Ford is Losing More and More Money With EV Business

Ford’s 2024 Q1 results announced last week are pretty telling about the state of the electric vehicle market, especially in the U.S.

While the automaker ended the quarter with a net income of $1.3 billion USD, mainly thanks to the success of its fleet vehicles, the EV-focused Model e division lost exactly that, or about double the loss it posted during the same period a year ago.

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Ford sold approximately 10,000 EVs from January through March 2024, meaning each of those represented a loss of roughly $130,000 USD. By comparison, every other retail vehicle sold during Q1 generated around $1,400, while those from the Ford Pro fleet division pocketed an average of $7,300 each.

In its report, Ford put the blame on declining wholesales and “significant industry-wide pricing pressure” that continued to affect EVs currently on the market. 

You see, despite Ford EV sales being down just 20 percent from the first quarter of 2023, their revenue have fallen a whopping 84 percent. Why? Because the company had to slash prices to adjust to customer demand, with thousands of Mustang Mach-E crossovers and F-150 Lightning pickups waiting on dealer lots across the U.S. as well as in Canada.

Are more price cuts coming? Ford can hardly afford it, but we’ll see soon enough. The Model e division’s current outlook for 2024 is a loss of more than $5 billion, which would beat the $4.7 billion lost in all of last year.

The second half of the decade should yield more positive results driven by the introduction of next-generation EV models, many of which will be built on a new, low-cost platform as we’ve previously reported.