Ford is significantly scaling back its ambitions in the electric car business. The American car manufacturer has now announced a radical change in strategy and will record a huge special expense of $19.5 billion in this context. A large part of this is due to depreciation in its electric car division. Amid weakening demand, the company wants to bring significantly fewer purely electric cars onto the market in the next few years than previously planned and instead focus more on hybrid models and cars with internal combustion engines. The F-150 Lightning pick-up van, which was once a great hope, for example, will no longer be a purely electric car in its next generation, but rather an “extended range” model with a gasoline engine that charges the battery while driving to extend the range. Another large pick-up van, which was previously planned as an electric model, is to be replaced by a variant with a combustion engine. Plans for a new electric delivery van in Europe are also being canceled. In a factory in the US state of Tennessee, which currently produces batteries for electric cars, large battery storage units are to be produced in the future instead. Sales figures for electric cars are below expectations With this realignment, Ford is reacting to the fact that sales figures for electric cars are not growing as quickly as hoped. What is currently making matters worse in the American home market is that the political environment has changed. US President Donald Trump rejects the promotion of electric mobility; a tax and spending law passed in July ensured that previous tax credits for the purchase of electric cars of up to $7,500 were abolished. Ford CEO Jim Farley recently said he wouldn’t be surprised if the market share of electric cars in the US halved to five percent. Competitor General Motors also announced a write-off amounting to billions in October. Ford will continue to rely on alternatives to pure combustion engines. The company says it expects half of its global sales volume to come from electric cars or hybrid models by 2030. At the moment it is 17 percent. But the focus will now apparently shift more strongly to hybrids.Cologne’s electric location in crisisThe move by the parent company is also likely to be closely monitored in the Ford plants in Cologne. The badly hit location was finally converted into a factory focused solely on electromobility. Ford has invested two billion euros there in order to make better use of its factories, which have been shrinking for years. But that hasn’t worked so far; on the contrary, the crisis has worsened. Ford is cutting a good 4,000 jobs, while jobs are also disappearing from previous savings programs. The new workforce reduction program began a little over two weeks ago, with Ford hoping that as many employees as possible accept the generous severance offer. However, layoffs for operational reasons cannot be ruled out. In mid-September, Ford had to further tighten the 2,900 job cuts program it had already negotiated with employee representatives and the IG Metall union. That corresponded to one in four of the 11,500 jobs currently still in the Ford factories. In addition to severance pay, part of the agreement with the workforce also included a pension protection shield. Before that, however, there had been violent protests against the austerity plans and the first organized strike in the almost hundred-year history of the Cologne Ford works. The production site has been shrinking for years: a few years ago, more than 20,000 people worked for Ford in Cologne. High severance pay, but poor prospects While the planned job cuts also affect employees from administration and other company departments, the most recent announcement affects the workers on the assembly line. The same rules apply to them; some long-standing employees receive more than 100,000 euros in severance pay, and in individual cases even significantly more. But the crisis doesn’t just affect the people who are losing their jobs. Even for those who stay, the prospects are not very rosy, as the decline continues. Ford is cutting a shift in the production of its two electric models Explorer and Capri for the new year. In the past, the company had already registered short-time work at the Ford factories in Cologne due to a lack of demand for its electric cars, which cost more than 40,000 euros, but so far they have been producing in two shifts. According to the union, Ford has 300 to 350 vehicles per shift. With the end of the unprofitable small car production of the Fiesta model in Cologne and the conversion to electric models, Ford wanted to be ahead of market developments. The electric models built in Cologne are based on the technical basis of the electric models from Volkswagen. The workforce in Cologne often criticized at company meetings that the vehicles produced there were too expensive to reach the market.More on the topicAn announcement from Ford last week did not cause any cries of joy at the site on the Rhine. Ford wants to enter into a strategic partnership in car development with the French manufacturer Renault and develop two new Ford electric models. The two models will be located in the B small car segment and will be developed on the basis of Renault’s existing Ampere platform. The new vehicles are to be produced in the “Electricity” group of Renault factories in Douai, Maubiege and Ruitz in northern France. Even though Ford emphasizes that the models are not in competition with the vehicles manufactured in Cologne, the product offensive does provide a direction.
Go to Source