So I was led to believe that EVs were doing poorly a few headlines ago, but maybe its specific to Tesla?
The Detroit automaker Monday reported sales of 174,192 cars and trucks for February. The results included an 81% jump in EV sales and roughly 32% uptick in hybrid models. Sales of traditional internal combustion engines also increased, up 7.5% from the same month a year earlier.
+81% EV sales, mostly Mach-E and F150 Lightning. Hybrids are still doing great at +32% growth.
Just rented a Mach E 4X for a week.
Pros: Styling I guess? Range prediction seemed accurate. Blue cruise did a good job.
Cons: The interior, the ride, the regen braking, the fact that you have to turn it on and off, the infotainment, there are buttons everywhere. Blue cruise nags so much there is almost no point to its existence.
Deal breakers: Not having access to superchargers. As a Tesla-haver, I had no idea the true extent of how miserable charging is for people that can’t use superchargers. Ford is now able to use them, but my rental was obviously unequipped.
Is it because Blue Cruise < Super Cruise?
I’ve never used either, so just curious.
There was low supply and waiting lists for both the MachE and Lightning for a while after release. My guess is that production increased on these models and dealers got more inventory. I just checked and my local dealer in a fairly large urban area has both in stock.
Hmmmm…
Mach-E is very, very high in supply.
https://caredge.com/guides/fastest-and-slowest-selling-cars-2024
Ford Mach-e is apparently 362 (!!!) days of supply, or nearly a full year. (Ex: If Ford cuts all of production today, it will take roughly a year before all the Mach-e at dealerships sell out).
I dunno what’s going on exactly. I’ll have to dig into more stats.
That’s interesting, they are making the Mach-E in Mexico where they previously built the Fiesta so the production capacity is there. It is a $50K+ vehicle and electrics are not practical for everyone yet due to infrastructure.
My understanding is that the Mach-E wasn’t designed to be efficiently manufactured. It was quick response to the rising popularity of the Model Y, and the high margins Tesla was getting for the car. Lots of off-the-shelf parts used which may not be the best fit, but were quickly available. I imagine Ford also has quite a few pollution issues with most of its line up being big trucks, so any EVs it puts on the roads means fewer emissions credits they have to buy.
A future refresh would likely cost much less to manufacture increasing Ford’s margin per unit.
I think the YoY comparison is misleading as their EV production was not in full swing last Feb, and now they are probably just filling inventory before they pause production to shift to more of a hybrid mix. It’s the same kind of YoY comparison that led to crazy Tesla valuations as they increased volume rapidly to meet demand. The huge increase is not indicative of a long term trend, since it’s unlikely demand was increasing at the same rate as production.
A more meaningful comparison would be to the average of the last N months (pick N to avoid seasonality).