Only on sale in the US since April, Ford’s F-150 Lightning BEV is tracking toward sales of at least 15,000 units in 2022. Based on its trailing 3-month average of 2,113, the electric version of the highest-selling vehicle in the world is also on pace for a very respectable 25,500 in annual (12 months) unit sales.
Ford’s E-Transit, the BEV version of its popular Transit work van, has sold 3,938 units through August and is averaging 563 units per month. Based on its trailing 3-month sales of 496, the E-Transit is on pace for 2022 sales of 5,923 units. At its recent 3-month sales pace, the E-Transit would be on track for only a few more units for a 12-month period, at 5,956. However, I would expect that we may see sales increase in the coming months as more fleet managers adopt EVs.
It is bit unfair to compare sales of the BEV vs ICE versions of these venerable vehicles because it is still very early in the availability of the E-Transit (7 months) and F-150 Lightning (5 months). That said, the percentage of sales of the BEV version shows how far Ford has to go to transition customers to full electric trucks and vans. YTD, the E-Transit accounted for 6.6% of total Transit sales and the Lightning captured 1.6% of total F-150 (technically the F-Series) sales.
A more relevant comparison is to look at the same month sales of the BEV version of the Transit and F-150 as a percentage of the combined BEV and ICE versions. In this case, the E-Transit actually reached 10.5% of combined Transit sales in May, though declining down to 3.9% in August. Whereas the F-150 Lightning saw a slight increase in sales share from June through August, when it reached 4.1% of total F-Series sales.
One challenge I’m hearing in the marketplace is that OEMs like Ford will not fulfill fleet orders (15 or more vehicles) until the fleet buyer at least purchases or installs EV chargers. In some cases the OEM may even require that you purchase their charger, such as the Ford Pro Charging Station. Regardless, it will be interesting to see if Ford can scale up production (and hence sales) of both vehicles by the end of the year to say 1,000 and 5,000 per month for the E-Transit and F-150 Lightning respectively.
