Ford Motor Co. expects to become the world’s second-largest seller of electric vehicles within two years, according to chief operating officer Lisa Drake.
Drake told investors last weekend that demand for Ford’s first electric vehicles – the Mustang Mach e-crossover, the new F-150 Lightning electric pickup slated for release next spring and its E-Transit commercial truck – encourages the automaker to increase production and raise sales expectations.
The optimistic forecasts come as the company has sold 22,000 Mashe questyear despite a chip shortage and the shutdown of the pandemic, and Lightning’s retail bookings are close to 200,000 units, up from 150,000 in mid-September.
About 75 percent of Lightning truck bookings come from new Ford customers, Drake added.
Drake predicts that within the next 24 months, based on the fact that there is huge demand for these products, Ford will be the manufacturer of auto electric n. 2 globally, with annual sales estimated at 600,000 units per year. “We are not going to stop there,” he said.
This is because Bloomberg analysts expect Tesla to sell 890,484 auto in 2021.
The Ford F-150 Lightning compete with the Tesla Cybertruck and Rivian Automotive’s R2T. The Mustang Mach-E will take on Tesla’s Model Y crossover.
Ford said in September that it would spend $ 250 million to double the capacity of the plant that makes Lightning in so as to be able to produce 80,000 trucks per year, compared to the expected 40,000.
The petrol version of the F Series truck was theauto best-selling in the United States for four decades and is Ford’s largest source of income.
South Korea’s Ford and SK Innovation plan to spend $ 11.4 billion to build three battery plants and an assembly plant for the F-Series electric trucks in Tennessee and Kentucky, the largest investment in the history of the US automaker.
The battery plants will be operational in 2025 and 2026. In addition to this joint venture, Ford is also purchasing cells from LG Energy Solution to supply the Mach-E and Transit electric truck.
“As we start building facilities like the Tennessee facility and others in the second half of the decade, we think there is clear potential to be number 1 and we keep that premise in mind as we install all of our facilities,” Drake said.
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