Is it realistically imaginable that Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) could ever sell more vehicles worldwide than Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) does? It’s a stretch, but winning that race may not be critical to the electric car company. The real issue will be which manufacturer sells more electric and autonomous cars a year. That year probably starts in 2023 or 2024.
Ford’s vehicle sales dwarfed Tesla’s last year. (Tesla’s calls its figure “deliveries.”) Ford’s figure was 2.41 million in 2019. Tesla’s was only 112,000. That is a 6.6 to 1.0 ratio, a spread that is impossibly large for Tesla to close.
Tesla’s critical advantage is that Ford is not even in the fully electric car business, at least on a commercial basis. As a matter of fact, Ford’s goal is to have only a third of its total sales be fully electric vehicles by 2030. Its new Mustang Mach-E compact crossover is a start, but an early part of a slow one.
Tesla’s sales in 2019 rose about 50% from the year before. It cannot grow at that pace indefinitely. It is within the realm of possibility that it could sell a million cars in 2030. There is certainly a case to be made that electric vehicle sales worldwide will be well into the millions by then.
Ford and Tesla have a similar challenge over the next several years. Every major car manufacturer, and a number of small ones, will be heavily in the electric car business by the end of the decade. At that point, the competition will become one of market share in a group that could number into the dozens of companies.
The number of cars Ford and Tesla sold this year, or will sell next, really won’t be the important measure as time passes.
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