kublikhan wrote:Ford said they are making layoffs in their gas-engine and commercial division because they are investing billions in their EV division. That is not a sign of 'PeakEV'. That is a sign of more money being invested in EVs, less in gas engines.
Ford Motor Co. reportedly has plans to fire at least 1,000 salaried and contract workers as the auto giant looks to offset the cost of investing in the electric vehicle market. A spokesman for the Detroit-based automaker confirmed the news to the outlet on Tuesday, adding that firings will be focused in the engineering, gas-engine and commercial-vehicle divisions.
Ford Motor has plans to fire at least 1,000 salaried and contract workers as the automaker looks to offset the cost of investing in the EV market with the introduction of its electric truck, F-150 Lightning, and other EV-related investments. The move comes after Ford touted its “ambitious, comprehensive plan to make the transition to an electric lifestyle” on its website, noting that it has plans to invest “more than $50 billion in electric vehicles globally through 2026.” In April, Ford announced a $1.3 billion venture to transition its Oakville Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, into the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex. Once complete, the facility will produce next-gen EVs that will hit the market in 2025. Most recently, Ford announced that it reached a deal with its EV rival Tesla where Ford EV drivers will have access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers throughout the US and Canada, effective sometime in 2024. With lots of costly EV efforts underway, Ford has made several rounds of global layoffs in a bid defray the massive cost of shifting from internal combustion to EVs.
Ford to ax at least 1,000 contract, salaried workers to offset billion-dollar EV investments[/quote]
Exactly right.
Ford and other automakers are responding to the huge government subsidies intended to encourage automakers and consumers alike to shift from ICE vehicles to EV vehicles. I think Ford got a direct grant of something like 9 billion dollars from the Federal Government just a few weeks ago to build a giant EV battery factory here in the US. If they want to stay on the Federal gravy train then they've got to build EVs.
Personally, I think there is no doubt that the giant government subsidies will succeed in boosting the EV market tremendously.
In the past the US and other western countries have operated as "market economies" where different auto manufacturers would offer different kinds of autos and the market would decide what works and what doesn't. Now we are effectively changing auto markets to "command economies" where what gets produced is effectively controlled by a top-down government decree, and right now the top down government decree is saying building many many EVs in order to reduce future carbon emissions and mitigate future climate change.
My only concern is whether or not this will turn out to have been a good idea or a bad idea when we look back at this 20 years from now.
As we roll out more and more EVs we can already see that things aren't quite working as promised. We already knew that EVs cost much more then comparable ICE vehicles and have much higher initial carbon footprints, but now comes a new revelation that EVs in their current form are essentially unrepairable, resulting in EVs costing much more to insure and EVs getting scraped at a much higher rate then ICE vehicles once they actually get on the road. This is all rather worrying, because it's the exact opposite of what EV boosters have been promising. Every time an almost new EV gets scrapped, all the carbon released during its manufacture can never be offset by that EV having lower tailpipe emissions. Imagine some poor guy whose almost new EV was just scrapped goes out and immediately buys another one, but now he's personally responsible for generating an initial carbon footprint equivalent to that of ca. 3.4 new ICE cars......Whoa....he thought he was a virtuous EV owner and now after a minor crash and a forced second EV purchase he is almost some kind of climate criminal!!!!!!!
Personally, I think the climate problem can be solved, but not with EVs. I'd much rather just see a carbon tax implemented that would slowly and inexorably bring down all carbon emissions all through our economic system.....A carbon tax will bring CO2 emissions in cars, farms, factories, stores......everywhere.......but a carbon tax is very unlikely to happen as long as politicians are pushing EVs, because you'd have to put a hefty carbon tax on each EV as it came out the factory door. So instead of a simple effective carbon tax we're going to get a Rube Goldberg system of subsidies and tax breaks and bells and whistles to try to corral people into doing what the politicians want then to do, even if its not the best thing to do.
Oh well......I never expected any different. Climate change is essentially unstoppable, IMHO, without implementing a universal carbon tax to force the world to actually reduce carbon emissions.
True enough if you assume that both cars start out the same and then stay on the road for the same number of years. But thats a cloud cuckoo land fantasy---it's just not true. Now we know the real world, EVs start out with a ca. 70% BIGGER carbon footprint coming out of the factory, and more EVs then ICE cars get taken off the road when they're almost new due to being almost unrepairable after minor accidents due to fears the EV battery may have been damaged and so is more likely to spontaneously combust...Yo Kublai....I haven't seen an analysis that takes into account this new issue with EVs being taken off the road faster than ICE vehicles due to the fact EVs aren't being repaired after minor accidents. It's clear that this would increase the carbon footprint of the EV auto fleet....but by how much? You are a very good researcher...have you seen any attempts to calculate the magnitude of this problem for EVs?
CHEERS!
