Ford Plans More Gas Trucks, Fewer Electric Vehicles

For much of the last five years, automakers have been spending billions of dollars in a frantic race to develop electric vehicles and build factories to produce them, with expectations that consumers would flock to these new models.

But in the past 12 months, the growth rate of electric vehicle sales has slowed sharply as some car buyers have balked at the high prices of electric cars and trucks and the hassles of charging them, especially on long trips.

The shift in consumer sentiment is now forcing many automakers to pull back on aggressive investment plans, and pivot, at least partly, back to the internal-combustion engine vehicles that still account for most new car sales and a large share of corporate profits.

The latest example came on Thursday when Ford Motor said it would retool a plant in Canada to produce large pickup trucks rather than the electric sport-utility vehicles it had previously planned to make there.

Ford’s move comes a day after General Motors said it expected to make 200,000 to 250,000 battery-powered cars and trucks this year, about 50,000 fewer than it had previously forecast.

“After the pandemic, there was a huge exuberance around E.V.s, and I think a lot of the manufacturers thought that growth was going to continue,” said Arun Kumar, a partner and managing director in the automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners, a consulting firm. “But the reality is that’s not the case, and it’s a smart move to make sure you’re not losing market share in internal combustion.”

Car companies’ hesitation about electric vehicles comes at a politically fraught moment for the industry. U.S. auto regulations could change significantly if former President Donald J. Trump wins the election in November. Mr. Trump has pledged to undo many of President Biden’s policies, including those that promote the use of battery-powered cars to address climate change.

But even before the presidential campaign ramped up, Ford, G.M. and other automakers had been slowing their investments in electric vehicles, delaying some new models and work on battery plants. Just a few years ago, G.M. and Ford expected to have the capacity to make more than one million electric vehicles a year by the middle of the decade.

At a CNBC event this week, Mary T. Barra, the chief executive of G.M., said it would take longer to reach that capacity level because of slower growth in electric vehicle sales.

Even Tesla, the leading producer of electric cars, has changed its plans because it no longer expects sales to grow 50 percent a year; its global sales fell 6.6 percent in the first six months of the year. The company has slowed plans to build an electric-car factory in Mexico and canceled a meeting in April between its chief executive, Elon Musk, and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to discuss a new plant in that country.

The Ford factory in Oakville, Ontario, recently stopped making the gasoline-powered Ford Edge S.U.V., and was slated to shift to new electric versions of the Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator, both three-row S.U.V.s. Instead, Ford will turn the factory into a third production location for its Super Duty pickup truck, one of its most profitable models.

Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford, said the company’s other Super Duty plants in Kentucky and Ohio couldn’t produce as many vehicles as its commercial customers wanted.

“We can’t meet the demand,” he said in a statement. In April, Mr. Farley said the number of Super Duty orders Ford had was double the number of trucks it was able to build. In the first half of this year, Ford produced more than 200,000 Super Duty trucks.

Ford said the Oakville plant should start making Super Duty trucks in 2026, with a capacity of 100,000 vehicles a year. The company plans to spend $3 billion to expand production of the trucks.

Toward the end of the decade, Ford plans to introduce updated Super Duty trucks. Among the new designs is an electrified model, most likely a hybrid truck that combines a powerful internal combustion engine with an electric motor. A purely electric powertrain would probably not provide the towing power and driving range that Super Duty’s customers need.

Super Duty models include the F-250 and F-350 models, which often sell for $70,000 or more and are typically used as work trucks in construction, forestry, mining and other industries.

The move to make Super Duty trucks in Oakville will secure about 1,800 jobs at the plant, as well as 50 others at an engine plant in Windsor, Ontario. To support increased Super Duty production, Ford also expects to add overtime work and employees at a transmission plant in Ohio, and component and axle plants in Michigan.

In April, Ford said it would delay the start production of the electric Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator in Oakville from 2025 to 2027, raising concerns about the status of jobs at the plant.

The Canadian auto workers union, Unifor, welcomed the new plan for pickup production. “We came to an agreement that will not only see our members back to work sooner, it protects our members’ jobs well into the future,” Lana Payne, the president of Unifor, said in a statement.

Ford said it still planned to make the electric Explorer and Aviator, but did not say when or where it would do that.