Giving the public what they don't want and can't afford.
https://ace.mu.nu/
THE MORNING RANT: Is Ford Starting to Miss the Thousands of ICE Engineers it Sacked to Save Money for its EV Debacle?
—Buck Throckmorton
It’s been just three days since I last wrote about the destructive mismanagement at Ford Motor Company, so I promise to give it a rest for a little while after today. But since I wrote and uploaded my EV roundup last week, there has been a cascade of awful news for Ford and its EV-loving CEO, Jim Farley.
Ford’s Q2 2024 financial results were just released, revealing a massive decrease in earnings, including a 6-month year-to-date loss on its electric vehicle debacle of $2.5 billion – this after Ford lost $4.7 billion on EVs in 2023. Ford’s stock price is in free fall, plunging 20% last week alone. Wall Street analysts were blindsided by the depth of Ford’s financial catastrophe.
Perhaps most telling is that warranty claims on Ford’s legacy gasoline-powered vehicles have spiraled out of control. This is not by accident. Mr. Farley deliberately sabotaged the legacy ICE (internal combustion engine) business a few years ago by gutting the engineering and design staff that had successfully made the F150 America’s most popular vehicle, as I’ll re-visit in just a moment. But first, here are some of the stories that came out late last week.
Ford shares fell sharply late on Wednesday after the carmaker reported second-quarter earnings far below analysts’ expectations, citing an unexpected spike in costs for fixing faulty cars under warranty.
Shares of Ford fell more than 11% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the automaker reported much weaker than expected earnings. The company said it was compelled to set aside more money to cover the cost of repairing customers’ vehicles.
The company’s adjusted net income fell $1 billion to $1.9 billion, or 47 cents a share. That badly missed analysts’ forecasts of earnings per share of 68 cents a share.
Aside from the surging warranty costs related to Ford’s neglected ICE products, the EV losses continue to worsen…
Ford’s model e unit lost another $1.1 billion in the second quarter. Ford Model e revenue fell to $1.3 billion, while volume was down 23% in Q2. Ford’s EV losses reached $2.5 billion through the first half of 2024. The higher losses are due to lower volume and industry-wide pricing pressure.
Ford successfully “sold” a record number of EVs in Q1 of 2024, but at a tremendous loss, due to fire-sale pricing in order to reduce its glut of unsold EVs. But sales plummeted again in Q2, with EV revenue falling off a cliff.
Over the past several years, Jim Farley and his band of merry destructors at Ford have sought to fund their EV misadventure by slashing the payroll of Ford’s profitable ICE division. In a manner that the cost-cutters at Boeing would recognize, Farley eliminated engineers who had critical roles in the quality of Ford’s popular gasoline-powered vehicles:
Up to 8,000 Ford employees could be hit by job cuts, according to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg. The move could be part of a plan to cut $3 billion in operational costs from the company's gasoline-powered business operations in order to boost profit and invest more into Ford's electric-vehicle endeavors.
It wasn’t just a one-time purge in 2022. Farley made it clear how contemptuous he was toward engineers whose skill set was for ICE vehicles.
Mere days after Farley expressed frustration with Ford’s disappointing 2022 financial performance – which was aided by the automaker’s overstaffing issue – the executive has noted that the company employs 25 percent more engineers than it needs...
As the EV debacle worsened, Ford continued to cut deeper into its brain trust of legacy ICE employees, with another wave of engineers let go in 2023.
Another policy success for Headboard and Team Dazzler. And dem shills are touting Headboard as the Science candidate because her mother was a cancer researcher. It's like the dems can't do basic math, science and economics.
Kamala Harris Touted a $5B Electric School Bus Program. Three Years Later, It's Produced Just 60 Buses.
California superintendent says electric buses would take district back to 'Pony Express days'
One of Kamala Harris's highest profile responsibilities as vice president has been spearheading the federal government's billion-dollar efforts to deploy thousands of electric buses across hundreds of school districts nationwide. But years into the program, only a small fraction of those projects have been completed while dozens of school districts have withdrawn from the program altogether.
As part of the first tranche of Clean School Bus program funding two years ago, Harris and EPA administrator Michael Regan unleashed nearly $1 billion in federal rebates for 389 school districts across all 50 states to help deliver a total 2,463 electric school buses. According to federal data reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, just 27 of those districts have proven to the EPA that their buses were delivered and that their diesel-fueled buses being replaced have been discarded.
Collectively, those districts have deployed a total of 60 battery-electric or low-emissions propane-fueled school buses. And 55 additional districts have pulled out of the program, according to other federal data shared with the Free Beacon, citing a variety of technological and infrastructure concerns. In other words: More school districts have withdrawn from the program than proven that they have completed it.
