The Ford Motor Company has announced that it will be laying off at least 1,000 jobs in an effort to offset rising costs of electric vehicle production, according to reports.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Ford has begun notifying its employees via email about the upcoming job cuts, which will begin on Monday.
The car manufacturer is focusing on reducing its $8 billion in operational costs, a high amount among automakers. In order to achieve that, Ford will be letting go of some 1,000 paid workers in North America.
While some staff in the gas-powered and commercial vehicle sectors will also be laid off, the job cuts will primarily affect those working in the software programming and electric vehicle areas.
Ford said that the operating profit on its electric vehicle business is expected to decline by almost $3 billion this year. The company’s executives are hoping that gas-engine vehicle profits will be able to keep the business afloat until the program starts to pay off.
The company previously laid off roughly 3,000 employees in the U.S. last summer and even more in Europe earlier this year.
Not only has the popularity of electric vehicles become a burden to car manufacturers, but it will also soon force Americans to ditch gas-powered vehicles in favor of costly electric vehicles.
In California, for instance, lawmakers moved to require all new vehicles in the state to run on electricity by 2035 in the hopes of cutting emissions from cars in half by 2040. The California Air Resources Board has also proposed requiring medium- and heavy-duty trucks to be fully electric by the year 2035.
Critics have also blasted the Biden administration for giving a “false impression” about EVs, noting that they are expensive and often unreliable.
“[The EV push] is really kind of a con job,” said Myron Ebell, the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment. “It may be a good deal for some people in some places under some circumstances. But by-and-large right now, it’s not a good deal.”
According to Kelley Blue Book, electric vehicles accounted for 5.6 percent of new car purchases in the U.S. from April through June.
