Ford Takes a $20 Billion Writedown on Electric Pickup

Current conditions: Yet another powerful atmospheric river, this one dubbed Pineapple Express, is on track to throttle the Pacific Northwest this week • Bolivia is facing landslides • Western Australia is under severe risk of bushfire.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Ford takes a $20 billion charge on electric pickup writedown

The Ford Motor Company expects to pay roughly $19.5 billion in charges, primarily from its electric vehicle business. In a press release, the automaker said it would refocus on hybrids and “efficient gas engines,” ramp up manufacturing of batteries for a standalone business, and boost truck production. The battery business aims to churn out 20 gigawatts of capacity every year starting in 2027. But the charges the company faces stem from its decision to abandon multibillion-dollar investments the carmaker made in new assembly lines for electric vehicles, demand for which slowed last year and dipped at the end of this year after the Trump administration phased out federal tax credits in September. “This is a customer-driven shift to create a stronger, more resilient and more profitable Ford,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a press release. “The operating reality has changed, and we are redeploying capital into higher-return growth opportunities: Ford Pro, our market-leading trucks and vans, hybrids and high margin opportunities like our new battery energy storage business.”

2. EU abandons its ban on gas-powered cars

Ford isn’t the only one accelerating in reverse away from electric vehicles. Last week I told you about the deal the European Union struck between its center-right and far-right lawmakers to curb environmental regulations. Now the bloc has moved to scrap its 2035 target to ban sales of new combustion-engine vehicles. The move would have marked a dramatic sea change in the West’s transportation policy, all but eliminating sales of traditional gasoline-powered cars in favor of battery-propelled alternatives. It’s a sign of Brussels’ broader effort to pull back from green mandates that European President Ursula von der Leyen blames for the continent’s economic malaise.

3. Trump teases more ‘historic deals’ in critical minerals

An old copper mine in Arizona. John Moore/Getty Images

It could have been worse. The Treasury guidance issued Friday dictating what wind and solar projects will be eligible for federal tax credits could have effectively banned developers from tapping the write-offs set to start phasing out next July. In the weeks before the Internal Revenue Service released its rules, GOP lawmakers from states with thriving wind and solar industries, including Senators John Curtis of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, publicly lobbied for laxer rules as part of what they pitched as the all-of-the-above “energy dominance” strategy on which Trump campaigned. Grassley went so far as to block two of Trump’s Treasury nominees “until I can be certain that such rules and regulations adhere to the law and congressional intent,” as Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin covered earlier in August.

Since the guidance came out on Friday, both Grassley and Curtis have put out positive statements backing the plan. “I appreciate the work of Secretary [Scott] Bessent and his staff in balancing various concerns and perspectives to address the President’s executive order on wind and solar projects,” Curtis said, according to E&E News. Calling renewables “an essential part of the ‘all of the above’ energy equation,” Grassley’s statement said the guidance “seems to offer a viable path forward for the wind and solar industries to continue to meet increased energy demand” and “reflects some of the concerns Congress and industry leaders have raised.”

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4. Virginia Democrats prepare to reintroduce vetoed energy bills

Virginia’s outgoing Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed more energy bills than he signed last year, killing legislation designed to increase rooftop solar and energy storage, boost utility planning requirements, and make efficiency improvements more available to low-income residents. Now that Democrat Abigail Spanberger is coming in to replace Youngkin as the next governor, those bills are coming back, the Virginia Mercury reported. In a column, lawyer and environmentalist Ivy Main called on Democrats to dream bigger. “Data center development is so far outstripping supply side solutions that if legislators aren’t more aggressive this year, next year they will find themselves further behind than ever,” Main wrote. “As more bills are filed over the coming weeks, we are likely to see plenty of bold proposals. Hopefully, legislators now understand the urgency, and will be ready to act.”

Data centers are now “swallowing American politics,” Heatmap’s Jael Holzman wrote recently. Just 44% of Americans would welcome a data center nearby, according to a poll from September by Heatmap Pro.

5. India inches toward opening its nuclear industry to foreign business

The 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster in India never resulted in any serious ramifications for Union Carbide, the Dow Chemical subsidiary responsible for the accident that left more than 3,700 dead from exposure to toxic gases. In 2010, India passed a law that threatened to impose full civil penalties on any private nuclear company that suffered an accident somehow. That legislation has prevented all but Russia’s state-owned nuclear company from entering the Indian market. Hoping to lure American small modular reactor companies to India, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed all year to overhaul the civil liability law. On Monday, Modi-aligned lawmakers proposed legislation to reform the nuclear sector and free foreign vendors from financial responsibility for anything that could potentially happen with their equipment.

The renewables industry, meanwhile, is continuing to boom on the subcontinent. The Japanese industrial giant agreed to invest $1.3 billion into renewable power in India in its latest push into green energy in South Asia, Bloomberg reported.

THE KICKER

There’s green hydrogen, made from blasting freshwater with electricity made by renewables. There’s blue hydrogen, the version of the fuel that comes from natural gas mitigated with carbon capture equipment. Gray hydrogen is the traditional kind made with natural gas that spews pollution into the atmosphere. And then there’s pink hydrogen, made like the green kind with clean electricity except generated by a nuclear reactor. Orange is the latest color in the hydrogen rainbow, referring to the version of the gas that comes from a chemical process that accelerates production of the gas in natural formations underground. The startup Vema has announced a 10-year conditional offtake agreement with the off-grid data center power provider Verne to supply over 36,000 metric tons per year of “orange” hydrogen for server farms, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham reported.