Tesla On Sales Path Of Ford Model T (Sort of)


Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription, on Patreon, or on Stripe. Help us produce all of the high-quality, original content we publish week after week despite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.

Originally published on EV Obsession.

A big tip of the hat to Bloomberg for uncovering the interesting point that Tesla sales are basically tracking the sales ramp-up of the Ford Model T (and to TeslaMondo, where I found this story). Bloomberg nicely summarizes things in the following video:

So, basically, it’s a “simple” story. Tesla’s target for producing 500,000 a year by 2020 matches what Ford reached 7 years after production of the Model T started. Tesla’s annual production and projected production from 2013–2016 is very similar to (but slightly higher than) Ford’s Model T production from 1909-1912. That said, Tesla production started a few years before 2013, and we’re mixing models in Tesla’s case. Nonetheless, Tesla has many more competitors than Ford did. And, generally speaking, it’s an interesting comparison and similar growth trend… providing the line for Tesla goes forward as expected and hits 500,000 vehicles/year by 2020.

We shall see. If Tesla is able to hit its 2020 target, though, you can be damn sure you’ll see a lot more comparisons between Elon Musk and Henry Ford between now and 2020… just not by members of the Ford family still involved in Ford Motor Company. If it just gets to 300,000, hmm, well, we’ll probably still see the comparisons flying all around the interweb and TV tubes.

In any case, one thing we learned for a fact today is that Bloomberg ain’t no Reuters.


Sign up for CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Advertisement
 
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.

CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

CleanTechnica's Comment Policy


Z. S.

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its editor-in-chief and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about electric vehicles and renewable energy at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao.

Z. S. has 9351 posts and counting. See all posts by Z. S.