Ford Finally Runs Out of EVs

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 6, 1:49PM EDT

Quick Read

Ford's Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning both cratered roughly 45% in May, selling just 2,467 and 1,046 units respectively. Both figures fell far below initial projections.
Farley called Chinese EVs an existential threat, saying they completely dominate globally with no real competition from Tesla, GM, or Ford.
Ford's $5 billion Universal EV Platform targets a 2027 midsize truck, arriving late as GM and EU rivals accelerate their own EV programs.
Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Ford didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Ford Finally Runs Out of EVs — © FotoSleuth / Wikimedia Commons

Ford’s (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) sales of its two flagship EVs dropped to nearly zero in May. Originally, each was to sell hundreds of thousands a year.

Sales of the Mustang Mach-E dropped to 2,467, down 44% from the year before. That is 82 per day nationwide. Ford thought that using the Mustang brand would help jump-start EV sales. The Mustang was launched in 1964 and is still on sale today. It is powered by a gas engine. The Mach-E was launched in 2020.

The Ford F-150 Lightning was named for the best-selling vehicle in America. The full sized pick up market is the most successful vehicle niche in the US. Ford sold 1,046 Lightnings last month, down 45% from the year before. That figure was 45 Lightnings sold per day.

Ironically, Ford CEO Jim Farley test-drove Chinese EVs. His comment after his early rides was “There’s no real competition from Tesla, GM, or Ford with what we’ve seen from China. They are completely dominating the EV landscape globally.” Earlier, he said Chinese EVs could be an existential threat to Ford. The barrier to EVs in the US is high tariffs, which Ford hopes will stay high every day.

The Ford EV folly has started to move forward after a remarkably poor past. “The best predictor of future performance is past performance. And I’ve seen your past performance,” or so the saying goes.

For reasons that are impossible to explain, Ford’s most visible project for its sales future is its Universal EV Platform and Ford Universal EV Production System. It is to be the largest car-production revolution since the Henry Ford assembly line, introduced in 1913, Ford management said. The Ford investment in the new project is $5 billion.

At the time of the launch, Farley said, “We took a radical approach to a very hard challenge: Create affordable vehicles that delight customers in every way that matters – design, innovation, flexibility, space, driving pleasure, and cost of ownership – and do it with American workers.”

The first product of the project will be a midsize EV truck, which will be ready in 2027. Given the pace at which the EV segment is evolving, that is late. While Ford may have exited the EV segment, several EU car companies have stepped up EV plans, as has Ford’s crosstown rival GM (NYSE: GM). It is hard to say what Ford’s management is thinking.

It will need several EV models, to hopes it to be competitive.

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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.