Ford has significantly dropped in overall sales in the face of the unmitigated chip shortage, though the country has risen sizably in BEV sales under the principle that first allocates raw materials to EVs, where battery electric vans took the crown of sales champion in the US.
Ford Group saw a YoY reduction of 10.5% in sales during April this year, and a decrement of 15% over the first four months of 2022 compared to the same period of 2021. The reason still lies on the insufficient supply of chips, however, the group’s current favorite has attained a polar opposite performance.
Compared to Tesla’s adjustments in vehicle software in order to resolve chip shortages, Ford’s solution is relatively straightforward, which first allocates available chips to EV production lines, and the excessive chips would then be used by gasoline models. Production will be suspended if there are simple not enough chips.
Under this strategy that forfeits gasoline models and retains EVs, Ford has had a twofold growth in EV (HEV, BEV, PHEV) compared to the same period last year. The country sold 16,779 units of EVs during April, which is 10% of the group’s total sales. Among which, BEV Mustang Mach-E sold 3,805 units under a YoY increment of 95%, and accounts for 2.3% of the group’s total sales.
10,539 units of Mach-E have been sold this year, making it the second best-selling electric SUV in the US after Tesla’s Model Y. Simultaneously, in terms of the commercial vehicle market that is less talked about among consumers, Ford has sold 1,575 units of the battery electric van E-transit this year, which is 6% of the gasoline variation, though it has become the best-selling van in the US.
The market of battery electric commercial vehicles is still at its preliminary phase. As indicated by the statistics announced by Ford, other brands have merely sold 42 units of battery electric vans in the US this year aside from Ford’s E-transit, which means that the model has almost no competitors in the US market.
As the largest commercial vehicle manufacturer in the world, the transition to the battery electric variation is the most painless change for clients who were already utilizing Transit, which is why Ford now has 10K of E-transit orders that have occupied all capacity of 2022.
Due to an excessive demand, Ford has now stopped accepting EV orders for 2022.
F-150 Lightning, the battery electric pick-up that serves as the protagonist of Ford when marching towards the BEV era, will begin delivery starting from May, and will be incorporated into sales statistics next month. Sales performance of Ford is expected to be even more astonishing then.
With that being said, a simple allocation of components for other vehicles instead of actually resolving the shortages of chips is still unable to break through the capacity bottleneck of Ford, and a significant warning would be the capacity for Mach-E. The capacity for Mach-E over the first three months of this year was much higher than the same period last year, and dropped by a YoY of almost 20% during April when sales had risen considerably. It is indeed concerning to how Ford is going to resolve supply chain issues when every single model is seeing a short supply.
(Cover photo source: Ford)