What the heck is Ford thinking?

Or perhaps a better question is: What does Ford know about our automobile future that the rest of us don’t?

And the answer is: Buckle up, because the fix is in for battery-powered vehicles, and that means the century-old American love affair with the gasoline-powered automobile is headed for heartbreak.

Oh, and you’ll be less free because of it. More on that in a moment.

At issue is a jaw-slackening $9.2 billion loan that Ford is taking out from Joe Biden’s Department of Energy, which the iconic automaker will use to finance electric-vehicle battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky.

We’re not exactly sure where our broke federal government got all this money to throw around. Nor are we able to lay our finger upon that article of the Constitution that gives Scranton Joe Biden the authority to loan-shark the money of his constituents in pursuance of a ruinous and idiotic “green” energy agenda. Nor do we have any idea why an agency that was founded by Jimmy Carter in 1977 to oversee our national energy policy and manage the development of the nation’s nuclear power and nuclear weapons is meddling in the transportation business.

But all that stuff is neither here nor there. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “The commitment adds to a clean-energy spending spree that has been accelerated by last year’s climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which gave the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office more firepower to dole out money to critical infrastructure projects.”

Not surprisingly, this is the biggest “investment” in the loan program’s checkered history, which spans nearly 20 years. And it could well end up being the worst if the American people continue to jam on the brakes in resistance to our headlong march toward EV nirvana.

But in terms of bad loans, let’s just say the bar has been set pretty low. Indeed, as our fellow skeptics from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page note, “This is the same shop that under Barack Obama doled out billions to Solyndra, Fisker Automotive, and A123 Systems, among other green businesses that went bust.”

Nothing says “left-wing government graft” like Solyndra.

Ultimately, the future of the American automobile will hinge on whether the other 49 states will follow the lead of Gavin Newsom’s California, whose Air Resources Board voted last August to phase out sales of gas-powered cars in the state by 2035.

Knock yourselves out, we said at the time, given the state’s already notoriously overburdened electrical grid, and given that experts say significant investments in grid infrastructure will need to happen to make Cali’s pipe dream a reality.

But since that time, plenty of other lemming-states have fallen in line behind the one that brought us tent cities, poop patrols, and free shoplifting.

“Why would these other states surrender their sovereignty like that?” asked one unionized Ford employee from the Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan.

We wish we had an answer. Unfortunately, the writing may be on the wall. All the major car manufacturers are investing heavily in EVs, even though the American people have made it clear that they don’t want them.

Don’t want their ungodly expense. Don’t want their limited range. Don’t want their dependence on an unreliable energy grid. Don’t want their subordinance to the whims of Big Government.

EVs certainly are too expensive — which is why the federal government insists on taking your money to artificially prop them up. As the Journal’s editors note: “The Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) $7,500 consumer tax credits are merely a down payment.” They aren’t kidding. As the Mercatus Center’s Christine McDaniel points out Biden’s battery production tax credit will cost up to $152.8 billion before it’s done.

No matter. Joe Biden has already declared war on gas cars. And in doing so, he’s declared war on our fundamental freedom to move around as we please.

“Remember when Ford’s slogan was ‘Quality is Job One’?” asked the editors of The Wall Street Journal. “Those were the days. Now pleasing the government is job one as the Detroit auto maker shovels up taxpayer subsidies to fuel its government-mandated electric-vehicle transition.”

As the editors continue: “Ford isn’t in financial danger now, but its EV investments are squeezing profits and forcing layoffs. The auto maker last year lost $3 billion on EV sales. In the first three months of this year, its EVs posted a negative 102% operating margin, meaning losses exceeded sales revenue.”

We can practically hear the Ford execs now: Keep ‘em coming, boys! We’re losing money with every EV we produce, but we’ll make it up on volume!

Updated with some related examples of how the government meddles with the free market.