"EPA anticipates that transitioning to new technology school buses will take time, which is why the project period is two years with an option to extend where needed and justified," said EPA spokeswoman Shayla Powell.
Powell didn't deny that 60 school buses have been deployed as part of the program, but she explained that districts still have three months until the EPA's deadline to either file close-out documentation showing they have obtained the buses and scrapped old buses, or file for an extension. The wide time frame is designed to give districts time to test the new buses out and integrate them into their fleet. Powell didn't say how many total buses may have been deployed in districts that have yet to file close-out materials.
The slow progression of the Clean School Bus program is a blow to the Biden-Harris administration as it seeks to quickly get billions of dollars in green energy and climate funding—earmarked in President Joe Biden's signature 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—out the door. It's also a black eye for Harris, who has, in many ways, taken credit for the program, which she characterized earlier this year as an "investment in our children, their health, and their education."
The Clean School Bus program was created nearly three years ago as a provision of the 2021 infrastructure bill, which put aside $5 billion for the EPA to distribute in the form of rebates and grants over the course of five years. Since Harris's initial announcement, the agency has unveiled a $1 billion tranche of grants for 280 school districts and a second tranche of rebates, worth $900 million, for another 530 districts. None of those districts have deployed any buses under the program.
"This only makes economic sense if the bus is paid for with a grant like we received," Jeff Dicks, the superintendent of the Newell-Fonda and Albert City-Truesdale school systems in northern Iowa, told the Free Beacon. "The cost is so prohibitive that the cost savings are not worth it."
Dicks's school district is among the districts that have received funds under the Clean School Bus project—Albert City-Truesdale was awarded $395,000 as part of the October 2022 tranche of rebates. That money was used to fund a single new electric bus and a corresponding charging station. The district will be able to save money on fuel, but only because the bus was acquired free of charge, Dicks said.
Based on the EPA's funding calculus, the average new school bus under the Clean School Bus program costs upwards of $370,000, more than three times the cost of a traditional diesel bus. That implies the cost to replace the entire U.S. fleet of 547,000 yellow school buses with electric alternatives would exceed $202 billion.
Comments
BidenBros/CC crew gonna pick up some extra cash!
Bullets and beans gents!
Giving the public what they don't want and can't afford.
https://ace.mu.nu/
THE MORNING RANT: Is Ford Starting to Miss the Thousands of ICE Engineers it Sacked to Save Money for its EV Debacle?
—Buck Throckmorton
It’s been just three days since I last wrote about the destructive mismanagement at Ford Motor Company, so I promise to give it a rest for a little while after today. But since I wrote and uploaded my EV roundup last week, there has been a cascade of awful news for Ford and its EV-loving CEO, Jim Farley.
Ford’s Q2 2024 financial results were just released, revealing a massive decrease in earnings, including a 6-month year-to-date loss on its electric vehicle debacle of $2.5 billion – this after Ford lost $4.7 billion on EVs in 2023. Ford’s stock price is in free fall, plunging 20% last week alone. Wall Street analysts were blindsided by the depth of Ford’s financial catastrophe.
Perhaps most telling is that warranty claims on Ford’s legacy gasoline-powered vehicles have spiraled out of control. This is not by accident. Mr. Farley deliberately sabotaged the legacy ICE (internal combustion engine) business a few years ago by gutting the engineering and design staff that had successfully made the F150 America’s most popular vehicle, as I’ll re-visit in just a moment. But first, here are some of the stories that came out late last week.
“Ford shares fall as car repair costs weigh on profits; Company misses earnings expectations following unexpected surge in need to fix faulty vehicles” [Financial Times – 7/24/2024]
“Ford keeps having to repair customers’ new cars and trucks. Its profit is plunging and its stock tumbled” [CNN – 7/24/2024]
Aside from the surging warranty costs related to Ford’s neglected ICE products, the EV losses continue to worsen…
”Ford misses Q2 earnings by a wide margin as EV losses reach $2.5 billion in 2024” [Electrek – 7/24/2024]
Ford successfully “sold” a record number of EVs in Q1 of 2024, but at a tremendous loss, due to fire-sale pricing in order to reduce its glut of unsold EVs. But sales plummeted again in Q2, with EV revenue falling off a cliff.
Over the past several years, Jim Farley and his band of merry destructors at Ford have sought to fund their EV misadventure by slashing the payroll of Ford’s profitable ICE division. In a manner that the cost-cutters at Boeing would recognize, Farley eliminated engineers who had critical roles in the quality of Ford’s popular gasoline-powered vehicles:
“Ford to Fund Its EV Efforts in Part by Laying Off 8,000 Workers: The cuts seem to be part of a plan, announced earlier in the year by Ford CEO Jim Farley, to cut $3 billion in operational costs from business operations related to internal-combustion products” [Car & Driver – 7/21/2022]
It wasn’t just a one-time purge in 2022. Farley made it clear how contemptuous he was toward engineers whose skill set was for ICE vehicles.
