Ford’s EV Dream Eats the Guardrail... CEO Jim Farley Writes a $19.5B Apology Note

Better late than never I guess…

Ford finally looked at its EV balance sheet, looked at the parking lots full of unsold electric trucks, and decided it was time to stop pretending the future was going exactly according to the pitch deck.

The automaker announced it’s taking a $19.5 billion gut punch in special charges tied to a sweeping EV pullback. Cue shareholders: “I told you so.”

Most of that damage hits in Q4, with another $5.5B in real cash charges stretching through 2027, meaning this isn’t just accounting gymnastics. Ford is paying real tuition for EV optimism that arrived a few years (and a few tax credits) too early.

About $8.5B of the write-off is straight EV asset markdowns. Translation: “We built expensive stuff customers didn’t want, and now it lives in the ‘lessons learned’ drawer.”

CEO Jim Farley did his best to put on a brave face in an interview, saying Ford is “following customers to where the market is.” What he meant was simpler: Americans were not lining up to buy $70k-$80k EVs.

And once the $7,500 federal tax credit disappeared early, that problem went from manageable to terminal. So, Ford is swerving… hard.

(Source: CNN)

The company is refocusing on hybrids, plug-ins, and extended-range EVs, because asking it’s redneck buyers to jump straight from gas to full EV turned out to be a bigger leap than executives expected (who knew?). 

The all-electric F-150 Lightning will now transition into an EREV (electric drivetrain, gas generator). Ford also quietly axed its next generation of massive all-electric trucks in favor of smaller, cheaper EVs… hoping that lower price tag will bait more buyers.

Meanwhile, battery plants in Kentucky and Michigan are being repurposed for a stationary energy storage business. Including data centers, grid support, and other boring-but-profitable use cases. So that’s a sign all hope isn’t lost.

All of this falls under Jim Farley’s ever-morphing “Ford+” plan, which started as a bold EV growth story in 2021 and has now matured into a EV survival story.

The funny part to me is that despite flushing $19.5B down the toilet, Ford raised its adjusted EBIT guidance to about $7B for 2025, because trucks and commercial vans remain the adults in the room.

By 2030, Ford expects roughly 50% of global volume to come from hybrids, EREVs, and EVs… up from just 17% next year. So while it’s not a full EV takeover. It’s also not a complete disaster you can never come back from. Just a realistic middle ground that acknowledges customers vote with their wallets.

(Source: Fox Business)

And if you’re wondering how shareholders reacted to Farley’s late-stage EV self-awareness, they didn’t dump the stock. Shares actually ticked higher.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Ford as mentioned in the article.