Ford Miserable EV Sales at 4% of Its Total

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 5, 9:45AM EDT

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) EV sales have dropped to less than 4% of total unit sales.
The Detroit automaker is grasping for an EV future that may never arrive.

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Ford Miserable EV Sales at 4% of Its Total — © 2024 Getty Images / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Just days after Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) said it would completely change the way it makes electric vehicles (EVs), it reported its August and year-to-date unit sales. EV sales dropped almost 6% to less than 4% of total unit sales. For the first eight months of the year, EV sales totaled 57,888, against a company total of 1,492,905. It is an astonishingly low EV figure for a company that has invested tens of billions of dollars into the sector and once said it would have an EV annual production run rate well into the hundreds of thousands of units.

Ford has just introduced what it called its “Universal EV Platform.” The day of the announcement, its stock fell on less than normal volume. The new plan is to get an MSRP of less than $30,000 for a single model—a mid-sized electric pickup. The investment for this advancement in manufacturing will be $5 billion, just to get one new model out the door. Ford expects there to be others.

Ford’s EV failure can be illustrated by its two flagship EV models. Its F-150 Lightning carries the name of the bestselling vehicle in America. The Mustang Mach-E is an EV crossover. For some reason, it is named after Ford’s iconic sports car, the Mustang, which was first sold in 1964.

Ford’s Future

The reality of Ford’s present and future is that it is a fossil-fuel car company in a fossil-fuel vehicle world. While it will lose about $5 billion in its EV efforts this year, its gasoline-powered vehicles are very profitable. Ford is reaching toward an EV future that may never arrive.

Over the past five years, its stock is up 69%, compared to the S&P 500’s 90% gain. However, at just under $12, it is down from $24, where it traded in early 2022. At that point, Ford had made a case to the market that its huge EV investment would make it competitive with market leader Tesla. According to CarEdge, in the first quarter of this year, Tesla had a U.S. EV market share of 44%. GM’s was 11%. At just below 8%, Ford was tied with Hyundai/Kia. Ford’s market share is below what it was in the second half of 2022.

Ford is a gasoline-powered car company.

Ford Falls Far Behind Tesla and GM in Software

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.