Ford Puts German BEV Plant on Half-Time Working as Consumer Demand Slows

Ford of Europe is putting employees of its battery-electric vehicle plant in Germany on half-time as demand for BEVs continues to slow below industry expectations.

Staff building the electric Ford Explorer and Capri at the company’s Cologne factory are being put on a one-week-on, one-week-off work schedule at least until the Christmas break.

Yahoo Finance reports a Ford spokesperson saying, “The significantly lower than expected demand for electric vehicles, specifically in Germany, requires a temporary adjustment of production volumes at the Cologne Electric Vehicle Centre.”

The company will apply for the German government’s furlough scheme to cover workers sent home by a company in financial distress. This allows for job protection with the government paying a percentage of worker salaries.

The local Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper reports a company spokesperson adding in an internal memo: “We are producing more than we can sell.”

As with other automakers, Ford is struggling to sell BEVs in Germany, caught in the twin prongs of the end of government incentives for private buyers and the nation’s flatlining economy which has only seen 0.2% GDP growth in the past five years compared to the Eurozone’s overall growth of 4.6%.

Ford has been cutting jobs at the Cologne site in line with the need for fewer skilled workers to make BEVs versus internal-combustion-engine vehicles with employee numbers falling from 20,000 in 2018 to just 13,000 this summer.