Ford is ditching the all-electric F-150 as it rethinks its EV ambitions

Ford once Electric vehicle manufacturing plans are changing again, in response to what has been a difficult year for the powertrain technology that is still making waves abroad but has seen Reducing local government support and Customer enthusiasm wanes.

Instead of planning to produce enough electric cars to account for 40% of global sales by 2030 – as it pledged just four years ago –Ford The company says it will focus on a broad range of hybrids, long-range electric vehicles and battery-powered models, which executives say will now make up 50% of sales by the end of the decade. The automaker will make hybrid versions of almost every vehicle in its range, the company says.

The company will no longer take action Big electric truckFord executives told reporters Monday that it will repurpose an electric vehicle plant in Tennessee to build gas-powered vehicles. The next generation of Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lighting will be an Extended Range Electric Vehicle, or EREV, a hybrid vehicle that uses an electric motor to power its wheels while a smaller gasoline engine recharges the battery. Ford says technology, which Automakers have touted it in recent years as a compromise between battery-electric cars and gas-powered carswill give its truck extended towing capacity and a range of more than 700 miles.

Ford still plans to produce a midsize electric pickup truck, priced from around $30,000, to be available in 2027. This will be the first of the “affordable” electric vehicle models it is currently designing at its Skunkworks studio in California, which is slated to be used A “universal” platform architecture that would make vehicle production cheaper.

The new plans leave Ford with a pool of excess battery manufacturing capacity, which the company says it will use by opening up a whole new venture: a sideline for battery energy storage. These new works will produce lower cost and longer life Lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, batteries For customers in the utility or data center industries.

“Ford follows the customer,” says Andrew Fricke, president of Ford Blue and Ford Model e, makers of gas and battery-powered cars. American customers’ adoption of electric vehicles is not what the industry expected at the beginning of the decade, he says. (Battery-powered electric vehicles currently account for about 7.5 percent of new car sales in the United States.) Frick also cited changes in the regulatory environment, including… The Trump administration retreats – Commercial and consumer tax incentives for electric cars.

The company has also canceled an all-electric commercial truck planned for the European market. Instead, Ford will collaborate with Renault, In a partnership announced last weekTo develop at least two Ford-branded small electric vehicles for Europe — a move that CEO Jim Farley described as part of the “fight for our lives,” as U.S. automakers try to compete with more affordable electric vehicles outside China.

Ford said Monday it also plans to produce a new gas-powered commercial truck for North America.