The market for electric vehicles has slowed down recently, and Ford is taking aim at the top EV maker, offering a special rebate to lure Tesla owners.
A new Ford incentive dubbed “Tesla Competitive Conquest Bonus Cash” offers existing Tesla owners an additional $1,500 off the price of a new Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, Ford Authority reported on Thursday.
A Ford source confirmed the rebate to Yahoo Finance, adding that it also applies to the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV and runs through July 8 for both 2024 and 2023 model years. In addition, Tesla owners don’t have to trade in their EVs to claim the cash, and only have to prove ownership, the report said.
Ford told Business Insider the Conquest Bonus was launched on April 3. A representative for Tesla didn’t immediately respond to Coins2Day’s request for comment.
Ford’s rebate for Tesla owners comes as the Michigan automaker recently cut the price on certain trims of the F-150 Lightning, which has a starting sticker price of just under $50,000. Meanwhile, the Mustang Mach-E starts at just under $40,000.
To be sure, Ford hasn’t just singled out Tesla owners with its rebates. Ford Authority reported earlier that it has also targeted Chevy and Dodge owners as well as Jeep owners.
But the latest moves add more price pressure to the EV market, which had already seen Tesla unleash a wave of earlier cuts with consumer demand for EVs overall waning in favor of hybrid models. Rivals like China’s BYD have responded with their own cuts.
Amid demand issues and rising competition, Tesla stock has plunged more than 30% year to date, raising alarm bells on Wall Street—even among once-staunch supporters.
Wedbush Securities tech analyst Dan Ives, who has been a Tesla bull since he started covering the company in 2018, warned in a Thursday research note that Elon Musk and company are going through a “Category 5 demand storm” in the EV market.
He said Tesla is currently stuck between “two waves of growth”—the first led by spiking high-end EV sales, and a second, which should come from mass-market EVs and robo-taxis. But despite this narrative, “patience is starting to wear very thin among investors,” Ives said.
That comes after Reuters reported last week that Tesla had abandoned plans to build a mass-market, sub-$30,000 EV called the Model 2. Musk responded to the report in a post on X, saying simply that “Reuters is lying (again),” without clarifying.
Separately, Bank of America analysts said in a Wednesday research note that demand issues and rising inventories mean Tesla might be forced to cut prices yet again for its EV models unless it’s able to tap into a new market, and that could lead to “mounting profit pressure.”
“The introduction of a low-priced model (Model 2) remains far away (2026). This leaves pricing as the main lever to stimulate demand (which we note has not worked very well so far),” they wrote.
