Cars and the EV Transition

On 15 December 2025 Ford Motor told investors that it would take about $19.5 billion of special-item charges, before tax, to unwind much of the electric-vehicle programme it had launched four years earlier. About $12.5 billion would fall in 2025 and the rest in 2026–27. About $8.5 billion was the write-down of EV assets, including the cancelled T3, a next-generation electric pickup meant for the new BlueOval City plant in Tennessee, and a next-generation electric commercial van. About $5.5 billion would be paid in cash, mostly in 2026, to suppliers, partners and others (8-K, as reported). The battery-electric F-150 Lightning, the truck that had been meant to carry Ford's best-selling nameplate into the electric era, would stop production. The next Lightning would be an extended-range electric vehicle (EREV), a battery-driven truck with a petrol engine that only generates electricity, built at the same Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn. BlueOval SK, Ford's battery joint venture with SK On, was dissolved: Ford took the twin cell plants in Kentucky and SK On the one in Tennessee (reported). A lower-cost electric pickup stayed planned for 2027.

The numbers behind the decision had been in Ford's own segment reports for three years. Model e, the unit into which Ford had put its EVs so that their costs would be visible, lost about $4.7–4.8 billion before interest and tax in 2023, about $5.1 billion in 2024 and about $4.8 billion in 2025 (10-Ks). The federal consumer credit of up to $7,500 ended for vehicles acquired after 30 September 2025 under the law of 4 July 2025, so buyers rushed to beat the deadline: EVs took more than 10% of US new-vehicle sales in the third quarter of 2025, then about 6.5% a year later (Kelley Blue Book, reported). Hybrids took about 19.7% of sales in the fourth quarter of 2025 on Cox Automotive's count. Ford's 2025 revenue was a record, about $187.3 billion, and its net result a loss of about $8.2 billion after special items (company, reported). The trucks and commercial vans were profitable. The electric programme that their profits paid for was not.

Ford was not alone. General Motors recorded about $7.6 billion of EV-related charges in 2025, and its own cumulative total for its "EV strategic realignment" reached about $10.9 billion by mid-2026 (company, reported). Stellantis announced on 6 February 2026 that it would exclude about €22.2 billion of second-half 2025 charges from adjusted operating income, €14.7 billion of it for product plans and cancelled or cut battery-electric models, and its shares fell about 25% that day (reported). The capital that the Detroit Three and their European rivals had committed to a forecast of EV adoption in 2021–23 was written down in 2025–26, when the forecast bent.