Ford, GM, and Stellantis are laying off thousands of EV employees, idling some plants, and reimagining others. Ford envisioned its Blue Oval City in Tennessee cranking out 500,000 electric trucks a year. This Emerald City of EVs will now become Tennessee Truck, a meat-and-potatoes ICE plant. Ford has killed off some EVs, including a second-gen Lightning and a Transit-style van, which will cost it $8.5 billion. Axing a joint battery venture with South Korea's SK On will result in another $6 billion charge.

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Despite the chaos, automakers are now free to make whatever they like, at least until the next sheriff arrives in Washington. "Choice" is the new mantra. Unsurprisingly, their choice is to make hay and haul it by building more high-margin SUVs and pickup trucks. The Trump administration and supporters have cast this as a win for affordability, as long as one ignores the potential fuel savings over the lifespan of more efficient ICE and electric models. Feature-laden pickups and SUVs are also the models that drove the price of the average new car past $50,000 for the first time, leaving consumers with fewer affordable alternatives.

That said, the Biden administration's rules would have required companies to make about 56 percent of new passenger vehicles fully electric by 2032, up from 9 percent today. The targets, together with carrots in the form of IRA subsidies and consumer credits, led automakers to invest tens of billions of dollars in U.S. EV and battery factories, as well as tech R&D. But the goals proved too ambitious, says Sam Fiorani, vice president of AutoForecast Solutions.

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Ford, after losing nearly $13 billion on EVs since 2023, reached the same conclusion. "We can't allocate money for things that will not make money," CEO Jim Farley told Reuters. "As much as I love those products, the customers in the U.S. were not going to pay for them. And that was the end of that."

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The Lightning, a Ford executive told Car and Driver, actually did OK for a pioneering electric truck. Critics lauded its performance and tech, including its mobile-power capabilities. The Ford outsold the Tesla Cybertruck and Rivian R1T, along with all three of GM's electric pickups combined. But initially strong sales stalled, on pace for about 30,000 this year. The executive said emission targets would have compelled Ford to sell hundreds of thousands of Lightnings a year to offset thirstier trucks like the Super Duty series, among the brand's most profitable models. From an initial ratio of roughly one Lightning for every 10 gasoline F-series, Ford projected it would need a one-to-one sales split to meet 2032 standards. Other options, all unpalatable, involved buying climate credits or offering steep discounts to drive sales. Ultimately, the math didn't add up. Ford knew it had to pull its chips off the table.

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Ford's follow-up to the Lightning will become a series plug-in hybrid that automakers like to call an "Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV)." That new Lightning will be built in the same Detroit factory, with beefed-up towing stamina as part of a total driving range of about 700 miles. For consumers attuned to energy savings or electric advantages, a planned wave of EREV models—from brands such as VW's Scout, Ram, and Hyundai—may be the most significant showroom change sparked by the EV pullback.

These EREVs are looking like an intriguing hedge for automakers and buyers. They mix electric and internal-combustion power, but with considerably more pure-electric range to sidestep the chief criticism of more common parallel plug-in hybrids. Yet akin to the latter PHEVS, it remains to be seen whether enough consumers will understand the technology's potential or pay a premium for it. Automakers are racing back to hybrids as well, where Toyota is sitting pretty: Nearly half of Toyota's U.S. sales are now hybrids, after the company faced withering criticism for not keeping pace on EVs.

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Wakefield says automakers are definitely in line for a windfall. For now, they will not face fines for falling short of C02 or mileage standards. Nor must they buy climate credits from the likes of Tesla, which padded profits via $10.7 billion in credit sales since 2012. And companies no longer need to develop and build as many EVs to meet federal targets, in a market that still faces daunting barriers to adoption. In China, Wakefield notes, EVs typically cost 5 to 10 percent less than comparable gasoline models. "Here, they still cost 25 to 30 percent more," he says. "But maybe by the end of this decade, we'll start seeing real cost parity."

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Yet domestic automakers face a familiar dilemma. They must build popular cars at home without ignoring the wider world, including the potential existential threat of China. The CEOs of the Detroit Three insist they're not walking away from EVs.

Ford intends to bring a $30,000 electric pickup to showrooms by 2027, from its skunkworks project in California. That mid-size truck will ride on a "Universal EV Platform" designed to radically reduce costs. Ford expects EVs, EREVs, and hybrids to make up 50 percent of its global cars by 2030, or triple its 17 percent today.