Elec­tric car trans­ition run­ning low on power

Com­pan­ies pulling back tar­gets amid slow­ing sales

This article was written by Craig Trudell and was published in the Toronto Star on December 17, 2025.

Ford Motor Co. has announced $19.5 bil­lion (U.S.) in charges tied to the retreat from an elec­tric strategy it vowed to go all in on eight years ago

The global trans­ition to elec­tric vehicles is begin­ning to unravel the way major changeovers often do: slowly at first, then all at once.

This week brought a cas­cade of sig­nals that the EV era is enter­ing a more uncer­tain, more con­tested phase. The European Com­mis­sion backed away from what had been the world’s most aggress­ive timeline for phas­ing out internal­com­bus­tion engines, grant­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers and con­sumers more time to move off gas­ol­ine. A day earlier, Ford Motor Co. announced $19.5 bil­lion (all fig­ures U.S.) in charges tied to the retreat from an elec­tric strategy it vowed to go all in on eight years ago.

The pull­back is no longer con­fined to a few lag­gards or skep­tics. From rel­at­ive new­comers to leg­acy giants, the signs of reck­on­ing have been mount­ing for months.

Take Tesla Inc., the U.S. com­pany that did more than any other in the world to kick­start the EV upris­ing. The Elon Musk­led man­u­fac­turer was never going to keep up the met­eoric rise pulled off at the begin­ning of the dec­ade, but it’s no longer just slow­ing down — world­wide vehicle deliv­er­ies are poised to drop for the second year in a row. Musk’s interests have wandered from pur­su­ing a $25,000 elec­tric car to devel­op­ing humanoid robots and driver­less taxis.

China’s BYD Co. will become the new No. 1 pur­veyor of bat­tery­elec­tric cars in 2025, though it too is now hav­ing grow­ing pains, with total sales fall­ing each of the last three months. The com­pany is still pro­du­cing one plug­in hybrid with a gas engine under the hood for every bat­tery­only EV, and its momentum is stalling in part because author­it­ies in Beijing are increas­ingly scru­tin­iz­ing pri­cing prac­tices.

Ford has had plenty of com­pany in strug­gling to catch up with the elec­tric lead­ers.

Its rival Gen­eral Motors Co. recently incurred $1.6 bil­lion in charges tied to par­ing EV pro­duc­tion capa­city, and flagged more such moves may be in the off­ing. Stel­lantis NV has scrapped plans for a fully elec­tric Ram pickup and revived gas­guzz­ling V­8 engines it will have no trouble selling in a U.S. mar­ket that has hol­lowed out fuel eco­nomy and emis­sions stand­ards.

When Volk­swa­gen AG — Europe’s car­maker that was once most motiv­ated to chase Tesla — ends out­put of elec­tric ID.3 hatch­backs this month in Dresden, it will be the first time in 88 years the car­maker will have ceased pro­duc­tion at a Ger­man assembly plant. VW, too, has taken sub­stan­tial fin­an­cial blows, book­ing 4.7 bil­lion euros ($5.5 bil­lion) in charges tied to its sub­si­di­ary Porsche AG revers­ing from EVs.

For all the chal­lenges the industry is hav­ing, the trans­ition isn’t being aban­doned.

“EVs remain our North Star,” GM CEO Mary Barra told investors recently, and she’s repeatedly stated bat­ter­ies are fun­da­ment­ally bet­ter than internal com­bus­tion engines.

Volvo Car AB, which had lob­bied for the EU to keep in place its effect­ive phase­out of ICE­powered cars by 2035, noted EVs are a seg­ment of the car industry that is grow­ing.

But the real­ity that poli­cy­makers in Brus­sels are bow­ing to this week is that EV sales aren’t grow­ing at nearly the pace required to reach tar­gets set for a dec­ade from now.

The degree of relief the European Com­mis­sion is grant­ing is some­what incre­mental, with tailpipe emis­sions still need­ing to drop 90 per cent by 2035, instead of the pre­vi­ous object­ive for a 100 per cent reduc­tion. The com­mis­sion also is con­di­tion­ing its relief on car­makers com­pens­at­ing for addi­tional pol­lu­tion by using low­car­bon or renew­able fuels, or loc­ally pro­duced green steel.

“It’s prob­ably a win for the con­sumer more than a win for the industry,” said Phil­ippe Houchois, an auto­mot­ive equit­ies ana­lyst at Jef­fer­ies.

“For car­makers, if you have mul­tiple power­trains, you have more time to make the invest­ments, but you have to spread your invest­ment over mul­tiple tech­no­lo­gies.”

For Ford, the eye­pop­ping charges the car­maker expects to record are linked to moves includ­ing the can­cel­la­tion of a planned elec­tric FSer­ies truck line, shift­ing pro­duc­tion toward gas and hybrid vehicles and repur­pos­ing bat­tery plants to pro­duce energy stor­age sys­tems instead of EVs.

“We’re see­ing the same thing around the world,” Ford CEO Jim Far­ley told Bloomberg Tele­vi­sion. “We need to give cus­tom­ers choice, and then use our man­u­fac­tur­ing flex­ib­il­ity to go where the cus­tom­ers are.”