Last year, Ford Motor Company announced plans to spend $1.8 billion to transform its Oakville, Ontario assembly plant into an electric vehicle manufacturing hub.

Now, it’s ditching those plans to instead focus on its gas-powered Super Duty trucks, a key part of its Ford Pro business the Detroit Free Press reports made $3 billion during the first quarter of 2024 and is leading the way to the company’s biggest earnings year ever.

In an announcement last month, Ford said the decision to ditch the EV transition in Ontario means it can add an initial capacity for 100,000 F-Series Super Duty trucks, though it “remains committed to developing a growing and profitable electric vehicle business.”

“Super Duty is a vital tool for businesses and people around the world and, even with our Kentucky Truck Plant and Ohio Assembly Plant running flat out, we can’t meet the demand. This move benefits our customers and supercharges our Ford Pro commercial business,” Jim Farley, Ford president and CEO, said in a news release cited by the Free Press. “At the same time, we look forward to introducing three-row electric utility vehicles, leveraging our experience in three-row utility vehicles and our learnings as America’s No. 2 electric vehicle brand to deliver fantastic, profitable vehicles.”

Initially, Ford did not plan to begin producing EVs in Ontario until 2027, resulting in layoffs, but the new plans means unionized workers there will be back to work in 2026, MotorTrend reports.

“This new retooling plan for the Oakville plant addresses our union’s concerns with Ford Motor Company’s decision to delay new vehicle production for a period that was too long, too disruptive and too harmful to accept,” Unifor National President Lana Payne said in a statement. “Working with our local unions and company executives, we came to an agreement that will not only see our members back to work sooner, it protects our members’ jobs well into the future.”

Had Ford stayed with plans to build EVs in Ontario, union members would have went three years without work, while the shift to Super Duty trucks will also result in $500 million more in investment there, increased engine production volumes at its Windsor, Ontario plant, and overtime for workers at the company’s component plants in Ohio and Michigan.

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“Finding a solution to support our members was multi-layered and extensive,” said Local 707 Oakville Plant Chairperson Marc Brennan. “This shift in direction reaffirms Ford Motor Company’s commitment to our members.”

The decision to shift production in Ontario coincides with the company’s recent move to shave about $1 billion off its planned $3.5 billion BlueOval Battery Park near Marshall, Mich., which slashed projected jobs from 2,500 to 1,700 and prompted the state to cut more than $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies for the project by 60%.

Last year, Ford lost $4.7 billion on its EV business, and the trend has continued this year.

Ford isn’t the only EV manufacturer taking a step back.

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LG Energy Solution also recently announced it is “adjusting the speed of overall investment” with General Motors in a Michigan EV battery plant as demand wanes, while other Korean companies including Samsung SDI, SK On, are taking action to address the “new crisis,” as well.

GM CEO Mary Barra said in mid-July the company won’t meet its previously touted goal of selling one million EVs next year, citing a slowdown in sales, CNBC reports.

“We won’t get to a million just because the market is not developing, but it will get there,” she said. “We’re going to be guided by the customer.”

Those customers “are just not buying EVs the way they thought they would,” Tim Nash, auto expert and director of the McNair Center, recently told WWMT.

An underwhelming 7% of vehicles sold in the U.S. last year were electric, and that figure is now at “an annualized rate of 6.8%, so that is a decline in electric vehicles overall,” Nash said.

That’s expected to continue, at least in the short term, according to analysts who told Reuters “EV makers still face a bumpy road ahead.”

“We’re expecting this period of time to have bumps along the way for the next few years as the transition goes from early adopters to mainstream buyers and we’re going to see this happen for a long time,” Sam Fiorani, vice president at AutoForecast Solutions, told the news wire. “Some quarters will be up, some quarters will be down, but all in all, it won’t be as strong a growth as we saw over the last few years.”