Ford CEO expects EV sales to be cut in half after US tax credits end today

[02Reaper]

You are assuming they are making a profit at those prices. Ford lost about $37,000 per EV sold in 2024. They are subsidizing our vehicles. Thanks Ford!

In that loss I wonder if they have this calculated in.... https://www.marketplace.org/story/2...-vehicles-but-saving-money-on-emissions-fines

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[WXman]

But it's a bit of mental gymnastics where people say they get a PHEV because the 50 miles or so of range is enough for them to "basically never burn any gas!" but they insist on hanging onto it because they are afraid of the occasional road trip.

I don't understand why that's such a stretch. So if 50 miles can get me to work and back Monday through Friday with zero gasoline burned, and then the engine can shave 2 HOURS of time off my 4 hour trip to the campground on the weekend because I don't have to sit at public charging stations, that's a bad thing?

PHEV objectively has more flexibility. If they aren't going to design the hybrid to be plug-in, then it's a moot point and I'd rather just have a simple ICE with a larger fuel tank. No point in more complicated systems onboard for little gain.

 

[Henry Ford]

In that loss I wonder if they have this calculated in.... https://www.marketplace.org/story/2...-vehicles-but-saving-money-on-emissions-fines

That's interesting. The article says one EV makes 12 gas vehicles CAFE compliant (paraphrasing and simplifying). That means every gas vehicle Ford sells is subsidizing every EV buyer more than $3000. Thanks gas vehicle buyers!

 

[02Reaper]

That's interesting. The article says one EV makes 12 gas vehicles CAFE compliant (paraphrasing and simplifying). That means every gas vehicle Ford sells is subsidizing every EV buyer more than $3000. Thanks gas vehicle buyers!

I know I had read somewhere that a lot of tesla's money come from selling credits to other vehicle manufacturers so they could be compliant. So rather than having to purchase them, they can use the EV's to subsidize them. https://carboncredits.com/tesla-hits-record-high-sales-from-carbon-credits-at-1-79b/

 

[Newton]

I don't understand why that's such a stretch. So if 50 miles can get me to work and back Monday through Friday with zero gasoline burned, and then the engine can shave 2 HOURS of time off my 4 hour trip to the campground on the weekend because I don't have to sit at public charging stations, that's a bad thing?

PHEV objectively has more flexibility. If they aren't going to design the hybrid to be plug-in, then it's a moot point and I'd rather just have a simple ICE with a larger fuel tank. No point in more complicated systems onboard for little gain.

How are you getting two hours of charging on a four hour trip? Do you actually own an EV or are you guessing? You are talking about 240 miles or so in reality with traffic, and I can do that in my EV6 with no stops.

In real life it takes about 31 minutes to charge my SR from 27% to 80% - and Ford has notoriously slow charging that I would hope they correct in future vehicles.

 

[Vulnox]

How are you getting two hours of charging on a four hour trip? Do you actually own an EV or are you guessing? You are talking about 240 miles or so in reality with traffic, and I can do that in my EV6 with no stops.

In real life it takes about 31 minutes to charge my SR from 27% to 80% - and Ford has notoriously slow charging that I would hope they correct in future vehicles.

I suspect they have a travel trailer, which in another response of mine I said is about the only reason I see an EREV being beneficial. Since they said going to the campground I am guessing that is their use case.

Which, as I said in my comment, is totally valid. But the cross section of people that tow travel trailers with a half ton is very small. Most TT owners that do it regularly and with a 30 foot+ TT are doing so with a 3/4 ton or higher. So Ford is not missing anything there.

Plus doing a battery plus engine and all that is likely going to further impact payloads, which will mean only smaller TTs can be towed safely with a potential Lightning EREV anyway.

All that is to say, it still seems like a bad idea for a company interested in money. It would account for an even smaller percentage of sales than the PowerBoost currently pulls in and almost certainly less than the Lightning as well. So what's in it for Ford?

 

[WXman]

How are you getting two hours of charging on a four hour trip? Do you actually own an EV or are you guessing? You are talking about 240 miles or so in reality with traffic, and I can do that in my EV6 with no stops.

In real life it takes about 31 minutes to charge my SR from 27% to 80% - and Ford has notoriously slow charging that I would hope they correct in future vehicles.

Because in my testing two weeks ago, I was seeing 80 miles on a charge. The campsite is 225 miles. I didn't go to Harvard, but I'm pretty sure that's 3 stops, unless I want to try for 2 and then figure out how to start my trip back home later.

Then I looked at how long it takes to charge one of these trucks on a level 3 charger and people are saying 45 minutes. So that's 2.25 hours, not 2 hours as I previously stated. My bad...

But no, I don't really have an EV. I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

 

[Vulnox]

Because in my testing two weeks ago, I was seeing 80 miles on a charge. The campsite is 225 miles. I didn't go to Harvard, but I'm pretty sure that's 3 stops, unless I want to try for 2 and then figure out how to start my trip back home later.

Then I looked at how long it takes to charge one of these trucks on a level 3 charger and people are saying 45 minutes. So that's 2.25 hours, not 2 hours as I previously stated. My bad...

But no, I don't really have an EV. I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

80 miles seems a lot lower than I have seen generally reported. Usually people say they get in the 1-1.2 miles/kWh range which should get you 120-130 miles or so. Unless you're doing 80 with a large trailer I guess.

I feel like it would still be a two stopper even if things are ideal since as you noted you don't typically want to start off at 10% on the return.

