Ford Takes $19.5 Billion EV Hit. Is the EV Revolution Over?

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss: Ford 's $19.5 billion EV writedown. Does Detriot have the right strategy? What's next for Rivian and Tesla . To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center . When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy . A full transcript is below. This podcast was recorded on Dec. 17, 2025. Travis Hoium: Has the EV Revolution ended before it even really got started? Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Travis Hoium, joined by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren. As a big topic this week is electric vehicles, and Ford is really the one that is the impetus for this conversation, even though you don't necessarily think about them as an EV company, but they are getting more or less getting out of the EV game, taking a $19.5 billion write off. Look, Lou, EVs were the future of the auto industry a few years ago. Every single company said that they were going to basically go 100% to EVs. You have Tesla, Rivian, Lucid , and others were thought to be disrupting Detroit. It's only been four years since a lot of those bets were made, and now we're really backing off. Tesla's sales are in decline. GM has pulled back. Now, Ford is doing the same. Were EVs over hyped, or what changed in the last few years, because this seems like a huge about-face? Lou Whiteman: What changed? Four years and one administration, shall we say. But look, I am hesitant to say it was over hyped, but I do think we definitely got ahead of ourselves. I still believe EVs are the future. I believe that is where we're going. But I think the timeline was probably likely always going to be longer than we had hoped, and honestly, that we priced in. There was a new administration, and some of the incentives did change, which I think is part of what happened now. I don't want to put too much on the administrations. The subsidies, they were nice. But I think that if we're to take from this that the subsidies were the only reasons that these were selling, that the dependency is what makes EVs work, that's the wrong lesson. The subsidies were necessary, because the tech just isn't ready for prime time. It's not ready for anyone except the early adopters now. Travis Hoium: Is it the tech or is it the cost? Because one of the things that I always go back and forth on is, people talk about range anxiety and infrastructure and things like that. I actually think those are pretty good for 99% of travel, and now we've got fast charging and things like that. But when I go look at an EV and go, could we replace our Volkswagen Atlas, a three-row SUV for a...

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