Ford Mustang Milestone Nobody Saw Coming
Ford has been on a roll lately with models it was not sure would even sell when they were still under development. Take the Mustang Mach-E. Being an all-electric crossover, who could have predicted the milestone it just surpassed? We’ll bet nobody at Ford expected the Mach-E to surpass sales of traditional Mustang coupes and convertibles.
Ford just sold more Mach-Es than gas-powered Mustangs
But it just did. Ford has sold more Mach-E EVs than traditional gas-powered Mustangs. We aren’t even through the first year of Mach-E production. Yet, Ford built 27,816 Mustang Mach-E EVs compared to 26,089 internal combustion coupe and convertible Mustangs.
CEO Jim Farley has already predicted that four-in-10 vehicles Ford sells will be electric by 2030. But that is just so much cheerleading. But the numbers don’t lie. To give you an idea of its popularity the Mach-E was the top-selling vehicle in all of Norway just last month.
Compare that to the US, where the conventional Mustang sells at a three-to-one pace over the Mach E. The EV revolution has been slow to take hold here. Be that as it may, EV sales are expected to rise over the next two years in the US.
“Mach-E has been much stronger than expected, so we’ve totally run out of stock”
“Mach-E has been much stronger than we expected, so we’ve totally run out of stock,” Farley told Automotive News on May 19. “Mach-E is going global as we speak, but in the U.S.” the wait for a Mach-E “is months.”
Part of the reason for the Mach-E surpassing the conventional Mustang is that Ford is prioritizing microchips for its newest vehicles. Flat Rock, Michigan, where the conventional Mustang is built, was shut down for all of May as a result of the chip shortage.
Why haven’t chip shortages affected the Mach-E?
“We have purposely protected our launches — Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mach-E, F-150,” Farley told Automotive News. “If we can switch a module over to one of those launch vehicles, we have. We’re very protective of the launches because they are so important for our business.”
With all of the cheery news, there is the slow down of F-150 production from the chip shortage. Being a new model, and in ramping up for Lightning production, the shortage couldn’t have come at a worse time. Of course, when would have been a good time for something impacting all of the auto industry so negatively?
If Ford’s bet on ending the incentives July 6 does coincide with a return to more normal inventories, then there is only one more month for the industry to endure the empty showrooms around the country.
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