By Paul Lienert and Joseph White
(Reuters) – Ford Motor’s decision to hit the brakes on a planned $3.5 billion battery plant in Michigan highlights a challenge for Tesla’s growing crowd of rivals in the U.S. market: Tesla is pushing most of them into unprofitable, low-volume niches.
Global automakers are launching scores of new electric vehicles in the United States, and pouring billions of dollars into new EV and battery plants. But few of them besides Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3 are selling at high enough volumes to support a full-scale assembly plant, according to a Reuters analysis of U.S. EV sales data for the first six months of 2023.
On a brand-by-brand basis, Tesla outsold its next 19 competitors by 10 to one or more during the first half, according to S&P Global Mobility data.
Tesla sold 325,291 vehicles in the United States from January to June. General Motors’ Chevrolet…
