Ford Gets Outsold By GM In EV Market As The Two Duke It Out For No. 2 Spot

By Julianne Geiger - Apr 04, 2023

GM outsold Ford when it comes to electric vehicles by almost two-to-one in the first quarter of 2023 as production troubles plagued the former No. 2 EV seller behind Tesla.

Ford sold 10,866 EVs in Q1 this year. While that’s up 41% from Q1 2022, it’s about 50% behind GM’s sales of 20,670 EVs. Ford’s lackluster EV performance can be attributed mostly to a factory outage in its Mexico plant that makes its Mustang Mach-E as it attempts to double the factory’s capacity, as well as five weeks of lost production with its F-150 Lightning EV due to a recall stemming from a battery fire issue.

Despite Ford’s plan to spend $50 billion on its EV lineup acro the next three years, it predicts it will lose $3 billion on EV models in 2023. That’s even with jacking up the price of their F150 by 50% in about a year, from $40,000 last January to $60,000 today.

Ford says its demand for the Lightning isn’t the issue—it’s limited in how many it can produce. But that may change after GM’s EV equivalent, the Silverado EV, is introduced—that EV isn’t even available yet.

Ford said on Tuesday that it was adding a third shift of workers to its Kansas City factory to produce its E-Transit van.

Consumer Reports recently predicted that automakers that fail to meet the growing demand for EVs would gradually lose market share as they struggle to find buyers for ICE vehicles. The report referenced what it considered to be pent-up demand for EVs over the next few years, which will eventually displace demand for ICE vehicles. A Consumer Reports survey pointed to a 350% increase in EV demand between 2020 and 2022 but noted that supply will not be able to keep up with demand until 2030.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com