Ford and GM won't be selling many electric vehicles soon, report says
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}U.S. automakers have plenty of electric car models coming in the next couple of years, but they don’t expect to sell too many of them, according to a new report.
Industry sources who’ve seen the upcoming product plans for General Motors and Ford told Reuters that the two companies are gearing up to produce around 320,000 fully electric vehicles annually for North America by 2026. Tesla alone sold an estimated 190,000 electric cars in just the U.S. in 2019.
Among the new electric Ford and GM models in the works are the Mustang Mach-E, an electric F-150, the Cadillac Lyriq, the Hummer EV and a larger version of the Chevrolet Volt, which accounted for just over 16,000 U.S. sales last year.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Instead, they’ll both be continuing to rely on the more traditional trucks and SUVs that make up most of their sales, with 93 percent of them expected to be equipped with conventional powertrains. Overall, electric vehicles will make up roughly 5 percent of overall sales between the brands. The report didn’t discuss figures for hybrid vehicles or projections beyond 2026.
The nationwide average price for a gallon of gas has dropped below $2.10 due to a combination of increasing supplies and the coronavirus pandemic, and analyst Patrick De Haan said it could go as low as $1.49 in the coming weeks.
"GM and Ford understand that buyers want more SUVs and trucks, but they're also trying to play to Wall Street, which thinks the future is all about electric vehicles," Sam Fiorani, vice president, global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast, which provided some of the data, told Reuters.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The Detroit automakers would love to get a little of that Tesla magic and money."
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General Motors would not comment specifically on its projections for North America, but a company spokeswoman told Fox News Autos that it remains on track to be building one million electric vehicles globally by mid-decade and that the figures in the Reuters report only represent programs that are actively being sourced at this time.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Ford has not commented on the report.
This story has been updated with comment from GM