While internal combustion vehicles still dominate the automotive landscape today, by 2030, EVs will likely make a significant dent in their omnipresence. The Blue Oval will be one of the companies responsible for this large scale transition, and has essentially split itself into two distinct divisions to reflect the coming change. Inevitably, the shift away from internal combustion vehicles practically guaranteed that some employees at the automaker would get laid off. And now, based on a report by the Detroit Free Press, 580 workers with Ford engineering ties will have to start looking for new jobs.
The reduction in Ford engineering staff happened on Wednesday, with 350 salaried and 230 agency workers being impacted, and some will end their time at Ford at the end of the week. The 350 salaried workers will get severance packages that include nine months of pay, continuation of benefits for a limited time, and career transition services. This is a permanent reduction in staff, not a layoff. As Ford Authority reported in 2021, this isn’t the first time The Blue Oval has sought to reduce its employee headcount for workers responsible for various internal combustion related development efforts, as the automaker initiated buyouts for about 1,000 employees last summer.
In addition to spending a formidable $50 billion towards producing 2 million EVs annually by 2026, Ford engineering will focus on quality checks and for the remaining internal combustion components that have hindered the company’s profitability, which in turn should help reduce costs. Ford CEO Jim Farley has stated that “mass EV adoption” should start in 2023, and two of its freshly launched EVs – The Ford F-150 Lightning and Ford Mustang Mach-E – are set to get production ramp-ups to help spur the change. That said, he has also acknowledged that fully electric vehicles aren’t for everyone, at least at the moment, so internal combustion R&D won’t be completely gutted for some time yet.
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Comments
This tells us definitely that Ford’s vision of the future is out of focus. The transition to EVs will not happen so quickly. Ford is sabotaging its future.
But Ford needs to cut costs because no matter how many vehicles it “sells,” clearly Ford can’t actually deliver them.
100 % spot. We may be watching a giant slowly imploding. Putting all of its eggs in one basket that only a select few in reality want.
What really concerns me is how hard the automotive companies have pivoted to EVs despite how small the demand for EVs actually is. It seems to me they are colluding to force us to accept higher-priced EVs, higher maintenance costs, and data surveillance platforms that the majority of people don’t want.
Can you say “myopia”? Prices for battery materials are soaring and Biden’s driving our economy off the cliff. A recession is coming. The silver lining is that gas prices will probably fall. This alongwith the higher prices of EVs will slow down their growth.
Circling the drain like GM.
Everyone should have seen this coming. Gut and bleed to death the profitable ICE division ( which is now one of two divisions in Ford ) to help pay for the $50 billion Ford is spend on the EV division, which will not make money for decades, and then when all that is left of the ICE division is a skeleton of itself, spin it off, and let it go bankrupt. Then we will all be screwed with only being able to buy overly expensive EVs, because you have to know that the other ICE manufacturers are going to do exactly the same thing as Ford.
I don’t know about that. It seemsxToyota and Stellantis and Nissan are taking a more cautious approach. Nevertheless, EVs are a huge gamble that not everyone is going to be successful with.
EVs are still too expensive for most people. The battery replacement will be very costly too. Depreciation in value is excessive.
I have a problem with EVs limited range.
I hope Ford knows what they are doing.