Less than three years ago, former President Joe Biden vowed to force most Americans to drive electric cars, and he insisted this is also what  they wanted. 

"The future of the auto industry is electric,” Biden said four years ago while touring a Ford EV facility in Michigan. Throughout his presidency, Biden passed multiple regulations mandating that automakers produce EVs. 

While the automakers were quick to fall into line with the plans, Biden, along with other "green energy advocates," it turned out, was wrong. Consumers weren’t as committed to doing away with gas-powered vehicles as much as Biden and the automakers wanted them to be. The bet on EVs has cost the American auto industry billions of dollars. 

A 2025 Pew Research poll showed that 53% of more than 5,000 Americans responded that they were "not too or not at all likely to seriously consider purchasing an EV."

Meaningful progress toward reduced losses

Ford Motor Company reported its quarterly and year-end results Tuesday, and the company continued to see losses from its electric vehicle line.  Noting that the company saw an increase in the number of units sold in its EV lines 2025, as well as a decrease in per-vehicle losses, Sherry House, Ford’s chief financial officer, said during the company’s earnings call that the company made “meaningful progress” for its EV ambitions. 

Energy expert, author and speaker Robert Bryce told Just the News that the company isn’t being forthcoming about the blunder it made. 

“This is the same story we’ve heard from Ford now for years — ‘Oh, just a few more of these, and we’re going to really figure things out,’” Bryce said.

Since 2022, Bryce said, the company sold 410,000 EVs at a loss of $36.3 billion, which comes to nearly an $89,000 loss for every EV the company sold. 

“Why does [Ford CEO] Jim Farley still have a job? In what other industry, what other company would you have somebody as the boss who, in over a four-year period, lost $36 billion and still has a job?” Bryce said.

Other automakers losing on EVs

The losses Ford has endured on its electric vehicle lines are highlighted because, unlike other automakers, Ford separately breaks out its EV business, dubbed Model-E. This provides a lot more transparency about what the push to go fully electric cost the company.

In December, Ford announced it would take a $19.5 billion writedown and would stop producing some EV models, including the fully electric F-150 Lightning. It’s replacing the model with an extended-range model that uses gasoline to charge the battery, Reuters reported. 

But the losses on EVs aren’t limited to just Ford, and the termination of the tax credits that incentivized reluctant buyers is adding further to the decreased demand. 

In January, General Motors’ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed it would record a $7.1 billion loss for the last quarter of 2025, primarily due to reduced value in its EV lines and battery factories, The New York Times reported. 

In November, GM and Stellantis scaled back their EV ambitions and repurposed facilities that were to make EVs for the production of more internal combustion engines, WardsAuto reported. 

Automakers that produce fully electric cars, namely Tesla and Rivian, have been experiencing considerable drops in demand. Tesla’s sales dropped 9% in 2025 from the previous year, according to NBC News, knocking it to second place in terms of global EV sales behind Chinese EV maker BYD.

But even Chinese consumers' interest in buying new EVs is slowing. Global EV sales were down in January 2026 compared to the same month last year, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. The global EV market was down 44% compared to December 2025, which was driven by falling sales in China. 

On his Substack, Bryce calculated the total losses on EVs since 2023 of major automakers — Ford, GM, Stellantis, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen Group, Rivian and Lucid. Altogether the losses came to $114 billion. 

Trump’s nails in the coffin

On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced the repeal of the Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency “endangerment finding,” which was the basis for the emission limits the Biden administration placed on vehicles to create a de facto national EV mandate. 

During a press conference, Trump said the repeal would lower the cost of vehicles by $2,400 on average. He called it the biggest deregulation in American history, and it follows his previous efforts to sever the legs of Biden’s EV mandate. In addition, in December, the Trump administration announced a proposed rulemaking to roll back the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, which limited emissions across automaker’s fleets. 

The repeal of the endangerment finding also effectively ends the legal basis for Biden’s tailpipe emissions standards, which was the third leg of the former president’s EV mandate. 

Last June, Trump signed three resolutions that repeal a waiver that allowed California to set more stringent emission standards than the federal government. Because many states were following suit, it would have helped sustain a de facto national EV mandate. 

Consumer demand has already weakened automakers’ EV commitments, but the Trump administration has effectively done away with any regulatory justification for forcing automakers to build money-losing cars that buyers don't want. 

Kevin Killough is the energy reporter for Just The News. You can follow him on X for more coverage.