General Motors passes Ford to become the second-best EV seller in U.S.

Detroit-based American multinational automaker, General Motors, has reportedly pulled ahead of fellow American rival, Ford Motor, to establish itself as second-biggest seller of all-electric vehicles in the US during the first quarter of 2023.

The automaker is now only trailing behind industry leader Tesla. Earlier this week, GM announced that it sold over 20,670 EVs between January and March of this year. Ford, which ranked second in 2022, reported EV sales of approximately 10,866 for the same quarter.

As per Motor Intelligence, Ford’s poor EV sales for the first quarter brought its ranking down to the fifth place in the US. Volkswagen and Hyundai Motor, which also includes Kia, also moved ahead of Ford.

Production halts at two of the company’s EV plants in North America were responsible for the firm’s fall from the leader board. In fact, Ford Mustang Mach-E sales fell by 19.7% over the quarter, as the company retooled a facility in Mexico to increase its annual production capacity two-fold to over 210,000 EVs.

The company also lost approximately five weeks of production at its F-150 Lightning pick-up assembly line due to a vehicle battery fire. The incident led to facility downtime and also forced the firm to issue a small recall.

Despite reaching the second spot, GM still trails Tesla in terms of EV sales by a significant margin. According to Motor Intelligence, Tesla, which doesn’t report its sales on the basis of region, sold over 161,630 EVs in the country in Q1 2023.

Both Ford and GM have stated that they intend to overtake top player, Tesla in terms of EV sales over the coming years. However, the task at hand seems difficult as Tesla is also aiming at substantial expansions to its EV production as well. The automaker previously claimed that it expects to make over 20 million EVs annually by 2030.

Source credit: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/gm-overtakes-ford-in-us-ev-sales-still-trails-tesla.html