“Ford Employs 25 Percent More Engineers Than Needed: Farley” [Ford Authority – 02/06/2023]
As the EV debacle worsened, Ford continued to cut deeper into its brain trust of legacy ICE employees, with another wave of engineers let go in 2023.
Another policy success for Headboard and Team Dazzler. And dem shills are touting Headboard as the Science candidate because her mother was a cancer researcher. It's like the dems can't do basic math, science and economics.
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/kamala-harris-touted-a-5b-electric-school-bus-program-three-years-later-its-produced-just-60-buses/
Kamala Harris Touted a $5B Electric School Bus Program. Three Years Later, It's Produced Just 60 Buses.California superintendent says electric buses would take district back to 'Pony Express days'
One of Kamala Harris's highest profile responsibilities as vice president has been spearheading the federal government's billion-dollar efforts to deploy thousands of electric buses across hundreds of school districts nationwide. But years into the program, only a small fraction of those projects have been completed while dozens of school districts have withdrawn from the program altogether.
As part of the first tranche of Clean School Bus program funding two years ago, Harris and EPA administrator Michael Regan unleashed nearly $1 billion in federal rebates for 389 school districts across all 50 states to help deliver a total 2,463 electric school buses. According to federal data reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, just 27 of those districts have proven to the EPA that their buses were delivered and that their diesel-fueled buses being replaced have been discarded.
Collectively, those districts have deployed a total of 60 battery-electric or low-emissions propane-fueled school buses. And 55 additional districts have pulled out of the program, according to other federal data shared with the Free Beacon, citing a variety of technological and infrastructure concerns. In other words: More school districts have withdrawn from the program than proven that they have completed it.
"EPA anticipates that transitioning to new technology school buses will take time, which is why the project period is two years with an option to extend where needed and justified," said EPA spokeswoman Shayla Powell.
Powell didn't deny that 60 school buses have been deployed as part of the program, but she explained that districts still have three months until the EPA's deadline to either file close-out documentation showing they have obtained the buses and scrapped old buses, or file for an extension. The wide time frame is designed to give districts time to test the new buses out and integrate them into their fleet. Powell didn't say how many total buses may have been deployed in districts that have yet to file close-out materials.
The slow progression of the Clean School Bus program is a blow to the Biden-Harris administration as it seeks to quickly get billions of dollars in green energy and climate funding—earmarked in President Joe Biden's signature 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—out the door. It's also a black eye for Harris, who has, in many ways, taken credit for the program, which she characterized earlier this year as an "investment in our children, their health, and their education."
The Clean School Bus program was created nearly three years ago as a provision of the 2021 infrastructure bill, which put aside $5 billion for the EPA to distribute in the form of rebates and grants over the course of five years. Since Harris's initial announcement, the agency has unveiled a $1 billion tranche of grants for 280 school districts and a second tranche of rebates, worth $900 million, for another 530 districts. None of those districts have deployed any buses under the program.
"This only makes economic sense if the bus is paid for with a grant like we received," Jeff Dicks, the superintendent of the Newell-Fonda and Albert City-Truesdale school systems in northern Iowa, told the Free Beacon. "The cost is so prohibitive that the cost savings are not worth it."
Dicks's school district is among the districts that have received funds under the Clean School Bus project—Albert City-Truesdale was awarded $395,000 as part of the October 2022 tranche of rebates. That money was used to fund a single new electric bus and a corresponding charging station. The district will be able to save money on fuel, but only because the bus was acquired free of charge, Dicks said.
Based on the EPA's funding calculus, the average new school bus under the Clean School Bus program costs upwards of $370,000, more than three times the cost of a traditional diesel bus. That implies the cost to replace the entire U.S. fleet of 547,000 yellow school buses with electric alternatives would exceed $202 billion.
My understanding is she’ll also use stolen gas stoves to turn children trans.
We're not banning gas stoves
We're just phasing them out
Yes we're banning gas stoves and here is why it's good for you
Mello is ignorant or a liar
We’re more fucked than I previously thought.
The commies have won.
Give up your guns, they said. Trust us, they said.
Covid concentration camps and now raising pension funds. Have fun, Aussies.
Seems like a winning strategy to me. Make the rubble bounce. Make the left own this sh*t.
Golly gee Wally what could have caused this?
Just add Open Borders and Crime to this mix stir, serve HOT and WIN.
Meanwhile…
BidenBros/CC crew say this is awesome!