The bulk of Ford Motor Company's 2022 revenue was generated from the sales of its two main automobile brands, Lincoln and Ford. The manufacturer's subsidiaries also include Ford Motor Credit Company, which provides financing, leasing, and insurance to and through its dealers. Ford Credit helped facilitate the purchase of new and used vehicles by retail customers, rental companies, and government entities, along with making it possible for dealerships to improve their facilities.
Ford is the automaker's most popular brand and claims the spot as the second most valuable American automotive brand worldwide as of June 2022, behind German automaker BMW.
A mixed performance in a changing market
Early in 2022, Ford Motor Company announced it would reduce the vehicle production of a few key products, including the F-150 pickup and Mustang Mach-E electric crossover. The F-Serie vehicles are among the leading cars and light trucks worldwide as of 2022, while the Mustang Mach-E was the third best-selling plug-in electric car in the United States in 2022. The United States is Ford's primary regional market, so the impact of production cuts on the company's vehicle inventory and annual output is expected to be observable. In June 2022, it would have taken Ford Motor Company's eponymous brand 41 days to run out of vehicle stock in the United States. International and national challenges also negatively impacted its performance on the Chinese market, including the lockdowns in China in 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, Ford's revenue from its operations in China dropped by 30.59 percent.Ford sold most of its vehicles wholesale in the United States in 2022. The company's market share had dropped slowly until 2021 but grew to nearly 14 percent in 2022. The release of the Ford F-150 lighting, an all-electric version of Ford's best-selling model, contributed to this rise in popularity, as the model jumped to the eleventh spot in the EV best-sellers in the U.S. in 2022.
On March 20, 2023, the Ford Motor Company recorded a market capitalization of over 47 billion U.S. dollars, ranking below fellow American brands Tesla and General Motors.
Tapping into the electric vehicle market
Ford expanded its engineering, research, and development expenditures in 2022 to 7.8 billion U.S. dollars to boost its performance. Most of this was expected to go toward a new fleet of electric vehicles, promoting the company's goal of having 50 percent of its global vehicle volume fully electric by 2030. Ford also invests in developing autonomous vehicles, particularly for its mobility segment.In June 2020, it was announced that Ford would gain access to Volkswagen's modular electric drive (MEB) architecture to assemble electric vehicles (EVs). This partnership was expanded in March 2022 as Ford planned to produce another electric model based on Volkswagen's MEB platform for the European market. This move halted a planned partnership between Ford's Lincoln brand and EV startup Rivian to build EVs. In 2022, Ford sold around 91 million shares in Rivian. In parallel, Ford Motor Company announced deals with Chinese battery maker CATL and with the mining company Rio Tinto in a push to reach a production of two million EVs by 2026. In January 2023, Ford followed in Tesla's footsteps and cut down the price of its Mustang Mach-E.
This increasing focus on electric vehicles and new technology could boost Ford's global performance. The manufacturer is yet to rank among the leading plug-in electric vehicle producers worldwide, despite the popularity of the Mustang Mach-E in its home market. The global market for electric vehicles is projected to be worth nearly 1.4 trillion U.S. dollars by 2027.
