Ford CEO Jim Farley said Trump would halve the EV market by ending subsidies

https://fortune.com/2025/12/16/ford-ceo-jim-farley-ev-tax-credit-donald-trump-ford-f150-lightning/

by stevenjgarner • 7 months ago

6 4 7 months ago

What I find disingenuous about reports on the explicit point-of-sale tax credits for electric vehicles is that they never mention the enormous government support for traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles — particularly the tax breaks (forgone revenue) and unpriced externalities that benefit the oil and gas industry. Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Treasury state these "indirect" subsidies are significantly larger than renewable energy credits but are embedded deep within the tax code. This is how the delusion is spread that electric vehicles somehow unfairly benefit from government subsidies.

Refs:

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/General-Explanati...

https://thefactcoalition.org/report/oil-and-gas-tax-subsidie...

https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1051...

https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-tax-incentive...

https://www.iisd.org/articles/iisd-news/fossil-fuel-subsidie...

https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-subsidies-fossil-fuels

csense• 7 months ago

One could just as easily say "The EV market is twice its natural size because it's being unnaturally propped up by subsidies."

Are there worthier causes the government could spend that on? Or maybe not spend the money at all, to reduce the deficit and ease pressure on interest rates and inflation? It's a politically charged question.

My personal thought is that government subsidy gets the best return on investment when the market is small (so the investment / denominator is small) and difficult to operate without the subsidy (so the improvement / numerator is increased a lot by the subsidy).

Heading into 2026 the EV market is pretty established and is no longer in that regime. The subsidies scale linearly with market size. Whether it makes sense to continue investment depends on how the positive externalities scale and the ratio of marginal positive externality to marginal government subsidy.

Maybe it's worth it, maybe it's not. But you can't assume the juice is still worth the squeeze in ~2026 just because the investment was justifiable when these policies were originally established back around ~2010 or so -- especially considering a fixed credit (per vehicle) means you need a lot more squeeze in ~2026 (when there are a lot more people buying vehicles than in ~2010).

tencentshill• 7 months ago

Oil has massive subsidies from the US. It just goes to oil companies instead of the end user. Would it be better for anyone if EV and battery manufacturers get all the subsidies instead?

daly• 7 months ago

Jim Farley doesn't understand what is actually happening. The majors are all in denial. (Rory Sutherland on selling an electric car: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OTOKws45kCo )

I just drove from Pittsburgh to Louisianna to Florida to Pittsburgh without touching the steering wheel. The car planned the route, planned the charging stops, and backed into the charging spaces.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke (I had a career in vision, AI, and robots yet it still feels like magic)

The price of electricity to "fill up" was about 1/4 the price of gas for equivalent miles. "Fill up" times at chargers averaged about 10 minutes.

I have had my car for 15 months. I rotated the tires and added wiper fluid. "Lower total cost of ownership always wins" is basic economics.

And now Grok listens to my trip stops and updates navigation. Talk to Grok, touch "start full self driving" and relax.

"The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed," -- William Gibson

Ford CEO Jim Farley said Trump would halve the EV market by ending subsidies

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