Ford to cut up to 8,000 jobs amid electric vehicle push: Bloomberg

Ford Motor Co. is planning to cut up to 8,000 jobs in the coming weeks amid a company shift to producing more electric vehicles.

Bloomberg News reported on Thursday that the job cuts will affect the company’s Ford Blue unit, which is responsible for producing combustion engine vehicles, and other salaried positions.  

A source told the news outlet that a bulk of the job cuts are likely to affect the company’s U.S. workforce, which employs up to 31,000 salaried workers. 

In a statement to The Hill, a spokesperson said that the company isn’t “commenting on speculation by others about our business.”

“We’ve said lots of times that, in order to deliver on the Ford+ transformation and lead an exciting and disruptive new era of electric and connected vehicles, we’re reshaping our work and modernizing our organization,” the spokesperson continued.

“That’s happening across all of our automotive businesses and the entire company. We’ve laid out clear targets for our cost structure, so that we’re lean and fully competitive with the best in the industry.”

Ford CEO Jim Farley said at a Wolfe Research auto conference earlier this year that cutting jobs is the key to boosting profits for the company.

“We have too many people,” Farley said at the conference. “This management team firmly believes that our ICE and BEV portfolios are under-earning.”

The company recently organized its divisions for conventional gas-engine business and electric vehicles and software in March, saying this new initiative will keep separate operations in-house with their own separate names, leadership structures and profit-and-loss statements.

Ford is planning to cut $3 billion of its current costs by 2026, with Farley saying that he wants the company’s Ford Blue series to transform into “the profit and cash engine for the entire enterprise.”