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

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.