Ford Crushes Customers With EV Price Increase

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 27, 8:50AM EDT

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Ford Crushes Customers With EV Price Increase — © gopixa / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Ford increased the price of its all new F-150 Lightning recently. The increase across the model line averaged about $7,000. Ford said it needed this increase because of the rising costs of material needed to build EVs, particularly their batteries. What Ford also did was jeopardize the possibility that the Lightning could storm the pickup SUV market and position itself as the best selling vehicle in the market.

Ford’s additional plans to raise EV prices will hurt the sales of one of its most successful new products. The price of the Mustang Mach-E will jump between $3,000 and $8,000, according to a CNN analysis. The Ford public relations team did what they often do without shame. They buried the information in a press release that included the new colors that will be available in the 2023 model year. Ford management has clearly not put a check on this PR practice.
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At the very end of the Mustang Mach-E release was a description of the price changes. “Ford is adjusting the MSRP on the Mustang Mach-E due to significant material cost increases, continued strain on key supply chains, and rapidly evolving market conditions, and will continue to monitor pricing across the model year.” It then listed the new prices.

The method of the announcement aside, the price increase will dent the overwhelming demand for the EV and help its competition This includes the Tesla Model Y, which has already been on the market for two and a half years. It has been highly popular among EV customers.

Ford is stuck in the vice of car price and demand. Keep prices low, and a model can lose money but sell well. Increase prices and undermine demand. Ford is not in an isolated situation. But, since it is in the critical stage of its EV launch, it is particularly vulnerable to the consequences of sharp price increases.

Ford wants to become the leader in the global EV market, as is the case with virtually every large manufacturer in the world. It has just made reaching that goal much more difficult. .
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.