target. What do customers want to buy from Ford? Electric vans, Mustangs and trucks. Car and Driver magazine named Ford’s Mustang Mach-E model the 2021 “Electric Vehicle of the Year.” It was number three in sales of electric sport utility vehicles. Ford unveiled the F-150 Lightning in May 2022, then took 200,000 reservations. Three-fourths of them were buyers who had never bought a Ford before. According to a survey conducted by Cox Automotive, respondents preferred the Ford F-150 to Tesla’s Cybertruck. They chose the Ford F-150 because of its price, driving performance, size and design. • Volkswagen is spending tens of billions to meet a goal: moving half its U.S. sales to EVs by 2030. The company plans to produce 1.5 million EVs by 2025 to meet new EU emission targets. • Hyundai’s award-winning IONIQ 5 has been named the Best Electric Vehicle by Cars.com in its Best of 2023 Awards. The IONIQ 5 surpassed all the 2023 EVs in the market tested by the company’s editorial team of expert car reviewers. Other manufacturers to consider are General Motors, Volvo and Xpeng. The Detroit Bureau expects a dozen or more all-electric pickups to be available by 2025. In addition to vehicles manufactured by Toyota, Hyundai and others, people will buy the Chevrolet Silverado EV, Ford’s F-150 Lightning, the GMC Hummer and Sierra SUV and the Ram 1500 EV. Don’t discount Chinese companies like Nio and Xpeng, even though they seem too unfamiliar for Americans to worry about. Elon Musk has said he considers his biggest competitors to be Chinese automobile manufacturers, even though (characteristically) he thinks everyone is so far behind Tesla that they are a “distant second.” But despite Tesla having an advantage in its worldwide Supercharging network, Consumer Reports rates it seventh on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. (The best Driver Assistance systems in the U.S. were Ford BlueCruise and GM SuperCruise.) Also, the German Level 3 system made by Mercedes-Benz surpasses Tesla’s Level 2 system. Just how fast is the market for EVs growing? In 2011, manufacturers sold 45,000 vehicles globally. The number was 3.24 million in 2020. Experts think 27 million vehicles will be sold by 2030. Tesla has done well financially. In 2012, annual sales were $400 million. They were $31.5 billion in 2020. However, maintaining that growth may prove impossible as other companies get involved and make the investments necessary to meet their goals. The drop in Tesla prices was good news for prospective owners but bad for existing owners. After all, there’s nothing quite like seeing the value of an expensive vehicle drop 20% in one day. In addition, Tesla vehicles have had construction problems and stale designs, and the federal government has been investigating 16 Tesla crashes that involved Autopilot or TrafficAware Cruise Control. Having stores where people can bring their vehicles for service and repair is a big advantage for dealerships. Earthweb estimated 2.5 million Tesla vehicles on the road at the end of 2022. According to Electrek in an online article dated June 2022, Tesla had more than 673 stores and service centers and more than 1,372 mobile service vehicles. Although Elon Musk said about the same time that his goal was to improve service in North America, he hasn’t been able to close that gap adequately yet. The reality for many Tesla owners is that they might not be close to any service center or mobile service vehicle. Even if they are, they might have to wait weeks or months for service from an authorized center. Elon Musk hoped that Tesla vehicles would need so little service that the shortage of repair places would have been no problem, but it hasn’t worked out that way. For example, Tesla windshields crack like windshields in other cars, but nobody has them in stock for next-day repair. Tesla’s inadequate service network creates an opportunity for its competitors. According to Mark Reuss, GM’s president, GM dealers started repairing Teslas in 2021. Other companies are doing the same thing. There’s even a website (fixyourtesla.com) with a national directory of third-party Tesla service shops. The world is moving to electric vehicles, and that will change the automotive landscape, but Tesla doesn’t have a lock on what that future will be in terms of market share. Tesla benefited from U.S. prosperity and a lack of competition. Those days are done. Legacy vehicle manufacturers are finding ways to adopt Tesla’s best ideas without dismantling the dealership model that has been developed and proven over time. ACCELERATE 21
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