From Autoline Daily:
Talk about ripping the bandaid off all at once. This morning Stellantis announced it’s taking a massive $26 billion write-off of its EV investments. That includes an $8 billion payment to suppliers for cancelled EV programs, as well as selling off its battery plant in Canada. To preserve cash, Stellantis is cancelling its dividend for 2026 and will issue $6 billion in new bonds. Investors reacted immediately to the news, sending the stock price down 24%. Here’s our Autoline Insight. This is a complete and total separation of the plan put forward by Carlos Tavares, the previous CEO of the company. He called it Dare Forward 2030 and the goal was to position Stellantis as the automotive leader in decarbonization. Tavares envisioned EVs accounting for 100% of the company’s sales in Europe and 50% in the U.S. by 2030. And he invested heavily to hit that target. As you know, those targets now look hopelessly optimistic, which is a big part of the reason why Mr. Tavares lost his job and why Stellantis had to take such a massive write-off.
Maybe that is for the best-the 4Xe has had some serious issues-a friend of mine has a Wrangler 4Xe and has several open recalls without any resolution on it.
IDK why I'm hyping myself up, because it's not gonna happen, but if this affordable sedan was Ford's rival to something like the su7 that Farley really likes, and drove as his personal car for awhile, but with sharper, more American and muscle car like styling, I would go out and immediately buy one. I've said for some time an affordable, low maintenance, incredible looking sedan that's fun to drive would be the best way for Ford to get back into the sedan game, instead of just doing a generic blob.
I'm all for it, it's just a matter of if there's enough of a market for two rwd performance sedans, but sign me the hell up. This is a really weird idea, but because Ford is trying all these radical new ideas for product development, do you believe it's possible the s650 based mustang sedan, and the affordable EV rwd sedan, are both mustang sedans?
Ford could be telling it's teams start with the same basic vehicle concept, a mustang sedan in this case, and we're gonna give both teams a small budget to work with. Come up with differing concepts, one that uses this affordable EV platform, and another that uses the ICE platform, and we'll see which one is the more compelling all around product before deciding which one to greenlight for production.
It's just the fact that this affordable EV sedan sounds like something that could easily wear the mustang badge, but we also know there's an s650 based sedan.
One thought-the Automaker (at least in North America) who had the least amount of HEV/PHEV and EV options is taking the biggest hit out of the three....hmmmmm
I like the way you think. Maybe the escape EV gets boxier styling, or maybe it goes in the other direction and becomes a sleek coupe SUV with mach-e like styling to appeal to those buyers. I would have assumed one of these affordable models would be a second gen mach-e, but explorerdude kinda hints that mach-e will be replaced by a gas powered rwd crossover, my guess is a mustang V6-V8 powered crossover with a more upscale price, which could be kinda cool.
The current Corsair starts at $39,999, so given inflation, it wouldn't fall into this.
That isn't to say it wouldn't be based on a "value" Ford nameplate.
I would be willing to bet that there will be several inserts where the grille would be to distinguish different trim levels....Ford has become a master at that.