Build for US or for the world?

Auto firms shift gears amid sector upheaval

- NORA ECKERT

Shortly after, his company announced it would kill several of those battery-powered models and take a $19.5 billion write-down on EV-related assets. It marked the industry's biggest electric-vehicle retreat since US President Donald Trump's sweeping auto-policy changes iced already cooling EV demand.

Mr Farley had spent years telling staff and investors that catching up to Tesla and China's leading EV makers amounted to an existential struggle. Now, after losing about $13 billion on EVs since 2023, Mr Farley says the path to survival lies in ditching these unprofitable models.

“We can’t allocate money for things that will not make money,” he told Reuters on Monday. “As much as I love those products, the customers in the US were not going to pay for them. And that was the end of that.”

Mr Farley’s angst reflects the broader conundrum facing auto executives in the wake of Trump-administration policies that stripped the industry of EV subsidies and eased restrictions on tailpipe pollution.

Most automakers now can’t sell EVs in the US profitably or in volume but must sell them in China, Europe and other markets to appease regulators and compete with Chinese automakers expanding globally.

That's left Ford and other automakers with the challenge of tailoring vastly different vehicle lineups for different regions.

The approach layers on extra expenses the industry thought it had left behind in recent decades through globalisation — making essentially the same car, with common supply chains, to sell worldwide. Fifteen years ago, then-CEO Alan Mulally called the strategy ‘One Ford’