The Ford Mustang Mach-E may have caused its fair share of controversy over the decision to call an electric crossover a Mustang, but as long as you can get past that, we found it to be a solid EV. Unfortunately for Ford, it ran into issues selling the Mach-E and ended up with a lot of extra inventory. Ford responded by cutting prices, and wouldn’t you know it, now that Ford has released its numbers for Q1, it looks like lowering the price on the Mach-E actually worked.
Through the first three months of 2024, Ford sold 9,589 Mach-Es, an increase of 77 percent over Q1 2023. Higher year-over-year sales don’t tell the whole story, though. Automotive News reports that the increase in Mach-E sales didn’t really start until late February when it announced price cuts of up to $8,100 on leftover 2023 Mach-Es. When the discounts hit, demand skyrocketed. Since then sales of the electric crossover have nearly tripled.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Ford is out of the woods just yet. Cutting prices also means cutting into profits. Sometimes, though, that’s better than sitting back while unsold inventory builds up on dealer lots. And while the Mach-E is selling better than it was, Ford reportedly still had about 18,000 units in its inventory at the end of March and is still dealing with a turn rate that’s below average.
As Rick Wainschel, analytics firm Cloud Theory’s vice president of data and analytics told AutoNews, “Across the board, there’s a need for, and a direction toward, a reduction in pricing at a time where that doesn’t make a lot of financial sense for the OEMs. I think Ford had to do what they did; they’re really in a bit of a bind to clear out those Mach-E’s. It was a necessary evil, in a way. But it worked.”