Carmakers are no longer just struggling to match Tesla on electric vehicle technology but are scrambling to come close on production too.
For years it had been assumed that the main carmakers that build millions of combustion engine cars a year could rapidly scale up their EV production — as soon as they nailed battery technology and enough consumers showed an interest.
But forecasts for six big car groups out to 2024 indicate that Volkswagen is the only legacy carmaker on track to overtake Tesla for EV production. VVhile the others are expected to rapidly increase the number of EVs they sell, none will come close to rivaling Tesla, according to forecasts from Bernstein, IHS, and EV-Volumes.com.
Last month, Elon Musk boasted that Tesla’s vehicle production had increased by an average of 71 percent a year over the past half-decade. “I feel confident of being able to maintain something like this, at least above 50 percent for quite a while,” he said
EVs are a niche but growing product. They made up just 3 percent of the global passenger market in 2020 and Tesla delivered about half a million vehicles. But they are expected to take 11.4 percent of the global market this quarter, according to EV-Volumes.com, while Tesla is producing at a rate that equates to about 1m a year and its factory near Berlin is just coming online,
Between 2017 and 2020, Ford’s electric vehicle production was less than 2 percent of Tesla’s. This year its volumes have ballooned thanks to the Mustang Mach-E. Its 2021 production rate is 83,000, or 10 percent of Tesla’s, according to Bernstein. Ford raised its forecast this week and said it would produce 600,000 EVs a year by the end of 2023 — still just half of Tesla’s forecast production. However, Bernstein predicts the figure will fall short and be closer to 450,000.
Meanwhile, as Ford CEO Jim Farley told employees this month, Tesla’s Model 3 is now the best-selling vehicle in both Europe and the UK. “Not electric. Flat out,” he said. “If we’re going to succeed, we can’t ignore this competition any more.”