As Ford Authority reported in April, China opted to suspend exports of various minerals and rare earth magnets to other countries for some time as its government worked to draft a new regulatory system. Trouble is, those materials are needed for electric vehicles and various other components, such as steering systems, headlights, spark plugs, and capacitors, which are used in a wide berth of electronic items, and China controls around 99 percent of the world’s supply of them. That move has since impacted automotive production in many ways, with Ford CEO Jim Farley recently giving us a bit more information as to how The Blue Oval was affected.
“We shut down plants for three weeks because we cannot get high power magnets – magnets go into your speakers in your audio system, your seat’s motors, your wiper motors, your door motors, and we can’t make that stuff,” Farley said during an appearance at the recent 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival.
We already knew that this issue impacted Ford Explorer production at the Chicago Assembly plant recently, as The Blue Oval paused it last week after one of The Blue Oval’s suppliers rain out of magnets, which are used in that model to operate braking and steering systems, power seats, fuel injectors, and various other components. The plant reopened shortly thereafter, according to a Ford spokesperson, who added that the automaker had already decided not to keep it running for a week in the coming months regardless of this shortage. The company simply chose to shift that downtime due to the disruption in rare earth magnet supply.
Rare earth minerals have since begun flowing from China again, but automakers are still scrambling to secure enough of them to build vehicles, regardless. “It’s hand to mouth – the normal supply-chain scrambling that you have to do,” said Lisa Drake, Ford’s vice president of Technology Platform Programs and EV Systems. Drake added that the automaker still needs to “move things around” to avoid having production disruptions, but noted that the situation has improved, at least.
The crossover continues to grow its sales total with each passing month.
It was one of just two to receive an award in that category.
Taking a page out of the Maverick's book.
All that Electric Spice looks pretty good, if we do say so ourselves.
It has remained with the original owner's family since new, too.
Three words: tech, advertising, and business.
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They don’t hold any in reserve? It just dawned on them that from time to time they might be at the whim of the antagonist nation that controls 99% of the rare earth? What the heck are they thinking? Farley says that if China runs the EV race there no longer will be a FoMoCo, but apparently hasn’t taken into account the myriad of things China can do to achieve that.
You didn't consider that they DID have reserves and they simply ran through them? That's quite the assumption there
Na this is America, we sit in our chairs in front of some type of screen just jumping to conclusions like fools.
China an antagonist nation?? Boy if that isn't the coffee kettle calling the coffee Mexican. You push insult and try to bully a humble nation,then that's what you get, not bad for a bunch of "peasants" huh? Once you realize China owns you and can cut off your supply of everything if it truly wants, then maybe you'll wake up. This whole mess is one idiots fault and the " people" who follow him. Not China's,so please get your lies straight. Now Ford and the rest of the country has to suffer, things aren't bad enough for you people???