Ford throws shade at Tesla with a new ad celebrating workers
Which company is winning the fight for EV domination?
A difference in leadership
Jim Farley, President, and CEO of Ford, is all in formaking Ford succeed. He has no side hustles – unlike Elon Musk, Musk not only signed on to buy Twitter this monthbut also has his attention divided between Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and.
But what’s better: singular focus or diversification? The leadership of a legacy company comes with its own gravitas, But the cross-vertical gains, like R&D, of being heavily invested in multiple industries is nothing to sniff at either.
Verdict:I suspect the singular focus trumps the scattergun approach (but could be convinced otherwise):
Marketing
Ok, so Tesla’s marketing is basically Elon shitposting on Twitter, and journalists and analysts writing articles about it every time he does so. Free advertising anyone?
And this is even before he committed to putting down $44M in investor money to buy Twitter.
By comparison, Ford puts out ads like this one.
Verdict:Gee, it’s a no-brainer; who needs a marketing department when you have Twitter?
Working conditions at Ford
We can assume that the ad’s US worker promo is throwing some shade at Tesla, who opened their Gigafactory in Germany earlier this year, and this week, the company announced plans for asecond factory in China.
But Ford also hasfactories outside the USin countries such as Germany, Thailand, and China, so the finger-pointing is a bit redundant.
But I think the bigger issue is attracting workers. We saw this also with Tesla’s AI Day last year.
Employer branding specialist Universumreleased its 2020 listof most attractive employers for US students. In a list of 100 companies for computer science grads, here’s how car companies fared:
Ford and GM are noticeably absent. Even worse, grads would rather work at Uber (ranked at 35) and Lyft (ranked at 39.)
Verdict:The auto industry is notorious for complaints about working conditions. Most of the Automaker Worker’s Union members work at Ford. But unions are pretty old school, and all companies are struggling to attract high-tech talent. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Ford needs to do a big old recruitment drive.
Ok, what’s the math?
In terms of sales, Tesla is still the dominant player in the EV market. Let’s look at a few sums – I’ve made it reasonably simple I hope.
2021:
In 2021,Teslaproduced 930,422 electric cars and delivered 936,176. (Their deliveries are the closest approximation to sales numbers reported by Tesla.)
By comparison, Ford sold 12.284 EVs last year. No, that’s not a typo.
Q1: 2022:
It’s a bit harder to quantify for Q1 2022.
What we do know is that according to industry analysts,Cox Automotive, in Q1, Tesla’s share of the EV segment globally rose to 75%, up from 70% in Q1 2021.
Tesla delivered 310,048 electric vehicles in the first quarter of 2022.
Only a fraction of the 966,000 automobiles Ford sold across its global operations were EVs. In February, Ford Jim Farleysaid in a releaseJanuary EV sales totaled 13,169 units.
So, even if we were generous and said 50,000 sales in Q1, that’s way below the 300k+ of Tesla. Oof.
Verdict:Unsurprisingly, Tesla wins for Q1.
However, it’s unclear how big F150 Lightning sales will hit for Q2. I’m not convinced the company has the capacity for that kind of rollout. Theystopped taking ordersfor F150 orders at 200,000 at the end of last year.
But there’s also talk this week of Ford’s plan tobuild a new EV pickup. I’m just not convinced this market segment is really relevant to Tesla.
So there you have it. Different brands with different approaches and market segments.
One is wildly successful when it comes to world EV domination. To be clear, I think competition is good.
Most OEMs wouldn’t have gotten off their backside until it became legislatively impossible if Tesla wasn’t there to disrupt the market completely.
I’m pretty brand agnostic, unlike some other journos. I wantallthe green cars to succeed – electric, solar, and yes, even (green) hydrogen. So, competition can only be a good thing. Bring it on.
Story byCate Lawrence
Cate Lawrence is an Australian tech journo living in Berlin. She focuses on all things mobility: ebikes, autonomous vehicles, VTOL, smart ci(show all)Cate Lawrence is an Australian tech journo living in Berlin. She focuses on all things mobility: ebikes, autonomous vehicles, VTOL, smart cities, and the future of alternative energy sources like electric batteries, solar, and hydrogen.
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