In the past few months, Ford decided to push back its plans to build 600k EVs annually by 2024 and two million by 2026 amid falling demand, which also prompted the automaker to temporarily reduce Ford F-150 Lightning production at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center as well. Ford CEO Jim Farley cites pricing as one major cause of this faltering interest, as well as politics – a notion chairman Bill Ford echoed recently. However, Ford isn’t alone in that regard either, as its cross-town rival, General Motors, also recently scaled back its own EV production plans, but that seemingly won’t be the case with Hyundai, according to Reuters.
Hyundai – which, like Ford, recently announced that it soon adopt the North American Charging Standard (NACS) for its EVs that Tesla currently uses – isn’t currently planning on delaying its EV production targets, nor the rollout of new models, as it plans to launch 31 new all-electric vehicles by 2030. In addition, Hyundai sees its EVs experiencing strong growth in the coming months and years, even though sales will likely be lower than previously expected – at least in the short term.
“We do not plan to dramatically reduce EV production or our lineup due to likely near-term hurdles as we believe EV sales will grow longer term,” Seo Gang Hyun, Hyundai’s executive vice president, told analysts during the company’s recent earnings briefing. Hyun added that even if EV sales dip slightly in 2024 as expected, the company has the production flexibility to increase the output of its ICE models if that is the case, leading to a minimal impact on overall sales.
Notably, Hyun also stated that he believes the tentative agreement Ford reached with the UAW last night – which ended a weeks-long strike – will have an impact on that automaker’s bottom line, though he also noted that The Blue Oval should be able to compensate by continuing to lower costs.
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Comments
With a full complement of cars and suvs in ice, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and full electric, why would they alter their strategy…they only have to tweak it to which increase production according to sales. Ford on the other hand has one car (ice), one pickup (ice, hybrid and electric), one suv (ice, hybrid and phev) all others are ice. Whose better placed to pivot…certainly not Ford!
Exactly! And as I’ve said in another article – truck owners are the least likely to switch to an EV and EV enthusiasts are the least likely to buy a truck. That leaves the Ford Lightning for a tiny subsection of douchebags that are neither true truck owners or EV enthusiasts. The same goes for the Hummer and Silverado on GM’s end.
Meanwhile, the Mustang Mach-e falls on its face for completely different, but still equally incompetent reasons. Apparently, they thought it was a good idea to put the other half of their chips in to compete directly against the Tesla Model Y, one of the most popular EV’s that beats the Mach-e in almost every respect that Tesla has now made cheaper than the Mach-e to turn up the heat. They also thought it would be cool to piss off Mustang enthusiasts in order to appeal to EV enthusiasts who are NOT classic car enthusiasts themselves, and who are all screaming for sub $30k EV’s and industry-leading fuel-efficient PHEV’s across body types.
I guess they have to learn the hard way that they can’t conflate consumer demand in the ICE market, or even the luxury vehicle market, with the consumer demand in the EV market but it’s really not that hard. Instead of chasing traditional consumer demand uncritically, automakers need to acknowledge that the environmental cost of EV’s is NOT zero and current technology and infrastructure has its limitations. Imagine the success if they didn’t just hype EV’s, but developed a short-, mid-, and long-term strategy for widespread EV adoption that took environmental cost, battery technology forecasts, and infrastructure into account as well as the cost to consumer and depreciation.
Quick, name the ‘full compliment’ of Hyundais’……
I don’t follow Hyundai because I simply don’t care for the vehicles, but I’m glad Ford hasn’t gone ALL in on EVs like gm wanted to. gm is lost.
Also, looking at the profits and revenues by region for these “American” auto companies, why are they letting China and Europe dictate the direction of autos toward EVs when North America is their bread and butter and BY FAR their biggest revue and profit center? Big 3, please stop leaving your core customers to chase another market that simply isn’t going to be there in the same numbers.
Good, let them go broke. The grassroots boycott against EVs is definitely working. #BudLightEVs
Hyundai’s small EVs are going to be much easier to get to cost parity with ICE than large SUVs and trucks, because they simply don’t take as much battery. As others have mentioned, at this point, increasing EV market share requires buy in from the less enthusiastic. Fortunately for Hyundai, money talks, and the great many that oppose EVs for political, cultural, or even practical reasons will probably change their tune as the price goes down. Ford’s unenviable position is just more fallout from their strategic fumble betting the farm on luxury-priced giant trucks. Why bother electrifying full-size trucks that have to seriously haul? An electric Maverick would make more sense for everyone.