Ford Motor Co. is pivoting away from its once-ambitious electric vehicle plans amid financial losses and waning consumer demand for the vehicles in lieu of investment in more efficient gasoline-engines and hybrid EVs, the company said Monday.
The Detroit automaker, which has poured billions of dollars into electrification along with most of its industry peers, said it will no longer make the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, instead opting for an extended range version of the vehicle.
Ford will also introduce some manufacturing changes; its Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center — part of the BlueOval City campus and once the future of Ford’s EVs and batteries — is being renamed the Tennessee Truck Plant and will produce new affordable gas-powered trucks instead. Ford’s Ohio Assembly Plant will produce a new gas and hybrid van.
The company has lost $13 billion on EVs since 2023 and said it expects to take a $19.5 billion hit largely in the fourth quarter due to the EV business.
“This is a customer-driven shift to create a stronger, more resilient and more profitable Ford,” CEO Jim Farley said in a statement. “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.”
Ford said it now expects half of its global volume will be hybrids, extended-range EVs — which also incorporate a gasoline-powered engine — and full EVs by 2030, up from 17% this year.
“Ford’s elimination of the electric F-150 Lightning is not much of a surprise after the truck failed to come close to filling the plant’s capacity. Ford’s choice to convert an existing gas-powered truck to accept the electric drivetrain helped reduce their upfront costs which, in hindsight, was the right move,” Sam Fiorani, vice president at AutoForecast Solutions, told The Associated Press.
“For months, the future of Blue Oval City has been in question and this announcement locks in the direction of this large plant,” Fiorani added. “Adding an affordable vehicle to the Ford lineup fills a glaring gap in the market.”
Several other automakers have made changes to their electrified product plans in recent years as consumer demand for EVs in the U.S. hasn’t quite met expectations.
EVs accounted for about 8% of new vehicles sales in the U.S. last year, but factors such as cost and charging infrastructure remain concerns for mainstream buyers.
The average transaction price for a new EV last month was $58,638, compared with $49,814 for a new vehicle overall, according to auto buying resource Kelley Blue Book.
Meanwhile, while public charging availability has improved, the industry has relied on home charging as a selling point for prospective buyers, and not everyone has access to charging at-home.
Since taking office for a second time, President Donald Trump has drastically shifted U.S. policy away from EVs, calling EV-friendly policy set under former President Joe Biden a “mandate.”
Though Biden-era policies — including generous tax incentives for consumers, and tailpipe and fuel economy rules for automakers — encouraged EV adoption, no policies required the industry to sell or Americans to buy EVs. Biden targeted half of new vehicle sales in the U.S. to be electric by 2030.
The Trump administration has since slashed that target, eliminated EV tax credits and proposed weakening the emissions and gas mileage rules.
“The one-two punch of the public’s slow EV adoption and the Trump administration’s softer stance on fuel economy and emissions has encouraged every automaker to re-think their current direction,” Fiorani added. “Electric vehicles are still the future, but the transition to EVs was always going to take longer than automakers have been promising the public.”
On a recent December day, Mark Latino and a handful of his workers spun sheets of vinyl into tinsel for Christmas tree branches. They worked on a custom-made machine that’s nearly a century old, churning out strands of bright silver tinsel along its 35-foot (10-meter) length.
Latino is the CEO of Lee Display, a Fairfield, California-based company that his great-grandfather founded in 1902. Back then, it specialized in handmade velvet and silk flowers for hats. Now, it’s one of the only companies in the United States that still makes artificial Christmas trees, producing around 10,000 each year.
Tariffs and trees
Tariffs shone a twinkling light this year on fake Christmas trees — and the extent to which America depends on other countries for its plastic fir trees.
Prices for fake trees rose 10% to 15% this year due to the new import taxes, according to the American Christmas Tree Association, a trade group. Tree sellers cut their orders and paid higher tariffs for the stock they brought in.
Despite those issues, tree companies say they aren’t likely to shift large-scale production back to the U.S. after decades in Asia. Fake trees are labor-intensive and require holiday lights and other components the U.S. doesn’t make, said Chris Butler, CEO of the National Tree Co., which sells more than 1 million artificial trees each year.
Americans are also very price-sensitive when it comes to holiday décor, Butler said.
“Putting a ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ sticker on the box won’t do any good if it’s twice as expensive,” Butler said. “If it’s 20% more expensive, it won’t sell.”
Americans prefer fake trees
About 80% of the U.S. residents who put up a Christmas tree this year planned to use a fake one, according to the American Christmas Tree Association. That percentage has been unchanged for at least 15 years.
Mac Harman, the founder and CEO of Balsam Brands, which sells hundreds of thousands of Balsam Hill trees each year, said Americans like to set up their trees on Thanksgiving and leave them up for weeks, which dries out fresh-cut trees. Others prefer fake trees because they’re allergic to the mold spores on real trees, he said.
Americans also like convenience; 80% of the fake trees sold each year have the lights already strung on them, Butler said.
That preference is one reason artificial tree production shifted away from the U.S., first to Thailand in the early 1990s and to China about a decade later. Winding lights around the branches is time-consuming and tedious, Harman said.
“Where are we going to get 15,000 people in America who want to string lights on Christmas trees?” Harman said.
Labor-intensive work
It takes an hour or two to make an artificial Christmas tree, from molding and cutting the needles to tying branches together and attaching the lights, Butler said. Workers in China, where 90% of fake trees are made, are paid $1.50 to $2 per hour, he said.
Harman said the workers who wrap the lights on Balsam Hill’s trees are so efficient “it’s like watching an Olympian.”
One of Balsam Brands’ Chinese partners employs 15,000 to 20,000 people; another in Indonesia has up to 10,000, he said. Many are seasonal workers, since orders for Christmas décor slow down between October and February.
