This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission.
Tesla, you may have heard, is going through a rough patch, and the company represents a large enough share of U.S. electric vehicle sales that its problems could lead to a down year for the entire market.
But that hasn’t happened—at least not yet—partly because several other brands’ EV sales have risen to take the sting out of Tesla’s decline.
Ford is looking especially good, with year-to-date sales through April of 28,252 EVs, an increase of 97% from the same period last year. That makes Ford the country’s second-leading EV brand, although Tesla still outsells Ford’s EVs at a rate of about seven to one.
Ford’s shift to an electric future is far from a smooth ride. The company’s EV division posted a $1.3 billion loss in the first quarter, and has a long way to go before this part of the business is profitable. It’s a familiar situation for legacy automakers who must invest billions of dollars for research and development and to retool factories and sometimes need years to see an adequate return on those investments.
Ford’s EV sales surge is being led by the Mustang Mach-E, a crossover SUV, of which 14,482 were sold, an increase of 107%, as of April, compared to the prior-year period. The F-150 Lightning pickup also gained momentum with sales of 9,833, an increase of 75%. Ford’s other EV, the E-Transit van, had sales of 3,927, an increase of 128%.
A lot of the company’s sales gains can be attributed to a price cut for the Mach-E that Ford announced in February. After cuts of $3,100 to $8,100, the model’s prices range from $39,895 to $57,395. (The Mach-E is not eligible for the federal tax credit of up to $7,500 because the model is assembled at a plant in Mexico.)
“The bottom line is that we’re more competitive and doing well in the marketplace,” said John Lawler, Ford’s chief financial officer, speaking about EV sales in an April 24 conference call with analysts.
Ford also is emphasizing gas-electric hybrids as an option for customers. The company sold 56,418 hybrid vehicles as of April, an increase of 47%.
Still, Ford has pushed back some timetables related to EV rollouts and production. For example, Ford said last month that it is delaying the market launch of a planned three-row electric SUV from 2025 to 2027. The model is set to be assembled at a plant in Oakville, Ontario.
To get a better sense of what’s happening with Ford’s EV sales, I spoke with Camron Savarani, general manager of Walnut Creek Ford in the East Bay area of greater San Francisco. His store is one of Ford’s best in the country for EVs, with electric models making up about half of sales.
He has observed the way EV sales gain a self-perpetuating momentum.
“It’s really just a factor of time as more people decide that they’re ready” to buy an EV, he said. “There continues to be more charging infrastructure; more people have friends and family members driving them; and that just continues to increase the growth rate.”
California has the highest EV market share in the country due to consumer preferences and a history of state laws that support EVs. His store’s experience may give a sense of what it will be like when other regions reach a similar level.
“It becomes less novel and less complicated or scary,” he said.
The Mach-E is his top model, and the price cut helped to boost sales, he said.
EV prices have fallen across brands, with an average transaction price of $54,021 in March, down about 10% from a year ago, according to Kelley Blue Book, a website for auto buyers. But even with the decrease, EV are more expensive than the average for all light vehicles, which was $47,218 in March, down 1% from a year ago.
Savarani views the prices of EVs as one of the main factors that hinder the growth of sales. This underscores why the Mach-E price cut was so important.
“As we continue to have EVs that are more and more affordable, that’s a huge step in the right direction,” he said.
EV sales in the United States rose 2.6% in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of the prior year, but they were down 15.2% compared to the fourth quarter of the prior year, according to Kelley Blue Book.
For the overall vehicle market, it’s normal for first quarter sales to be the lowest of the year and fall behind fourth-quarter sales. But this hasn’t been the case for EVs, sales of which have grown every quarter since mid-2020.
The main reason for the sluggish 2024 growth was that Tesla, the market leader for EVs, posted a 13% decrease in sales for the quarter.
Since Tesla sells about half of the EVs in the country, its struggles reverberate across the market. Tesla has faced an array of challenges, including a lackluster rollout for the Cybertruck and few substantial updates for its top sellers, the Model Y and Model 3.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that federal prosecutors are looking at whether Tesla committed fraud by misleading investors and consumers about the effectiveness of its vehicles’ self-driving systems. This would be one more in a bunch of legal and regulatory challenges for the company.
Sean Tucker, a senior editor at Kelley Blue Book, said EV sales remain strong despite challenges like those being experienced by Tesla. His company continues to project that EV sales will grow this year to reach 10% of overall new car sales, which would be up from 7.6% in 2023.
“Slow growth is still growth,” he said. “We saw exponential growth for a couple of years in the EV market and everybody got very used to that, and now we saw one quarter of relatively slow growth, and we’re getting all of these panic stories: ‘Oh my God, the rush is over.’”
He is referring to some of the media coverage of EV sales, which sometimes highlight any signs that the shift to clean transportation is sputtering.
But the reality is that sales continue to rise at the same time that some automakers struggle to make a profit on EVs.
While I’ve focused on Ford, it’s far from alone among brands that have a combination of at least 5,000 EVs sold and substantial percentage increases in sales. The others include BMW, Cadillac, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and Rivian.
Looking at the numbers, I don’t see an EV market that is collapsing.
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