reduction of industrial subsidizes for EVs globally [0] along with recent supply chain scares [1] have made the economics for EVs much more difficult recently [2].

This should not be construed as "EVs are dying" but as I keep saying, EVs are going thru the same cycle that Hybrid ICE went thru 15 years ago.

Assuming a 0 to 100% EV transition would happen globally in a handful of years is dumb. Heck, even Chinese automotive manufacturers primarily export ICE vehicles globally [3]. The transition will happen both slower than EV fundamentalists and faster than ICE fundamentalists assume.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/global...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-tightens-rare-eart...

[2] - https://www.spglobal.com/automotive-insights/en/blogs/2025/1...

[3] - https://www.reuters.com/investigations/china-floods-world-wi...