Ford sold 6,047 electric vehicles in the United States in the third quarter of 2026, down 80.2% on the same quarter a year earlier. Three models account for all of it.
| Model | Q3 2026 | Year on year |
|---|---|---|
| Mustang Mach-E | 5,574 | −72.4% |
| F-150 Lightning | 289 | −97% |
| E-Transit | 184 | −57% |
| Total | 6,047 | −80.2% |
Ford's total US sales fell 6.6% to just under 510,000 cars. The electric line fell roughly twelve times as fast in percentage terms as the company around it, and electrified sales overall — battery and hybrid together — were down 41.3% to 50,355.
The comparison quarter is doing most of the work
An 80% fall reads as collapse, and the base deserves naming before anyone draws a curve through it. The federal $7,500 purchase credit ended on 30 September 2025. Q3 2025 was the last quarter in which an American buyer could still claim it, and it was a record electric quarter for Ford precisely because of that: demand that would otherwise have arrived later was pulled into it.
Measured against an artificially full quarter, almost any quarter that follows looks like a cliff. The figure establishes how large the pull-forward was. It does not establish a new rate of decline.
It is not a Ford problem
Every maker that sold into the credit is reporting the same shape.
| Model, US Q3 2026 | Units | Year on year |
|---|---|---|
| Chevrolet Equinox EV | 1,905 | −92% |
| Chevrolet Blazer EV | 5,199 | −84% |
| Ford Mustang Mach-E | 5,574 | −72.4% |
| Hyundai Ioniq 5 | 2,928 | −65% |
| Chevrolet Silverado EV | 1,655 | −58% |
| Cadillac Lyriq | 3,617 | −50% |
Underneath those numbers the market has found a floor rather than a hole. Edmunds and Cox Automotive put electric cars at 5-6% of US new-car sales through 2026, roughly where they sat before the Inflation Reduction Act widened the credit in August 2022.
The 289 Lightnings need one further caveat. Ford is phasing the current truck out, so that figure is a run-out rather than a reading of demand. Its replacement, the $28,350 Fathom pickup, is not due until early 2027.
Where this connects to Tesla
Tesla's Q3 release closed on an open question: deliveries were down 2.1% globally while European registrations rose sharply, which means the decline came from somewhere else. Ford's and GM's American quarters are the clearest public measure of how far that somewhere else fell.
Tesla does not break out US deliveries, so the comparison cannot be made directly. What can be said is that a 2.1% global decline and an 80% national one are not the same event, and that Tesla had no volume model being discontinued mid-quarter.
Europe has no credit to lose
Ford's difficulty is not only American. ACEA's January-August tables put Ford at 244,938 registrations across the EU, EFTA and the UK, down 14.4%; on the EU-only count it was 171,670, down 17.7%. That is a market with no credit to lose. A policy cliff explains the American quarter. It does not explain Europe.
Update: 2026-10-04
One figure in the table above is wrong and is corrected here. Chevrolet sold 1,261 Blazer EVs in the United States in the third quarter of 2026, not 5,199. The larger number is the combustion Blazer, which fell 52.9% over the same quarter; the −84% change was right, but the unit count beside it belonged to the petrol car. The Equinox EV figure of 1,905 stands.
GM's company-level quarter has also now been counted, and it is the scale the per-model table implies without stating: 25,473 electric vehicles sold in the US in Q3 2026, down 61.7% from 66,501 a year earlier, and 3.8% of GM's 670,974 total US deliveries against 9.4% in Q3 2025. Sources: U.S. GM Sales In The Red During The Third Quarter 2026, GM's Electric Vehicle Sales Fell Off A Cliff Last Quarter.