This coup is squarely on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, US manufacturing be damned.
But Ford’s restructuring of its EV investments and strategy has become a repetitive mantra for (Ford CEO Jim) Farley in recent weeks, as he tells Wall Street analysts the automaker is in good shape to develop a variety of vehicles and propulsion systems to meet customers’ range requirements and wallets. Most importantly, Ford is positioned to better compete against the Chinese EV giants, especially BYD, which is known for high-quality, yet affordable, EVs. Those cars are currently barred from the U.S.
“We think that our battery strategy is more fit than our competitors,” Farley said at a Wall Street conference recently. “And we have understood BYDs through teardowns and future knowledge from the supply chain.”
While Ford deserves credit for tweaking its EV strategy to focus on smaller, more affordable EVs, some industry experts said all of the Detroit automakers should have recognized sooner that developing cheaper battery technology on smaller vehicles was the right way to gain widespread EV adoption in the United States.
In 2022, Ford established Skunkworks, where Farley said, “My badge does not work in that building,” alluding to the top-secret development happening there. He said Ford hired a whole new team in California, with many from competitive all-EV brands.
“They have developed a platform that we think is fully competitive with BYD,” Farley said.
Farley said creating Skunkworks proved to be effective from a cost standpoint. The automaker has developed a new platform at about a third of the cost than had Ford done it in-house.
“That will give us a huge benefit, because we believe that EV demand is still out there, that there is a very underserved group of people on the super affordable,” Farley said. “But these very large EVs that cost $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, we don’t believe in. We think (extended-range electric vehicle) or hybrid is a much better, more profitable investment in our capital.”
The Trump administration is shutting down EV chargers at all federal government buildings and is also expected to sell off the General Services Administration‘s (GSA) newly bought EVs.
GSA, which manages all federal government-owned buildings, also operates the federal buildings’ EV chargers. Federally owned EVs and federal employee-owned personal EVs are charged on those 8,000 charging ports.
The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages buildings owned by the federal government, is planning to shut down all of its electric vehicle chargers nationwide, describing them as “not mission critical.” The agency, which manages contracts for the government’s vehicle fleets, is also looking to offload newly purchased EVs.
The GSA currently operates several hundred EV chargers across the country, with approximately 8,000 plugs that are available for government-owned EVs as well as federal employees’ personally owned vehicles.
The official guidance instructing federal workers to begin the process of shutting down the chargers will be announced internally next week, according to a source with knowledge of the plans. Some regional offices have been told to start taking their chargers offline, according to an email viewed by The Verge.
“As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA owned charging stations are not mission critical,” the email reads.
The GSA is working on the timing of canceling current network contracts that keep the EV chargers operational. Once those contracts are canceled, the stations will be taken out of service and “turned off at the breaker,” the email reads. Other chargers will be turned off starting next week.
“Neither Government Owned Vehicles nor Privately Owned Vehicles will be able to charge at these charging stations once they’re out of service,” it concludes.
At the GSA’s Denver office, employees were told that EV chargers at four federally owned buildings would be taken offline next week. The news was first reported by Colorado Public Radio.