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Ford didn’t have the soaring growth in EV sales in the 3rd quarter as it did earlier in the year, but it did still see 12% growth in EV (full electric vehicle) sales last quarter.
The issue is that its best selling EV, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, had a decent quarter last year in Q3 (14,842 sales) and didn’t improve on that this year in Q3, and in fact shrunk a little (down 10% to 13,392 sales). With that sales hit, there was no chance at a 50% growth quarter even with the other EV models doing very well.
On the plus side, the Ford F-150 Lightning grew 104.5% from 3,503 sales to 7,162 sales. That’s decent sales in line with the truck’s sales in the first half of the year, but its year-to-date total of 22,807 is still solidly behind the Tesla Cybertruck’s ~27,000 sales this year. Will we see these models compete on volume terms in the future? Or is the Cybertruck going to run away with it once production ramps up? Or, giving a nod to those more bearish on the Cybertruck, could the F-150 Lightning steadily climb and surpass the Cybertruck? We shall see.
Ford’s other electric model, the E-Transit, had a 13% increase in sales, going from 2,617 to 2,955 year over year in the 3rd quarter.
The Mustang Mach-E is still the electric flag bearer for Ford — and, in my opinion, the best looking EV on the market — and has 35,626 sales in 2024 through the first three quarters. However, even with another 15,000 sales in the 4th quarter, it would just barely surpass 50,000 sales. And, all combined, Ford’s EV sales are at 67,689 in the first three quarters of the year, perhaps reaching 90,000 or 100,000 by the end of the year. As I reported recently, young NIO and Xpeng are on track for more than 250,000 sales a year extrapolating from September figures. But, hey, that’s different territory — the Chinese auto market is much further along with EVs than the US, and most of that comes down to federal policy. More than 50% of vehicle sales in China are now plugin vehicles — and, as much as we can and should credit companies like BYD, Xpeng, and NIO for making that happen, we have to be honest and note that the biggest factor supporting that EV market is strong government policies.
Getting back to Ford, the company’s 67,689 sales through the first three quarters of 2024 are a 45% increase over the 46,671 sales of the first three quarters of 2023. We celebrated Tesla achieving ~50% annual increases in sales when it was at that stage, and I think it’s still worth celebrating Ford’s ~50% increase in sales year over year. However, given that the 3rd quarter had only a 12% increase in sales, we need to see something change for Ford to keep that better pace up. The company needs more EV models — an approach that has worked very well for Mercedes and BMW — and needs to keep backing and promoting the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning while working to cut their prices. Given changes in narrative this year from Ford, I’m skeptical about Ford strongly continuing down this path in the near to mid-term future. But I do think Ford is still striving to be a leader in the EV market. On that matter, you can see how Ford compares to its competitors in the US EV market in the following reports from the second quarter (third quarter reports coming soon):
Oh, to close, Ford’s overall sales were up 1% and its retail sales were up 4% in the 3rd quarter. So, compared to that, 12% EV growth is still significantly better. The EV market is still pulling the overall auto market forward.
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