Ford October sales slide 10% largely due to supply chain issues

By Michael Ballaban, CNN Business

Ford saw its October US sales slump 10% over the last year as the company continued to battle supply chain difficulties.

Ford sold 158,327 vehicles last month, down from almost 176,000 vehicles in the same period last year, the company said Wednesday.

Not all automakers saw sales declines, however. Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia reported strong sales for the third month in a row, and Japanese automaker Toyota saw year-over-year sales rise 28% in October. Other competitors like GM and Stellantis post sales quarterly, rather than monthly.

Ford, like much of the global economy, has repeatedly run into supply-chain related headwinds. The company said in September that it could not finish assembling between 40,000 and 45,000 large SUVs and pickups as it did not have all the required parts. In March, the company said it would ship some vehicles without some less crucial computer chips and add them later. Shortages and the rising cost of supplies raised Ford’s expenses by about $1 billion in the third quarter.

There were glimmers of hope for Ford, however. Electric vehicle sales — a comparatively tiny proportion of Ford’s current lineup that the company plans to be the majority in the near future — were up almost 120% over the last year to over 6,000 vehicles. And sales of the company’s smallest pickup truck offering, the Ford Maverick, were also up 123%, the company said, with more than 60% of Maverick buyers coming over from another brand.

Issues getting cars delivered to customers aside, “Ford continues to see strong demand for its vehicles,” Ford’s vice president in charge of sales for gasoline-fueled vehicles, Andrew Frick, said in a statement. Orders for 2023 model year vehicles are “up 134 percent over this time last year,” he added.

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