LOSING A $50 BILLION BET—OR JUST MORE TRUMP CHAOS? PART 2

YESTERDAY, LINDSAY VANHULLE DESCRIBED “Automakers Regroup As Market Shifts After $50 Billion EV Debacle,” Automotive News, February 13, 2026. This, of course, is a fair piece of change, but implications are even larger. We continue here in Part 2.

Specific Hits. VanHulle recounts, “GM disclosed more than $7 billion in EV-related charges for 2025 and in January said it expects to take a lesser amount in such charges this year. The automaker canceled its Chevrolet BrightDrop electric commercial van and repurposed a planned electric pickup plant near Detroit to instead build gasoline trucks.”

Cancelled: Chevy BrightDrop EV commercial van. Image from GM Evolve.com. 

“Ford’s EV pivot,” VanHulle relates, “will cost about $20.9 billion through 2027, slightly higher than it originally projected, though it took the bulk of the charges in late 2025.”

Discontinued: The F-150 Lightening. Image by Michael Martinez from Automotive News. 

VanHulle continues, “It canceled the F-150 Lightning electric pickup in December and instead plans to make an extended-range model with a gasoline engine that acts as a generator [what used to be called a ‘series hybrid’]. Ford previously canceled a pair of three-row electric crossovers.”

Cancelled: Ford three-row SUV EV. Image by John Roe/Car and Driver.

Suppliers Caught Up As Well. VanHulle quotes Mike Ward, a U.S. auto analyst at Citi Group: “Some of the cash-related charges are settlements with suppliers that invested to add capacity based on automakers’ projections that they would build a certain number of EVs.”

That is, the chaos occurs up and down the auto industry chain.

Stellantis. VanHulle continues, “Stellantis [Chrysler etc. to us old-timers] previewed €22 billion ($26 billion) in charges Feb. 6 ahead of releasing its full 2025 financial results later in the month. The charges include $17.5 billion for canceled vehicle programs and platform impairments and $2.5 billion for reworking its EV supply chain. The company also said it will end a battery joint venture in Canada with South Korean partner LG Energy Solution.”

The new CEO of Stellantis is quoted saying, “We are resetting our product plan and our EV supply chain to reflect much more real customer demand, a shift in regulation, following an initial overestimation of pace of adoption of electrification in the regions.”

I suspect the Trump administration’s Big Beautiful Bill’s killing off the $7500 EV Credit may have affected demand. The credit was scheduled to last through 2032, but who’s noticing…. 

Meanwhile, in Europe. VanHulle observes, “The company [Stellantis] has a ‘multi-energy’ platform strategy in Europe that’s tied to ever-stricter fleet emissions standards and puts gasoline, hybrid and electric drivetrains on the same architecture.” 

More Trump Meddling. Though not mentioned explicitly in VanHulle’s analyses are Trump’s dismantling of U.S. automotive regulations, both clean-air and mpg standards: Trump claims this will reduced purchase prices by at least $1000. He ignores the tradeoffs in auto pollution levels and degraded mpg (i.e., higher fuel costs). And the likelihood of greatly diminished export sales of vehicles built to these new MAGA standards.

The U.S. As Outlier. Julian Torres reports “Trump Virtually Eliminated Emissions Regulations. Here’s What Happens to Your Next Car Now,” CNN Business, February 22, 2026. Torres quotes John Paul MacDuffie, professor of management at the Wharton School of Business (Trump’s alma mater, sorta): “There is no doubt that the U.S. risks becoming an outlier market—building up capabilities for designing and building vehicles that literally do not sell anywhere else in the world. If you talk with auto companies from around the world… they are quite convinced that the transition to electric is inevitable. They figure the U.S. will just lag in that adoption.”

Have you MAGAs been paying attention to this? ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026