I should have known something was up when Ford scheduled an embargo at 4:05 PM yesterday. It was a one-two punch of news, with the exciting part for us being the introduction of an EREV F-150. The other fist of news, while somewhat predictable, was maybe even more important and timed to be released after the market closed. Ford is changing its big EV plans and paying the price for it this year.
The big picture of it all is interesting to me, so it’ll lead The Morning Dump today. I think Ford is getting off easy, especially when you look at other trends. The earliest report of November EV sales shows a huge 40% drop. In Europe, Volkswagen is closing a plant for the first time in 88 years. Can you guess what it makes?
And, finally, GM has done ok in the EV space, but there’s one big drawback to buying most GM EVs. Will the company’s latest move fix this problem?
Ford Didn’t Get Off Easy, But It Could Have Been Worse
When Ford announced last year that it was creating a Skunkworks team to develop a sub-$30k EV separate from all the other electric vehicles it was developing, it was clear that the company was having serious second thoughts about whether or not it could make big electric cars work.
It’s long been my view, and David’s view, and Lucid founder Peter Rawlinson’s view that the battery technology is just not there to make big EVs work as well as EREVs can. With the exception of the Mustang GTD, Ford is a mainstream brand that makes the biggest chunk of its money from selling trucks to people who do work or, at least, people who like to imagine doing work. It does this at a massive scale, moving somewhere around three-quarters of a million F-Series trucks a year.
It’s no surprise then that Ford’s view was that it could build a lot of big electric vehicles for that kind of customer. A big three-row SUV, a couple of trucks, and an electric van. All extremely Ford products.
With the announcement that it was discontinuing the all-EV F-150 Lightning and making it an EREV instead, Ford also mentioned it was giving up its big EV dream and focusing on other things.
“This is a customer-driven shift to create a stronger, more resilient and more profitable Ford,” said Ford president and CEO Jim Farley. “The operating reality has changed, and we are redeploying capital into higher-return growth opportunities: Ford Pro, our market-leading trucks and vans, hybrids and high-margin opportunities like our new battery energy storage business.”
These actions provide a path to profitability in Model e by 2029, targeting annual improvements beginning in 2026. The actions will also improve profits in Ford Blue and Ford Pro over time with early signs of benefits in 2026. As a result, Ford expects to record about $19.5 billion in special items, the majority in the fourth quarter of 2025, with the remainder in 2026 and 2027.
As part of these special items, the company expects approximately $5.5 billion in cash effects, with the majority paid in 2026 and the remainder in 2027. To support these actions, Ford and its subsidiaries plan to hire thousands of people across America, reinforcing the company’s leadership as the top employer of U.S. hourly autoworkers.
That $19.5 billion is Ford cancelling most of its big EV plans, including the three-row (widely expected) and the electric van (also, not a surprise). Ford says it’ll keep the affordable, probably Maverick-sized EV truck it teased earlier this year, built on the company’s Universal EV Platform.
The key words in all of this are “choice” and “affordability.” Looking at the relative success of an automaker like Hyundai, Ford thinks it’ll bring a bunch of different pieces together for different consumers, and expects that by the end of the decade, about half of its cars globally will be electrified in some manner.
While nearly $20 billion is a huge amount, I think the muted market reaction so far today is a sign that this was sort of priced in, and that the potential for profits from hybrids and trucks means Ford is better off not wasting the money.
EV Sales Down 41% In November, But Rivian Does Better
The latest EV Market Monitor from Cox Automotive shows that EV sales dropped 41.2% year-over-year and 5.2% compared to October. This was no surprise and reflects two different, but connected political realities. Last November, more people bought EVs because the election of President Trump made them fear they’d lose out on an EV tax credit. Then, in September of this year, that tax credit went away.
While most brands struggled, it wasn’t universal as Cox points out:
Despite November’s weakness, year-to-date EV sales remain 2.1% above last year’s pace. EV share of total sales fell to 5.4% in November, the lowest since April 2022 and down from October’s 5.8%. By volume, the market leaders were Tesla (39,800), Rivian (4,500), Ford (4,188), Chevrolet (3,112), and Hyundai (2,853). Tesla dropped 2.1% month over month but gained 2.2 percentage points of market share to reach 56.7%, as competitors faced even steeper declines. Several brands posted year-over-year sales volume gains, with Rivian leading at 7.6% and showing the strongest momentum. Rivian’s sales volume was up 14.1% from October.
Wow, good on Rivian.
VW Closes First Plant In Germany In 88 Years
If you want to have a bookend for modern Volkswagen, I don’t think you can do better than the Dresden Glass Factory. It was built to produce the VW Phaeton, which, while a car I love, was a good example of the insanity of peak-Piech era thinking. It’ll be the first plant to close in VW’s post-WWII history, and the last vehicle to roll off the assembly in is an ID.3 EV created in the company’s whiplash response to Dieselgate.
The plant will be taken over by a VW-led partnership:
From DFP via MSN:
From January 2026, Volkswagen, Saxony and the Technical University (TU) of Dresden are entering into a strategic partnership and will put the Transparent Factory to new uses.
The plan is to create an innovation centre for key technology fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, microelectronics and chip design.
The TU intends to use almost half of the space in the factory in future. The 230 employees are to keep their jobs in Dresden for the time being.
“For the time being” is how long, exactly? Asking for a friend.
GM Will Get Apple Music
General Motors makes a nice EV, and is one of the few companies that is well-positioned to keep making a wide range of EVs into the future. The company also doesn’t put Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in most of these cars, and plans to remove the software from future vehicles. This sucks!
The company is starting to make some improvements, though, by at least offering Apple Music and podcast apps (hopefully, Apple Podcasts) to its vehicles. Here’s what the company said in a press release:
To make listening effortless, GM is making audio streaming standard through OnStar Basics for all 2025 and newer vehicles in the U.S. and Canada. That means customers can access their favorite music, audiobook, podcast, and news apps — including Apple Music — at no additional connectivity cost for eight years with their vehicle purchase.
“We are bringing the Apple Music app to GM vehicles in a way that takes full advantage of our industry-leading audio capabilities,” said Tim Twerdahl, GM’s vice president of global product management. “It’s the latest example of how we’re expanding entertainment choices built directly into our vehicles.”
This does sound like, after eight years, you’ll have to pay to use basic apps.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
This is Phil Cordell’s “Red Lady,” a song that gives a Decemberists vibe approximately 40 years earlier. I’m also shocked this hasn’t been in a Wes Anderson movie yet.
The Big Question
What’s your favorite car-that-never-got-built?
Credit: Ford; DepositPhotos.com
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