The Mustang Mach-E GT’s popularity caught Ford by surprise, admitted CEO Jim Farley in an interview during Monterey Car Week.
“We didn’t have the right spec levels, the GT was much more popular than we thought,” Farley told The Drive. “We couldn’t react. It was like, the marketing team could, but the industrial system that creates the physical product, and the software team—they didn’t like, get the memo of this demand.”
With an MSRP starting price of $42,895 for its base variant, the Mustang Mach-E has worked its way up the ranks to become one of the top-selling all-electric vehicles today. The Mach-E has been successful in the US and in Europe and has topped sales charts alongside solid contenders in the global EV market, including Tesla. In Norway, for instance, the Ford sold 896 Mustang Mach-E units last month, coming in second place behind the Tesla Model Y.
In the first quarter of 2021, Ford sold 6,614 Mustang Mach-E vehicles with low day-to-turn of just 7 days, meaning the all-electric cars didn’t stay in the dealers’ lots long. In fact, Ford noted that the Mustang Mach-E was turning on dealer lots in just 4 days, back in April.
By the second quarter, Mustang Mach-E sales were significantly growing month-over-month. In July, Ford noted that Mach-E sales increased 15.8% compared to June, taking second place in the rapidly growing electric SUV segment.
And Ford isn’t done yet. The legacy OEM started delivering the Premium Mustang Mach-E GT variant last month. Ford sold 1,448 Mustang Mach-E vehicles in August.
Ford seems to have learned from the Mach-E GT’s rising popularity and maybe applying those lessons to the F-150 Lightning’s production.
“We couldn’t impact the commercialization, couldn’t buy batteries at the higher level. But probably the biggest [lesson learned] is vertical integration. We need to be involved in battery production, we can’t just buy batteries,” Farley said.
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