Ford Sold 183,000 Vehicles Last Month, Few EVs

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Sep 9, 7:27AM EDT · Published Sep 7, 8:36AM EDT

Ford Sold 183,000 Vehicles Last Month, Few EVs — © 2013 Ford F-250 Super Duty Lariat 6.7 Power Stroke B20 (BY 2.0) by Michel Curi

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) had a good month in August, but electric vehicle (EV) sales failed to impress.
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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) had a good month in August. In the United States, the number two U.S. automaker sold 183,985 vehicles. That was up 13.5% from the same month a year ago, although the electric vehicle (EV) sales were up sharply on a percentage basis, on a raw number basis, the figure was less than modest, It is a sign of how badly Ford’s foray into EVs has gone.

Ford’s EV unit sales were only 8,944, up 29.8%, In a sign of customer preference, hybrid sales were up 49.8% to 16,394. Across the industry, hybrids have become an unexpected success and alternative to gasoline-powered vehicles. They have been around since the Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) Prius was released in 1997, but have never been a large part of the car industry. Toyota was one of the few companies that has not pressed into the EV sector, preferring to stay with hybrids.

Toyota’s decision contrasts with Ford’s. In 2021, Ford said it would invest $30 billion in EVs before the end of 2025. In 2022, it said it would be on pace to build 600,000 EVs by late 2034. Ford missed both goals by miles, and in the first half of the year, it lost over $100,000 per EV sold. It has throttled back EV production and investment sharply.

If there is anything that shows Ford continues to rely on gasoline-powered cars, it is the extraordinary success of the F-Series full-sized pickup. It has been the top-selling vehicle in America for over four decades. Its sales represented 37% of all Ford’s sales in August.

It was always a stretch for Ford to diversify much beyond gasoline-powered vehicles. Today, it is plain just how much of a stretch that was.

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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.