If the EV pundits are to be believed, Tesla will lose its crown as the global electric vehicle (EV) sales leader by 2025 to not one, not two, but three automakers – Volkswagen, General Motors, and Ford.
Earlier this month a report by Bloomberg Intelligence predicted that VW will overtake Tesla to become the world’s leading seller of EVs by 2024.
Now a senior auto analyst for Bank of America is predicting that General Motors and Ford will also surpass Tesla, but by 2025. According to John Murphy, Tesla’s market share will shrivel from it’s current 70%+ to just 11% in the next three years.
The reason for Tesla’s decline and why the two legacy automakers will be able to achieve this feat is because Elon Musk didn’t move fast enough in the EV space. Murphy says that Musk should have used his early mover advantage to “shut the door” on the competition by introducing more product lines, but “he didn’t recognize what was going on in the market.”
“One of the biggest mistakes that whenever they look back at this in five to 10 years, is that Tesla didn’t take greater advantage of the free money it could have gotten, raise much more, open capacity faster, grow much faster and shut the door. He didn’t. He didn’t move fast enough. He didn’t recognize what was going on in the market. He had tremendous hubris that they would never catch him, they would never be able to do what he’s doing, and they’re doing it,” Murphy said. (via Detroit News)
While it is true that most of Tesla’s sales come from two vehicles, the Model 3 and Model Y, both vehicles are showing no signs of slowing down, even in the face of multiple prices increases over the last year. The Model 3, which first launched in 2017, is still a very strong seller, and was the ninth best-selling car globally in 2021. The Model Y, in its short two year tenure on the market is already outselling the likes of the budget-friendly Honda Civic.
Then of course there is the Cybertruck that is set to debut in 2023, for which Tesla already has over 1 million orders, enough to fulfil its production capacity likely to 2025 or beyond, depending on how quickly they can ramp production.
On the other hands, General Motors sold 26 EVs in the first quarter of this year, but has pledged to spend $35 billion on EVs and autonomous tech by 2025. Ford’s EV sales are growing, but its best seller, the Mustang Mach-E, is still selling a quarter the number of units that the Model Y is. They also aren’t making any profit on it at the moment.
