Ford could build 50,000 Mustang Mach-Es in the first year

Ford plans to build 50,000 Mustang Mach-Es globally in the first full year of production. This news comes from L.A. where Detroit News reporter Ian Thibodeau tweeted that Joe Hinrichs made this statement. Hinrichs is Ford’s president of automotive, and he said production wouldn’t be any higher than this due to limited battery availability.

Compared to most EVs, 50,000 cars in one year is an aggressive target. The Tesla Model 3 is one big exception to this – the Bloomberg Model 3 VIN tracker counts approximately 536,000 registered Model 3s. It’s difficult to know exactly how many Model 3s were sold so far this year (Tesla doesn’t report those numbers), but it’s at least a couple hundred thousand in 2019 so far.

Ford’s 50,000 vehicle target looks low relative to the Model 3’s continued sales success, but rather ambitious compared to the rest of the EV market. Nissan sold just over 30,000 Leafs in its best year, and the Chevrolet Bolt EV saw a little over 20,000 units sold in its best sales year. Of course, both those cars are rather boring compared to the Mustang Mach-E and not anywhere nearly as cool as a Model 3.

Another aspect of this worth noting is that Ford hasn’t said what it ultimately expects sales to be once it can sort the battery supply issue out. Could Ford sell more than 50,000 Mach-Es a year? At this point, we don’t know what Ford thinks demand will end up being once its production constraints are removed. 

Actual production for the Mach-E will kick off next year sometime with the first cars heading to dealers in late 2020. The GTs won’t be available until spring 2021. We’ll be checking in periodically to see if the Mustang Mach-E is able to fulfill the expectations executives have for it at launch.