President Joe Biden's "green" energy transition pipe dreams suffered another setback this week, courtesy of Ford Motor Company. It seems billion-dollar losses, inflated costs, high interest rates, and lagging demand have made its attempts to comply with the administration's mandates untenable, and they're taking action that's sure to disappoint the likes of Biden, his Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and his Climate Czar John Kerry.
Ford announced this week that it was cutting planned production of its all-electric F-150 "Lightning" pickup truck "roughly in half" in 2024, the latest blow to President Biden and his administration's attempts to force Americans to drive the cars they think they ought to, regardless of the cost and workability.
According to CNBC, the decision to slash production of electric pickups is "a major reversal after the automaker significantly increased plant capacity for the electric vehicle in 2023."
That decision was part of a push by U.S. automakers to ensure compliance with the Biden administration's regulations put out in late July that proposed to "require an industry fleet-wide average of approximately 58 miles per gallon for passenger cars and light trucks in MY 2032, by increasing fuel economy by 2% year over year for passenger cars and by 4% year over year for light trucks" while "the proposal would increase fuel efficiency by 10% year over year" for "heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans," as Townhall reported.
At the time the Biden administration proposed its new requirement for automaker fleet average efficiencies, the average 2023 MY vehicle gets 28 miles per gallon, meaning automakers would need to increase their production fleet's average by as much as 30 MPG by 2032.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, CNBC notes that Ford has found electric vehicle demand to be "slower than many expected" due in part at least to inflated costs and interest rates at highs not seen since 2001 — but also because EVs, especially those not made by Tesla, are not a workable option for many Americans.
Biden's own Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm experienced and demonstrated these issues herself when she attempted a summer EV road trip that ended with the police being summoned to settle a dispute between her staffers in gas-powered vehicles as they tried to hold a charging space for the secretary, as Townhall reported at the time.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm's EV road trip earlier this year was a complete mess.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 12, 2023
😂 pic.twitter.com/X0JC65uQUT
The news comes after, as Katie reported in September, Ford announced "that it would pause construction of a billion-dollar plant in Michigan involving a Chinese electric vehicle battery company" amid significant financial losses on electric vehicles to the tune of $4.5 billion, with a loss of some $60,000 on each electric vehicle produced.
Still, President Biden continues to push for American taxpayers to foot the bill to subsidize such staggering losses in order to earn his dubious "gold star" from global climate alarmists, no matter the economic cost to the United States and its citizens nor whether the United States taking action to follow through on Biden's promise to "end fossil fuels" would meaningfully change anything on a planetary level.
As House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) noted of the Biden administration's attempts to regulate gas-powered vehicles out of production, "new fuel economy standards will add even more to the price tag, depriving people of safe, affordable vehicles" as the "new penalties put an additional burden on manufacturers as well, which will ultimately be passed along to the hardworking people of this county. This is another part of President Biden's full regulatory assault to force Americans to buy unaffordable electric vehicles and cede our automotive future to China," McMorris Rodgers said.