 

[Newton]

What did your “testing” consist of? With a full charge my SR will go 160 miles to about 20% at freeway speeds. It shows around 200 miles of range at a full charge. The ER goes quite a bit further. I don’t think that a fully charged Lightning will ever show a range of 80 miles, even with a trailer it just isn’t smart enough to know how the trailer is going to affect the range because trailers vary.

So I am really curious what your test was. You are reporting 90’s Nissan Leaf numbers. Even my 2019 E-Golf will report 120 miles on a full charge.

Also you are making a common mistake with fast charging times - in actual use one tends to put in as many miles as you need. So not all charging stops take the same amount of time.

I have driven from (almost) the Canadian border to California with my Standard Range with no issues at all, I stop more than the truck needs to stop. I do wish that it charged as fast as my wife’s EV6 but it is not bad.

 

[Newton]

I wonder if you were looking at the wrong number. Ford recommends that you charge to 80% unless you are about to go on a long trip. You might have been looking at the 80 next to the gauge, which represents the battery percent and not the range. The range is in the middle of the circle, the top number if you have a destination set in nav. The arrow points to the battery percentage and not the range (this is an Extended Range truck). This picture shows that at 74% the range is 219 miles.

I think there can be some cognative dissonance - the general public knows that EVs can’t go very far so our minds ignore contrary evidence. In California, non EV owners are floored by my Washington license plate, ”you are so brave” etc. when in reality the trip is uneventful. If I hopped into a Silverado my mind might ignore the 539 miles of range on the dashboard because that is so much more than what I am used to that I’d think that it meant something else. (Edmonds tested and it actually went that far).

Tomorrow I’m going to do an 88 mile round trip that I have been doing frequently, I’m starting at 76%. I’ll let you know if I survive.

 

[Deleted member 12322]

Sucks the credit is going away, they’re good vehicles and honestly a lot of folks in my neck of the woods that have driven my truck actually bought into EVs a bit. They make wonderful commuters.

As for the never ending high way range debates, coming up on 40k miles I don’t think I’ve ever had to stop to charge when I wasn’t more than happy to stretch my legs and walk the dog. I don’t know how folks can sit for more than a few hours, maybe I drink too much water but I always stop around or before the 3 hour mark even in my ranger when I had it just to get fresh air. I’ve found the EV road trip experience, especially these days with how many more chargers there are compared to 3 years ago, to be pretty easy going. My last 2,400 mile trip I barely planned anything except the next town I’d stop in and everything worked out flawlessly.

 

[WXman]

Well it consisted of the medium range battery pack which is a 123 kilowatt hour pack. Charged to 90%. Pulling my 26 ft camper trailer. Speeds varied between 35 and 70 mph for the duration of the 50 mi. I ended up with about 0.7 miles per kilowatt hour.

If this were a car forum I could kind of understand the mentality around here but it's not. This is a truck forum. People buy trucks because they have work to do. And it was explained earlier in this thread that we're talking about Towing and the fact that a PHEV would be a much more flexible vehicle.

 

[Grumpy2]

People buy trucks because they have work to do.

This is the key. The F150 truck has been so universal in capability the public for decades have used it to do any and everything well. Those versions of the F150 are still available, but the battery driven model is a more specific tool that excels in may ways, but is limited in some. Those limits are well known.

You wouldn't use a claw hammer to break concrete, you get the sledge hammer.

 

[EV Engineer]

If this were a car forum I could kind of understand the mentality around here but it's not. This is a truck forum. People buy trucks because they have work to do. And it was explained earlier in this thread that we're talking about Towing and the fact that a PHEV would be a much more flexible vehicle.
[/QUOTE]

I actually could not disagree more. I think Ford did a lot of analytics and build an ideal truck. I think most work that people do the Ford EV F150 is the superior tool. It's a truck that gets 75mpg and still has amazing capability.

People are just too anxious about range anxiety. Most American truck owner's (70%) did not even tow in the last year. Some hardly even use the bed. The amount of use cases for >200 miles towing is very slim.

Contractors, local utilities and gov. agencies, lawn care, basic day to day jobs---- the SR is plenty. Even for towing. For the average truck owner a SR would do more than enough. ER for the cases that need it.

If you plan on hauling a camper across america in an EV you're gonna have a bad time. Buy an ICE. An extra 100kWH battery isn't going to solve that problem.

 

[Newton]

As promised the details from my death-defying trip to Bellingham (and back!). I‘m (sniff) not in the cool kids ER club, I have a Standard Range Lariat, which has one of the smallest ranges available in a new EV. The trip was from sea level to sea level with some rather big hills in between (I-5 between Burlington and Bellingham), about half of the trip was at speed limits of 60-70 And about 1/3 was at 55, with the balance being rural and surface streets. The weather is in the 60s, fairly windy in the morning and calm in the evening.

I started out with 73% charge which shows 154 miles of range. By the end I was at 31% charge with 61 miles of range, having driven 92.5 miles over two hours with an average of 2.4 miles/kWh (good for a Lightning, poor for other types of EVs like the EV6). I ended up at about the point that I would start thinking about looking for a charger, but had this been the first leg of the trip I would have started out with 100% and had it been the second I would have been at least at 80%. Looking at the technical data with an OBDII scanner, I believe that the Lightning is about 10 miles pessimistic on the range at this point.

I am currently charging at home on a 32A EVSE and will be at 80% before I wake up (probably will finish by about 2am)

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