I wouldn't characterize this as a "stunning blow to the electric car industry". More like a hard knock to Ford, which has had no success with its EV efforts to date. That Ford has quickly pivoted and having built this potential into this plant indicates at least some degree of management forethought.
EVs will continue to gain penetration as a proportion of the overall light vehicle fleet as millions are added to the existing base worldwide each year. Maybe not a rapid gain, but a gain nonetheless.
Those who have no interest in buying one can always come here with straw man arguments against them while proclaiming that those who've bought them and are happy with their purchases are obviously clueless and need more Fox News therapy.
I agree, EVs are here to stay and I will also say lithium is not the final word anymore than the filament light bulb was. More so with EVs if we ever for some unknown reason want to get rid of gasoline vehicles it will have to be something better than lithium. If the price ever becomes on par with gasoline from a dealer near me, like GM we will have one as a second car maybe. Not sure if that can be done in 2 years or less. We are to the point that although our second car still runs like new and perfect shape, it's getting OLD and we are tired of it. Yet we dont really use it, so EV for local car would be fun, I think. Electric dirt cheap here too, no matter how much I use any time of day, the cost is 10 cents a kWh... then again, gas is dirt cheap too, so its not about the cost as an EV will cost way more to insure.
A significant number of Americans will never put up with standing with their EV for 15 minutes or more to "fill it up" when they can do that with gasoline in less than 5 minutes. Talk about going backwards in time. Heck I even avoid gas stations with "slow" gas pumps *LOL* SO other than a local car charged at home which would be our use I would NEVER consider an EV for our travels.
The blow has nothing to do with Ford. It DOES have to do with the entire EV industry projections from MANY of the manufacturers selling in the USA.
We can not deny that sales growth has not met projections of almost every company here. To keep it simple, let use the biggest EV manufacturer here in the USA. Tesla. Sales growth stopped dead for Tesla in the USA almost a year ago and this year is negative. This is a far cry from their projections just less than 3 years ago. That is pretty poor in a nation with close to 300,000,000 (three hundred million) cars, less than 4 million are EV. The dealers should not be able to keep up with demand but they can, from all manufacturers, at the present time. My god we are giving away $7,500 per vehicle new and $4,000 used, how much more does it take to realize they are not in high demand!!??!?! (just having fun here)
Every USA manufacturer has since but back plans, not just Ford. The largest manufacturer of cars in the USA for 80 years - GM has also cut back plans until a clear picture of demand is met vs faulty projections.
