• Mark Fields joined Ford in 1989 and was the company’s CEO from 2014 to 2017.
• Fields said US automakers “went full bore” into making EVs without considering consumer demand.
• “This is clearly an issue where the market didn’t develop the way automakers thought,” Fields said.

Former Ford CEO Mark Fields said on Tuesday that US automakers overestimated consumer demand when they started ramping up production of electric vehicles.

“Over the last couple of years, the automakers really went full bore in putting in capacity for EVs,” Fields, 64, told CNBC’s “Power Lunch.”

“They really didn’t have a good discussion on the consumer, in terms of what it was going to take to get the consumer to buy these EV products,” Fields said.

Representatives for Fields did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Fields started his career at Ford in 1989 after graduating with an MBA from Harvard Business School. He held a variety of senior leadership positions at Ford, and was the company’s chief operating officer from 2012 to 2014 and its CEO from 2014 to 2017.

Some of the big bets automakers made on EVs have come undone “over the last 18 months or so,” Fields told CNBC.

General Motors said in an exchange filing on Tuesday that it was taking a $1.6 billion charge “based on a planned strategic realignment of our EV capacity and manufacturing footprint to consumer demand.”

The company said it expected the “adoption rate of EVs to slow” after the Trump administration eliminated federal EV incentives.

Under the Biden administration, EV buyers were entitled to a $7,500 consumer tax credit if they bought a new EV and a $4,000 consumer tax credit for a used EV. Both schemes expired on September 30.

“This is clearly an issue where the market didn’t develop the way automakers thought. A lot of them, particularly in GM’s case, boasted that they had the full lineup of EVs,” Fields said on Tuesday.

“And what was an advantage, at least they thought at the time, has now probably turned into a bit of an albatross as the market take-up of EVs is going to be lower, at least in the near to medium term, than they plan for,” he continued.

Auto chiefs have expressed mixed views on whether the rollback of federal EV incentives would hurt the US EV market.

Ford’s current CEO, Jim Farley, said last month that the expiry of federal EV incentives could halve US EV sales.

“I think it’s going to be a vibrant industry, but it’s going to be smaller, way smaller than we thought,” Farley said on September 30.

Former Tesla president Jon McNeill, however, thought otherwise. McNeill said in an interview with CNBC on October 2 that the market can continue to “grow without subsidies.”

“In Europe, France and Germany in particular rolled subsidies off a couple of years ago, and what happened after that, surprisingly, was the market continued to grow,” McNeill said.

“That’s largely because the models continue to roll out from other OEMs, much like they have here,” McNeill added, using the acronym for original equipment manufacturers.

• Howard Schultz said he was worried about AI and the speed at which it is progressing.
• The former Starbucks CEO drew parallels to social media, saying regulation lagged behind.
• He urged Big Tech leaders to remember that they have a moral responsibility that should not be forgotten.

Howard Schultz said he’s — capital W — Worried about AI.

Speaking in an interview with LinkedIn’s editor in chief, Daniel Roth, the former Starbucks CEO brought up the topic of AI, saying it was something he wanted to talk about.

He drew parallels between the speed at which social media progressed, how regulation around social media lagged behind, and warned that AI is on the same trajectory.

“If we look back on the last 10, 15 years on social media, I think we’d be hard pressed to say that the velocity and the impact and the adverse effect of social media is equal to, or more than, the benefits that have occurred,” he said. “And one of the reasons is the fact that there wasn’t regulation, and the regulation that has come is too late.”

He said AI is progressing so fast and “the regulators are so far behind, they don’t even know what the questions are because of the speed of this thing.”

Schultz said as well that he does support AI adoption, but is voicing his concerns “as a private citizen.”

“I worry, with a big W, about the impact this could have, that could be adverse,” he said to Roth.

He then urged the leaders of Big Tech companies, like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman, and Bill Gates, to “come together and understand collectively” that they have a moral responsibility that should not be forgotten in the pursuit of winning.

Schultz was the company’s CEO from 1987 to 2000 and returned in 2008 to revive the chain after the financial crisis. He also briefly served as the interim CEO from 2022 to 2023. He now runs a philanthropic organization, the Schultz Family Foundation.

Starbucks has been investing in its people, rather than AI and automation, to boost its performance, unlike chains such as Chipotle and Wendy’s.

However, in June, it partnered with OpenAI to develop an AI-powered tool, Green Dot Assist, which acts as a virtual assistant for its baristas.

Schultz’s interview with LinkedIn comes less than a month after Starbucks announced that it would be closing more than 100 locations across North America and laying off 900 non-retail staff.

Representatives for Starbucks and the Schultz Family Foundation did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.