Ford Swings for the Fences With New EV Plan

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 14, 6:40AM EDT

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Ford Swings for the Fences With New EV Plan — © gopixa / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) will allow all its dealers to sell electric vehicles.

After years of effort to develop a successful electric vehicle (EV) sales plan and a forecast $30 billion investment, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) has made a decision that could improve its chances of success. EVs will be available at all of its 2,800 dealers. Its earlier Ford Model e EV program required dealers to pay between $500,000 and $1.2 million to prepare their facilities to sell EVs. About 50% of Ford’s dealers signed up.

Ford’s new program gives it a large new advantage. Management said opening 100% of its network means over 90% of Americans will live within 25 miles of a Ford dealership that can sell and service EVs.

Ford’s early efforts at EV sales failed, particularly the sales of its flagship products, the F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E. That has changed recently. Its EV sales rose 64.7% in May to 8,966. Mustang Mach-E sales rose 45.9% in the month to 4,255. Lightning sales rose 91% to 3,260. On a raw number basis, that is well short of Tesla sales, but it shows significant progress.

Ford will still have to contend with challenges to all EV sales. Some people think they are too expensive. Others worry about charging time or about the number of charging stations.

Ford must move on to its next challenge. It must restart its massive efforts to develop, produce, and market EVs, and it will need a much more extensive lineup of models. It has new leverage and a chance to use it.

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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.