Ford CEO Jim Farley: Demand Isn't There for Big EV Trucks & SUVs Yet

Yahoo

06-02-2025

You can't fault Ford for trying, but it seems that its decision to kick off its electric vehicle plans with the likes of the F-150 Lightning is taking its financial toll on the Dearborn-based automaker. On Wednesday, Ford CEO Jim Farley took to the proverbial stage during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call to say in no uncertain terms that the current stage of EV manufacturing wasn't sustainable.
"For larger retail, electric utilities, the economics are unresolvable," Farley said in the earnings call, according to InsideEVs, referring to big EV SUVs and pickup trucks. "These customers have very demanding use cases for an electric vehicle. They tow, they go off-road, they take long road trips. These vehicles have worse aerodynamics and they're very heavy, which means very large and expensive batteries."
Considering gas-powered pickup truck and full-size SUVs have been Detroit's bread and butter for ages, it wasn't surprising that FoMoCo targeted the category for one of its first volleys into the EV market. Indeed, they're hardly alone; Ford, Chevrolet, GMC, Rivian, and Tesla all crank out some version of all-electric pickup here in 2025, and more are coming from the likes of Scout Motors and beyond. But the big EV utility vehicle market that manufacturers initially relied on isn't as strong as automakers had been counting on.
"Retail customers have shown that they will not pay any premium for these large EVs, making them a really tough business case," Farley said.
The lowest-trim F-150 Lightning starts at $49,875, making it not terribly expensive in the grand scheme of truck sticker costs. However, a comparable internal-combustion F-150 starts at $10,000 less — and generally speaking, Lightnings cost around $13,000 more than their gas-powered crew-cab F-150 equivalents. Meanwhile, Chevy's bulky Silverado EV starts at $75,195, roughly $20,000 more than the four-door short-bed Silverado 1500 LT that serves as a direct ICE comparison, and Tesla's Cybertruck only builds on that with a $79,990 sticker price.
And the production costs may not be worthwhile for Ford. Reporting from Bloomberg suggests that Ford is losing significant money on its EV programs, which in turn has contributed to the automaker's stock decline over the course of 2024. Analysis of Ford's Model E-business earnings shows the electric wing of the automaker at a $5 billion deficit for 2024, in addition to $1.9 billion in development costs. Ford's Rouge complex in Michigan, where the F-150 Lightning is produced, was shut down for two months at the tail-end of 2024, too. It wasn't until the automaker started to offer $2000 home chargers for free that EV sales came out of hibernation, rising fourth quarter EV sales by 16 percent after an extended period of dealer lot stagnation.
"We have observed lower-than-anticipated industry-wide electric vehicle adoption rates and near-term pricing pressures," Security and Exchange Commission documents filed by Ford on February 6, 2025, read. "The trend may be exacerbated as a policy change in the United States could reduce or eliminate supply- and demand-side incentives, resulting in slower adoption of EVs."
"Battery costs remain high, which is detrimental to electric vehicles reaching pricing parity with ICE vehicles and further exacerbates the pricing pressures on electric vehicles. Furthermore, as we invest in battery production, including the construction of battery plants, if we are unable to operate those plants at their expected capacity because electric vehicle adoption rates remain lower than anticipated or otherwise, we may be unable to recoup the investments we have made."
Ford has a plan to dig their way out of this EV spiral, however. Instead of building a previously promised three-row EV SUV, Ford is refocusing on a line of more accessible EVs priced around the $30,000 mark, Farley explained. The company is aiming to compete with the long-rumored affordable Tesla model — a vehicle that has endured through multiple waves of Elon Musk's chatoic decision-making process — and the legacy automaker is doing so in a start-up-like way, employing a former Tesla executive and a "skunkworks" team of engineers.
In addition, Bloomberg states that Farley revealed last month that Ford's future EVs will benefit from the availability of a on-board ICE generator used for on-the-fly charging — a powertrain layout known as an extended-range electric vehicle, or EREV. This isn't new technology — BMW would point to its original i3, and locomotives have been using similar tech for nearly a century — but it is finding new life these days. Stellantis will likely beat Ford to the punch, as the incoming Ram 1500 Ramcharger employs the technology, and Scout is set to be the second as the Terra SUV and Traveler pickup launches in 2027.
In the meantime, Ford will continue to temper its EV infrastructure investments and focus on commercial offerings, like the popular E-Transit van. Bottom line, it's still early for electric vehicles — and automakers are still working to figure out the best strategy for shareholders and customers alike.
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