Summary
- The Ford Mach-E enjoyed a couple of years of strong sales as a newcomer to the EV SUV market
- 2023 saw Mach-E sales stall out, only gaining 3.3% YOY against 2022 sales
- A combination of the Tesla Model Y slashing its price by nearly 1/3, as well as more and more EV SUVs coming to market are giving customers more options
- Ford has slashed between 10% to 14% off of the prices of the Mach-E across all trim levels to drive up sales, as well as is offering an unprecedented 0% lease or 0% financing OAC
- We think that Ford has reacted just in time, but the truth of the matter is that the EV SUV market will be saturated soon, and only time will tell if Ford reacted quickly enough to save Mach-E sales.
Ford’s Mustang Mach-E, their first all-electric SUV, entered the market with significant expectations and hype in 2021. For a company that is used to massive sales success, they aimed to match or defeat other EV makers such as Tesla and Porsche in terms of sales, performance, and overall utility.
The Mach-E moved 27,140 US units in 2021, and then 39,458 in 2022, a year to year gain of just over 45.6%. However, for 2023, the Mach E only moved 40,771 units, a net YOY gain of barely 3.3%. Effectively, the projected sales rise has stalled out. Using available data, we will analyze what has caused this, and what Ford is doing about it.
Sales & Pricing Through 2023
As stated above, Ford was anticipating the first year of the Mach-E to be rather disappointing, but an upward trend in sales was projected across the next few years.
However, what they did not account for was that as the semiconductor shortage eased off in 2023, Tesla, their primary competitor, slashed the prices of the Model Y SUV nearly a full third. This put the Model Y at a slightly lower price than the base Mach E for 2023, before any of the rebates or EV incentives are calculated in.
Consider as well that the Model Y is an established vehicle, having been introduced in 2015, and is extremely popular with first time EV buyers. To put this in perspective of numbers, while the Mach-E moved 40,771 units in North America in 2023, the Model Y moved 284,498 units in North America alone, and 1.23 million globally.
In response, Ford recently announced that across the entire Mach-E range, they are slashing prices from anywhere from $3,100 to $8,100 to make the Mach-E more tempting for those that are looking at a Model Y. This is crucial, as the Mach-E does not qualify for the $7,500 tax credit Federal Purchase Incentive Program. Instead, it will only get the half credit at $3,750, according to The Verge, while the other Ford EV, the F-150 Lightning, does qualify for the full credit.
To offset this disparity, for qualified buyers with excellent credit, the offer of 0% leasing and 0% financing is also on the table, effectively eliminating the profits that Ford would make on the interest, and focusing entirely on the markup from production price to MSRP.
Analysis
While reducing the price might attract more customers, it also raises concerns about Ford’s initial pricing strategy combined with the sudden drop off in sales in only its third year on the road. The fact that the company needed to lower the price so drastically indicates a potential misjudgment of the market demand and competitive landscape by the Blue Oval.
To understand the quantitative data, we need to calculate the new prices after the price drop in 2024 compared to the original prices in 2023. Taking the absolute base model, RWD, no added features Mach-E for 2024, but including incentives, we get:
- Original Base RWD Model Price (2023): $44,795
- New RWD Model Base Price (2024): $39,895
- Percentage Decrease: 10.9%
A nearly 11% drop in price year over year is quite significant, but the news only gets worse with the highest end Mach-E GT Performance Edition:
- Original GT Performance Model Price (2023): $59,995
- New GT Performance Model Price (2024): $51,840
- Percentage Decrease: 13.6%
What is particularly damaging about the 13.6% drop is that the direct competitor to the GT Performance, the Tesla Model Y Performance, comes in at $52,490 before incentives. Add in the tax credit and other incentives, and the Model Y drops to $41,390, almost exactly $10,000 less than the Ford, which it outperforms in actual performance metrics.
Sales Performance Analysis: Projected vs Real
To properly evaluate why the Ford Mach-E has started to attract the word “Sales failure,” we need to look at its competition. As noted, the Model Y outsold the Mach-E in North America in 2023 by a factor of 8.2x, but competition exists as well from Audi with the Q4 E-Tron and VW with the ID.4.
The Audi Q4 E-Tron launched in late 2022, so all we have are its first year sales numbers through 2023, as well as Audi being a boutique luxury company vs the “functional chic” of Ford and Tesla. That said, Audi moved 2,576 units in Q3/Q4 2022, and 8,146 units across 2023. If we extrapolate that as if the Q4 E-Tron was on sale from January 2022, that would make a hypothetical 5,125 2022 units, which comes out to 58.9% YOY. Granted, this is only hypothetical, but it does show that the Audi is definitely popular among the luxury crowd.
For the Volkswagen ID.4, 2023 was its first year of sales in the US, yet it still managed a hefty 28,031 units sold. It is a much fairer comparison to the Mach E, as it is both functional but also lightly performance oriented. Where this impacts Ford the most is that while the new RWD base price including incentives for the Mach E is $39,895, the ID.4’s base price is $38,995 before incentives.
Conclusions
The bare reality is that the EV SUV market is rapidly filling up, and with some options with better features and better prices than the Mach-E becoming available. For example, coming in 2024 are the Porsche Macan EV, the Lotus Eletre Hyper-SUV, the Kia EV9, the refreshed Hyundai Ioniq 7… and that’s just off the top of our heads.
Putting it simply, the only conclusion we can draw here is that Ford shot itself in the foot banking on the Mustang name to drive up sales, and why the words “Sales failure” are tossed around is because it fell well short of projections and effectively stalled out in 2023.
Now that reality has bitten them precisely in the wallet, Ford had to adjust to compensate, and not a moment too soon. We think that while the new pricing is very tempting, going so far to even call it fair, the inevitable truth is that unless something catastrophic happens, no-one is going to be able to keep up with Tesla’s production numbers and pricing by the sheer effect of market volume allowing them to slash prices as they need to.
On top of that, all projections by independent analysts show that the EV SUV market is going to be saturated in the next 2 to 3 years, so we think that this is Ford’s “Hail Mary” to get qualified and enthusiastic EV buyers into their vehicles. Only time will tell if it worked.
