Another EV competitor to Elon Musk’s Tesla, another pause/delay in their investment. Ford is the latest, following GM last week, to announce that they are pausing a $12 billion EV investment after saying their research is showing that electric vehicles are too expensive for their target market consumers and demand is slowing.

Earlier in the year Ford announced that they would abandon their target of building two million EVs by 2026. So what’s up with this latest “pause”?

High prices. Everything that goes into manufacturing an EV including lithium batteries, composite materials, steel, aluminum, electronics including computers and lidar are all expensive. As demand increases manufacturer costs will decrease, but that has been slow to happen. If consumers are pulling back from EVs in light of rising inflation, then we could see a longer road to adoption of EVs to replace fossil fuel burning vehicles.

Ford pauses a $12 billion EV investment, after saying electric vehicles are too expensive