Ford Mustang Mach-E Sales Trickle Down In USA — January Through April Sales

Update: I have a number of new pieces of info about all of this that I will publish shortly, but the key takeaway is: “We are selling every Mustang Mach-E we can build right now with days-to-turn on dealer lots of just 4 days. We are still building dealer stock on lots and we have many still in transit. We are also trying to satisfy global demand from the same plant at the same time. We are filling all orders globally as fast as we can.” More info can be found here.

It’s early in the life of the Ford Mustang Mach-E, so we shouldn’t make a big fuss about sales trends at this stage. That said, they don’t look great at the moment in the USA. The most positive explanation for that may be that Ford needs to send units abroad to meet regulatory requirements there, so the US is lacking supply. We’ll have to wait to see about that.

As I’ve written many times, I think the electric crossover/SUV has a lot of potential. I could see it getting 100,000 sales a year in time. (Though, production capacity for it is reportedly supposed to be half of that.) In February, it had more than 3,700 sales in the US, which seemed like a good start as production started to ramp up. In March, that dropped to a bit more than 2,600 sales. In April, it was down to 1,951 sales.

Not uplifting. We’ve gone from an annual sales rate of 44,400 to 23,412. That’s Model S or Model X levels from years ago, nothing in the same league like Tesla’s Model 3 or Model Y sales rates.

As I said, one hope is that Ford just needs to send more of these abroad and we’re seeing a dip in US sales without seeing a spike in European sales because the vehicles are still on ships. Maybe that’s what’s happening. Even if that’s so, a 3-month total of 8,327 is not cool. We’re talking just ~32,000 US sales a year at that rate.

Another possibility is that chip shortages are hurting the ramp up, or other supply shortages. On the last Tesla conference call, Elon Musk noted that they were struggling with supply shortages across the supply chain.

Or perhaps production is just slowly ramping up for other reasons and we’re in a lull before a boost.

Of course, the worst possibility is that there’s low US demand and this is where we are on the demand side after an initial surge in interest from a niche group of buyers. Let’s hope that’s not the case.

I look forward to reporting next month’s sales numbers, as I can only hope that they bounce from here.

Related stories:

1. Ford Mustang Mach-E — 1st Impressions
2. Ford Mustang Mach-E — 1st Impressions, Take Two!
3. Ford Mustang Mach-E 1st Drive Review, Take 3! It’s Not A Tesla, & That’s Good
4. Ford Rises To The Occasion: My Review Of The Mustang Mach-E