Stock market today: S&P 500, Nasdaq rise as Fed minutes signal ‘likely’ September rate cut
Ford (F) shares were up more than 1% on Wednesday afternoon after the company announced changes to its EV strategy.
Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian reports:
Ford (F) is revamping its electric vehicle strategy, canceling and pushing back some of its projects as the company looks to get a hold on higher EV costs. The changes come as Ford sees smaller, cheaper EVs as the future, with hybrid technology reserved for powering larger vehicles.
Starting off with larger EVs, Ford said it is canceling the upcoming release of a large, three-row electric SUV in favor of leveraging hybrid technology for its next-gen three-row SUVs. The updated changes to this product strategy will result in Ford taking a special non-cash charge of about $400 million for the write-down of certain product-specific manufacturing assets and could result in a further $1.5 billion charge in later quarters, the company said.
“This is about us being nimble and listening to responses from our customers,” Ford vice chairman and CFO John Lawler said in a call with reporters regarding changes to its three-row SUV plans.
“Hybrid tech for those customers is the best solution,” Lawler added, saying the cost structure of a three-row electric SUV could not meet Ford’s requirement of profitability in the first 12 months of launch that Ford is targeting with its newest EVs.
Ford also said it is “retiming” the launch of its upcoming next-gen electric truck — code-named “Project T3” — to the second half of 2027. Ford’s BlueOval City Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center will still assemble the vehicle after an 18 month delay, Lawler said.
In addition, Ford said it plans to introduce an all-new commercial van that will begin production in 2026 in Ohio, followed by two new pickup trucks in 2027 — a medium-size pickup based on the platform designed by Ford’s California Skunkworks team and a next-generation truck to be assembled in Tennessee. The next generation truck is the Project T3 truck, Lawler said.
The small pickup from the Skunkworks team does not mean there won’t be other products coming off that platform, as Ford said this isn’t a change from its plan to launch a small car or other smaller vehicles from this platform.
