After announcing major investments into all-electric vehicles and the batteries that power them, waning demand as of late has prompted Ford to scale back its plans of producing 600k units annually by 2024 and two million by 2026, along with around $12 billion in planned investments, which could be delayed or canceled altogether. Ford CEO Jim Farley has stated that pricing is one of the major barriers to EV adoption at the moment, a sentiment that’s been echoed by numerous studies in recent years, even with a bit of a price war erupting as of late. Now, a new survey from S&P Global Mobility backs up that data with even more proof that pricing remains a big barrier for many EV shoppers.
Of the 7,500 people that S&P surveyed across the globe – not only in the U.S. – 48 percent said that EV prices are too high, even though they also understand that those types of vehicles tend to cost more than their ICE counterparts across the board. Pricing is now the number one barrier to EV adoption, the survey found, but it was also joined by some familiar reasons such as lack of charging infrastructure and range anxiety.
Regardless, things have changed over the past few years, as back in 2019, many respondents to a similar survey cited a lack of options as one of the main reasons why they weren’t considering the purchase of an EV. At that time, 58 percent of respondents said that they were open to buying an EV as their next new vehicle purchase, a number that soared to 86 percent in 2021. However, that same figure declined to just 67 percent in May of 2023, and 42 percent in this most recent survey.
According to S&P, there are a few good reasons for this sharp decline in interest among potential EV shoppers – chiefly among them, price fatigue, which has been fueled by soaring interest rates and inventory shortages. Thus, until automakers can figure out how to make cheaper EVs, it seems as if this trend might continue into the foreseeable future.
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Comments
So, Ford and others are losing $33k/vehicle and the prices are still too high. EV desire and demand has tanked. In all seriousness, Ford would need to lose $50k/vehicle to move the EV inventory. Is Farley prepared to walk away from billions of dollars in sunk costs and losses, or will he continue to lose billions year-after-year? By the time domestic manufactures have this figured out, cheap Chinese vehicles will be here and push EV prices even lower. Why does Ford (or anyone else) want to keep playing this EV game? They should all take their mulligan and come back when the technology has matured. In the meantime, produce hybrids until the technology and infrastructure are ready for EVs and keep selling ICE vehicles since they are profitable.
I agree. Maybe these companies need to push back on some of these absurd mandates.
I just looked up how slowly Ford’s flagship “Mustang” Mach-E is selling. It is currently the worst selling vehicle in America with a whopping 239 days of inventory. Ford’s E-series is a distant second at 130 days. In fact, Ford holds 9 of the 10 worst selling (most days of supply) vehicles in America right now (there’s a Ford Authority article for you), despite the fact that they’ve had various shut downs for months that have reduced production. That’s really bad.
I guess I was wrong. I just read this on WSJ, “Ford Motor Co. lost $62,016 on each electric vehicle it sold during this year’s third quarter.” So, a $62k loss isn’t moving anything. How about a $75k loss? These losses are just absurd.
Buyer pushback has begun already on overpriced ICEs also.
Correct. Everything is overpriced.
Pricing and charge time. No thanks.