Ford Motor Company, once at the forefront of innovation in the auto industry, may finally have achieved its match in the artificial propulsion of electric vehicles.
According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, Ford's efforts to transition to all- or mostly electric vehicle production are cutting its profits by nearly 50 percent.
The Journal's report began optimistically enough, noting that Ford shares rose 3 percent Wednesday on news that Ford's projected adjusted operating profit would reach $11 billion this year — well above the $9.6 billion that analysts had expected. .
Despite this initial good news, the newspaper went on to detail the company's problems when it comes to electric vehicle production, especially regarding the increasing costs of manufacturing electric vehicles.
According to the magazine, their electric vehicle production line lost a whopping $4.7 billion last year, and the company expects things to get even worse next year, by between $5 billion and $5.5 billion.
If Ford hadn't splurged so much on projects like the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning EVs, the company's adjusted operating profits would have been 50 percent higher, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Oh.
Some of these problems stem from Ford's current inability to take some of its most popular products — its pickup trucks and SUVs — and convert them into electric vehicles. The problem, as the newspaper explained, is that heavy vehicles like pickup trucks and SUVs can't realistically be converted into efficient electric cars.
One would think that Ford would learn from last year's painful experience and stop developing electric cars, but no. Instead, they're stepping on the accelerator and pledging to pour 40 percent of the company's capital expenditures into electric vehicles in 2024, just as they did in 2023, according to the report.
If Ford electric cars are losing so much money, why are they still on the road to bankruptcy?
EVs certainly have their fans, but those fans don't seem to include the majority of Americans — at least not yet.
It's not customer demand or interest then. So why this big push for something that most of their customers don't care about, at best?
Apparently, this is because Ford and most auto companies believe electric vehicles are the wave of the future, despite customer apathy.
But these companies only believe electric vehicles are the wave of the future because of the Biden administration's aggressive push and de facto mandates to artificially inflate electric vehicle manufacturing and sales by an arbitrary date.
And not just the Biden government, but governments across the Western world are pushing EVs with aggressive rhetoric, crazy emissions standards, and generous tax subsidies.
It's basically governments bullying consumers into buying a product they don't actually want, all to pursue a questionable strategy to reduce climate activists' concern, carbon emissions.
It is the antithesis of the free market.
You would think that any company that really wanted to make money — especially Ford, the company that has ever made cars profitable — would realize that.
This article originally appeared in The Western Journal.