Balsam Brands, which is based in Redwood City, California, studied whether it could make faux trees in Ohio during the first Trump administration, when President Donald Trump threatened -– but eventually delayed –- tariffs on imported Christmas décor, Harman said.
The company hired consultants and considered automating some work. But it concluded a tree that currently sells for $800 would cost $3,000 if it was made in the U.S. Harman said Balsam couldn’t even find a U.S. company to make the pair of gloves it includes in each box for fluffing out branches.
American-made trees
Lee Display employs three or four people for most of the year, adding more during the holiday rush to help with installations and displays. About half its business is making custom displays for companies such as Macy’s, while the other half is selling directly to consumers.
Latino said he likes that he can produce an order quickly instead of waiting for it to ship from overseas.
“You have more control over it. I like to think that everything here is either my fault or my mistake or my careful planning and skill,” he said.
The tariffs still affected Lee Display. Latino’s son James, who leads business development and marketing, said the company didn’t import lights or decorations from China this year and relied on items it already had in stock. It’s getting low on lights, so next year it will have to pay more to import them, he said.
Responding to tariffs
Some artificial tree companies are branching out so they’re less reliant on China. National Tree Co., which is based in Cranford, New Jersey, moved some manufacturing to Cambodia in 2024, and could source all its trees from outside China by next year if it wanted to, Butler said.
But diversifying their suppliers didn’t make those companies immune from the impact of tariffs either. In April, the Trump administration threatened a 49% tariff against products from Cambodia. That rate was eventually reduced to 19%. Tariffs on artificial trees from China also bounced around but now average 20%, according to the American Christmas Tree Association.
Butler said his company imported fewer trees this year and also raised prices by 10%. He said he used a lot of the money to offer customer discounts since demand was weak because of consumer worries about the economy.
“It’s a discretionary item. People say, ‘I can wait one more year,’” Butler said.
Balsam Brands cut its workforce by 10%, canceled travel, froze raises and even stopped serving lunch in the office once a week to absorb the impact of tariffs, Harman said. It also raised tree prices by 10%.
Harman said his sales are down 5% to 10% this year in the U.S. but up 10% or more in Germany, Australia, Canada and France. That tells him tariffs have decreased U.S. demand.
“If a merry Christmas is measured in how many decorations people put up, by that measure it’s going to be a slightly less merry Christmas,” he said.
The White House is launching what it calls the United States Tech Force to recruit around a thousand tech specialists to work with the government on artificial intelligence and other modernization programs. The initiative aims to place tech workers in two-year stints at government agencies, with "private sector partners" like OpenAI, Oracle, Apple and Dell allowing employees to take leaves of absence to join the program. As Nextgov notes, however, the hiring push comes after some tech-focused government sectors experienced layoffs earlier this year.
Digital violence is no longer a fringe issue in the U.S. It’s infiltrating social media, email, and messaging platforms, impacting both teens and adults. While it leaves no visible scars, the consequences can be just as severe - triggering anxiety, fear, isolation, and even financial harm that’s hard to undo.
Common forms of digital violence
One of the most widespread is online harassment, which ranges from repeated insults to coordinated campaigns designed to humiliate or intimidate someone. Then there’s doxxing - a growing practice of publishing personal information such as home address, phone number, or workplace with the intent to incite threats or real-world attacks. Another tactic is identity theft, where perpetrators create fake profiles or hack accounts to send messages, solicit money, or damage the victim’s reputation.
The rise of digital extortion
Particularly alarming is the surge in extortion involving intimate images, whether real or manipulated. The advent of artificial intelligence has amplified the threat through deepfakes - highly convincing fake content that can be weaponized for blackmail or coercion.
How to protect yourself
There’s no foolproof defense, but prevention is possible. Experts advise tightening privacy settings on social platforms, using strong and unique passwords, enabling two-factor authentication, and treating unexpected links or messages with skepticism - even if they appear to come from trusted contacts. Keeping evidence - screenshots, emails, URLs - is also critical for reporting abuse.
A fast-evolving threat
Digital violence is advancing as quickly as technology itself. Recognizing it and knowing how to respond has become an essential self-defense skill in a world where the virtual and the real are increasingly intertwined.
Google has begun a limited rollout of NotebookLM integration with its Gemini chatbot, allowing users to attach curated research notebooks directly into AI conversations for the first time. The feature, spotted by tech observers over the weekend and confirmed by multiple outlets on December 14 and 15, represents a step toward combining Gemini's conversational AI with NotebookLM's source-grounded research capabilities.
The integration appears through a new NotebookLM button in Gemini's web attachment menu, enabling users to select notebooks and instruct the AI to operate exclusively from those sources. According to Alexey Shabanov of TestingCatalog, who first reported the feature on December 13, access remains highly restricted, with only one of his five accounts showing the option. Android Authority confirmed the feature is absent even on paid Gemini Advanced accounts for many users.
Users who gain access can attach multiple notebooks and switch between Gemini's reasoning interface and the full NotebookLM workspace via a Sources button. The integration also works with Gemini Gems, allowing custom AI assistants to reference notebook collections.
The move addresses what Google describes as a major bottleneck: transferring carefully curated sources into an AI assistant without losing structure or citations. NotebookLM, which launched in 2023, was designed for multi-document analysis with mandatory source attribution, and research has shown it produces hallucinations at roughly one-third the rate of standard Gemini or ChatGPT when handling document-based queries.
By connecting the tools, Google enables users to leverage Gemini's latest reasoning models while maintaining the citation-backed workflow that has made NotebookLM popular among researchers, journalists, and students. The feature arrives as Microsoft deepens Copilot's integration with OneNote and Loop, and OpenAI's ChatGPT expands multi-file upload capabilities through its Projects feature.