Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) says it wants to be the number one electric vehicle (EV) company in America. Its aspirations got a setback when it announced third-quarter sales. Sales of its EV flagship, the F-150 Lightning, fell from a meager 6,464 last year to a tiny 3,503, a drop of 46%. Ironically, sales of the gasoline-powered version of the F-150 rose 13.4% to 190,477. Ford hopes to sell tens of thousands of units of the Lightning next year. Based on the quarterly figures, that seems extremely unlikely. (These are America’s 17 favorite pickup trucks.)
[in-text-ad]
Ford said plant downtime and slow demand for the Lightning were the reasons for lackluster sales. Neither is a good sign. Ford should keep open plants building such a critical product. Demand for a vehicle that Ford expects to ride into the EV future should be extremely strong.
[nativounit]
Ford has struggled with EVs in general. It was supposed to hit an EV production rate of 600,000 by the end of this year. That was put off until next year. Ford also said the pace of production for the Lightning would be 150,000 at year-end because of demand. What happened to demand last quarter?
[wallst_email_signup]
The Lightning trouble remains a sign of Ford’s management problems, which, in the past, has caused mistakes about expenses and increases in Lightning prices. A global manufacturer should do better, not only by a modest margin.
[recirclink id=1310305]
In the past two years, Ford’s stock price has retreated 21%, while the S&P 500 is off 3%. If the markets believed Ford’s story about its future, this would not have happened.
Ford Lightning Sales Plunge
© jetcityimage / iStock Editorial via Getty Images
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.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks