Ford Motor Company has lost the second spot in US EV sales in the first quarter of 2023 to General Motors.
While Tesla remains the undisputed leader in America's EV market – it's expected to announce at least 180,000 deliveries for Q1 2023 – GM snatched the title of the second-best seller of EVs in the US from Ford.
GM reported 20,670 EV sales for the quarter, almost twice as many as Ford, which posted 10,866 sales during the same period. The vast majority of General Motors' EV sales were made up by the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV models that start under $30,000.
GM sold 19,700 Bolts, 968 Cadillac Lyriqs and just two GMC Hummer EV Pickups, while Ford sold 5,407 Mustang Mach-Es, 4,291 F-150 Lightnings, and 1,168 E-Transits.
The fact Ford lost the No. 2 spot in US EV sales is largely attributed to production downtime for two of its key electric products, the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning.
Ford's Cuautitlan plant in Mexico that makes the Mach-E was down for most of the first quarter as the automaker prepared it to boost production in order to reach a run rate of 210,000 vehicles by year's end. Production of the Lightning at the plant in Dearborn was also down for five weeks as Ford worked through a battery issue.
Despite these setbacks, Ford reaffirmed that it's on track to reach a run rate of 150,000 units for the Lightning this year and a global run rate of 600,000 EVs by the end of this year, on the way to an annual production capacity of 2 million EVs globally by 2026.
According to preliminary data, Ford has dropped to fifth place in US EV sales in Q1, with Hyundai Motor Group (Hyundai, Kia, Genesis) and Volkswagen Group (VW, Audi, Porsche) surpassing it and taking third and fourth place, respectively.
General Motors said on April 3 that it expects to build 50,000 EVs in the first half in 2023 and "double that" in the second half of the year on increased Lyriq production and shipments of Silverado EV beginning later this spring.
