American EVs are caught in a size conundrum.
Over the past three decades, U.S. drivers decided they want tall, roomy crossovers and pickup trucks rather than coupes and sedans. These popular big vehicles looked like the obvious place to electrify as the car companies made their uneasy first moves away from combustion. But hefty vehicles and batteries don’t mix: It takes much, much larger batteries to push long, heavy, aerodynamically unfriendly SUVs and trucks down the road, which can make the prices of the EV versions spiral out of control.
Now, as the car industry confronts a confusing new era under Trump, signals of change are afoot. Although a typical EV that uses only a rechargeable battery for its power makes sense for smaller, more efficient cars with lower energy demands, that might not be the way the industry tries to electrify its biggest models anymore.
The predicament at Ford is particularly telling. The Detroit giant was an early EV adopter compared to its rivals, rolling out the Mustang Mach-E at the end of 2020 and the Ford F-150 Lightning, an electrified version of the best-selling vehicle in America, in 2022. These vehicles sell: Mustang Mach-E was the No. 3 EV in the United States in 2024, trailing only Tesla’s big two. The Lightning pickup came in No. 6.
Yet Ford is in an EV crisis. The 33,510 Lightning trucks it sold last year amount to less than 5% of the 730,000-plus tally for the ordinary F-150. With those sales stacked up against enormous costs needed to invest in EV and battery manufacturing, the brand’s EV division has been losing billions of dollars per year. Amid this struggle, Ford continues to shift its EV plans and hasn’t introduced a new EV to the market in three years. During this time, rival GM has begun to crank out Blazer and Equinox EVs, and now says its EV group is profitable, at least on a heavily qualified basis.
As CEO Jim Farley admitted during an earnings call on Wednesday, Ford simply can’t make the math work out when it comes to big EVs. The F-150 Lightning starts at $63,000 thanks in large part to the enormous battery it requires. Even then, the base version gets just 230 miles of range — a figure that, like with all EVs, drops quickly in extreme weather, when going uphill, or when towing. Combine those technical problems and high prices with the cultural resistance to EVs among many pickup drivers and the result is the continually rough state of the EV truck market.
It sounds like Ford no longer believes pure electric is the answer for its biggest vehicles. Instead, Farley announced a plan to pivot to extended-range electric vehicle (or EREV) versions of its pickup trucks and large SUVs later in the decade.
EREVs are having a moment. These vehicles use a large battery to power the electric motors that push the wheels, just like an EV does. They also carry an onboard gas engine that acts as a generator, recharging the battery when it gets low and greatly increasing the vehicle’s range between refueling stops. EREVs are big in China. They got a burst of hype in America when Ram promised its upcoming Ramcharger EREV pickup truck would achieve nearly 700 miles of combined range. Scout Motors, the brand behind the boxy International Scout icon of the 1960s and 70s, is returning to the U.S. under Volkswagen ownership and finding a groundswell of enthusiasm for its promised EREV SUV.
The EREV setup makes a lot of sense for heavy-duty rides. Ramcharger, for example, will come with a 92 kilowatt-hour battery that can charge via plug and should deliver around 145 miles of electric range. The size of the pickup truck means it can also accommodate a V6 engine and a gas tank large enough to stretch the Ramcharger’s overall range to 690 miles. It is, effectively, a plug-in hybrid on steroids, with a battery big enough to accomplish nearly any daily driving on electricity and enough backup gasoline to tow anything and go anywhere.
Using that trusty V6 to generate electricity isn’t nearly as energy-efficient as charging and discharging a battery. But as a backup that kicks in only after 100-plus miles of electric driving, it’s certainly a better climate option than a gas-only pickup or a traditional hybrid. The setup is also ideally suited for what drivers of heavy duty vehicles need (or, at least, what they think they need): efficient local driving with no range anxiety. And it’s similar enough to the comfortable plug-and-go paradigm that an extended-range EV should seem less alien to the pickup owner.
Ford’s big pivot looks like a sign of the times. The brand still plans to build EVs at the smaller end of its range; its skunkworks experimental team is hard at work on Ford’s long-running attempt to build an electric vehicle in the $30,000 range. If Ford could make EVs at a price at least reasonably competitive with entry-level combustion cars, then many buyers might go electric for pure pragmatic terms, seeing the EV as a better economic bet in the long run. Electric-only makes sense here.
But at the big end, that’s not the case. As Bloombergreports on Ford’s EV trouble, most buyers in the U.S. show “no willingness to pay a premium” for an electric vehicle over a gas one or a hybrid. Facing the prospect of the $7,500 EV tax credit disappearing under Trump, plus the specter of tariffs driving up auto production costs, and the task of selling Americans an expensive electric-only pickup truck or giant SUV goes from fraught to extremely difficult.
As much as the industry has coalesced around the pure EV as the best way to green the car industry, this sort of bifurcation — EV for smaller vehicles, EREV for big ones — could be the best way forward. Especially if the Ramcharger or EREV Ford F-150 is what it takes to convince a quorum of pickup truck drivers to ditch their gas-only trucks.
