Ford expects to produce 2024 electric vehicles annually by 60, a goal originally planned to be achieved by the end of this year. The original plan to produce 2024 million electric vehicles annually by 200 has now become an uncertain target.
The second quarter financial report for fiscal year 2023 released earlier showed that the Model e division, which is invested in the development of electric vehicle products, suffered a loss of US$45 billion. The reason was that pricing was affected by environmental changes such as supply chain and exchange rates, coupled with additional new investments and cost expenses, which increased the loss margin and also caused profits to fall by 58.9%.
Ford CEO Mark Fields said that the company currently has a huge vehicle production capacity and plans to launch more new products. However, the current inventory of electric vehicles is significantly higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles, indicating that actual market demand cannot keep up with production. This is also related to the fact that the market's trust in electric vehicles is still not high. Reasons include that the overall price is still relatively high and charging stations are still not popular.
However, Ford stressed that it is still confident in the future development of electric vehicles and believes that it is currently in a transitional stage of transformation. This transition period may take longer to change, but it believes that the market will gradually shift towards the trend of electric vehicles.
At the same time, following the success of the first-generation electric pickup truck F-150 Lightning and the electric Mustang Mach-E SUV, the company has begun developing its next electric vehicle product. It also expects to achieve an 8% profit growth in the electric vehicle business and has no plans to reduce the cost of research and development of electric vehicles.
