Today there is such news circulating on the Internet: the centennial Ford has finally made a difficult decision - to abandon electric vehicles altogether.
To be honest, apart from rubbing my eyes for a second and confirming that this is an electric car and not a fuel vehicle, the author does not hesitate to believe that this news is fake.
However, out of the habit of **, the author still tries to find the source of this so-called news.
As a result, I don't know if I don't check, but I laugh when I check it.
Let's put it this way, the author doesn't even want to call it "news" - this kind of nonsensical stuff is at best a "joke".
Where, the basic style of painting is like this:
And this:
Or simply something like this:
And these, after experiencing the previous baptism, the author is too lazy to open the link to see:
The above cookie-cutter news, converted into the Internet style we are used to, probably looks like this:Big event! FordceoJust decided! Discontinued electric vehicles!
Looking at the content of the news, it probably means that the Ford CEO stopped the production of electric vehicles, and the auto industry was shocked, and the supporters of gasoline vehicles cheered. The reason is that the CEO of Ford believes that electric vehicles hurt the middle class, but he has strong support, so he wants to take a salary from the bottom of the kettle and stop producing electric ......
The author believes that most people will not take these illogical sentences seriously after reading this.
In addition, if you look closely at the link date, you can see that this "just now" dates back to the beginning of December last year, or the beginning of January or 1 week ago this year, and today.
Therefore, this kind of so-called news, idle people and other people brush up on the traffic and eat melons, and the masses laugh, it's just that.
But
There's probably one thing in this nonsense that is true: Ford's electric car business cost Ford $4 billion in a year.
In October last year, Ford said in its third-quarter 2023 report that it had a loss of $1.3 billion in its electric vehicle business in the quarter and estimated a loss of $4 billion for the full year of 2023. To this end, Ford will postpone about $12 billion in electric vehicle investment plans in the United States.
According to news reports at the time, Ford's judgment was that North American consumers were becoming more cautious about buying electric vehicles, and they were not willing to spend too much money on electric vehicles.
Translated, Ford's electric car didn't perform as expected. Two weeks ago, Ford said it would downgrade the production of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, and shift its production focus to a variety of gasoline models, including the newly launched Ford Spirit. In December, Ford announced that it would cut its F-150 Lightning production capacity by about half.
It can be seen that Ford's electric vehicle business does have problems. The situation on the other side of the ocean is bad enough, and in China's most dynamic electric vehicle market, Ford's performance is far from that of its peers.
Although the highly anticipated Ford Electric Horse entered the market with a high profile, the market performance was weak. In 2022, the Ford Electric Horse sold just under 5,000 units in its first full sales year. Despite the measures taken such as ** adjustment and sales channel adjustment, the electric horse still "can't run" - the annual sales volume in 2023 will drop to more than 2,000 units.
What highlights the lack of Ford's electrification transformation is that since the launch of the electric horse in October 2021, Ford has not introduced new electric vehicles to the Chinese market for more than two years. At present, along with the electric horse, Ford is competing for the new energy vehicle market in China, including the Lingjie EV launched in 2019 and the Ruiji PHEV launched in June 2021, and the fuel version of the two was launched earlier. In China's new energy vehicle market, which is so competitive, it is clear how competitive such a product lineup is.
It can be seen that the reason why jokes like "Ford discontinued electric vehicles" can be happily circulated in the market is because it is completely in line with the logic of "if you can't play, you won't play".
In fact, the question of whether Ford will "stop producing electric vehicles" has been made clear a few months ago when Ford was calculating a loss of $4 billion: it will not abandon the new generation of electric vehicles, nor will it cut spending in this area. Instead, Ford will invest more in these areas and gradually increase its production capacity for electric vehicles.
However, in order to avoid the "nonsensical" contradiction between large investments and large losses in the electric vehicle business, Ford still needs to increase technology and capital investment in China's new energy vehicle market, as his American counterparts did.
Text: Yang Zheng.