Ford sees Q3 sales growth despite September declines

Yahoo Finance Autos Reporter Pras Subramanian discusses Ford's third-quarter vehicle sales as well as the backlash to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's tweets on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Video transcript

- Ford is getting a Q3 sales boost according to fresh sales data. A sign the company is recovering from its supply chain issues. Rivian also on pace to meet its goals for the year. And we've got Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian back with us in studio after a long break. A good week to be back. A lot of production numbers out there. Walk us through them.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, all these Q3 numbers coming in. You know, a story about execution. Some companies doing it better than others, right? So Ford came out today, just this morning, about an hour ago, sales up 16% up to 450,000 units. Mock e-electric EV sales up 77%. SUV sales up 33%.

Also GM, GM had a big 24% up quarter compared to last year too. And then you mentioned Rivian, right? So Rivian, this is a company that's sort of beaten down in gaining some momentum here. About 7,000 trucks they built last quarter.

That follows up on the 4400 from Q2 and about 2500 in Q1. So they're really ramping up there. They say they're going hit that $25,000 yearly forecast for them, which would be a big deal. And I think that shows the company is on the right path, and hopefully they can start making enough trucks that are also not so grossly from a negative profit point of view.

Hope we get to that point where that's actually parity. So I think there's like- they're doing well, GM, Ford. But Nissan, Honda, not so well. And I think it's a problem with the component shortage. They can't weather that yet. Hopefully, by next year they can get those components that they need.

- And this is, of course, coming on the back of the biggest EV player, Tesla putting out their numbers that were kind of disappointing over the weekend.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, disappointing in the sense that they missed the mark in terms of what they're looking for. But they still had a record quarter, around 350,000 vehicles last-- almost-- 343 in deliveries last quarter. So they are still training higher, a little bit below what they said they would-- what the street wanted.

There is a concern there that is demand drying up. I think we'll hear more about that next quarter. As far as I can tell, it seems like they can't make enough cars to sell, so we'll see in Q4, which is traditionally their biggest quarter.

- So Tesla is bouncing back today, up about 5%. But yesterday it was down on those numbers. And then we got this Twitter beef, can we call it that? Elon Musk putting out this tweet. Let's try to run through these for you.

Elon Musk, first of all, put out this tweet talking about the annexation of these Ukrainian or Russian controlled Ukrainian territories saying, "you should redo the elections of these annexed regions. Crimea formerly part of Russia as it has been since 1783". Then said, "Ukraine should remain neutral". That, as you can imagine, evoked a lot of responses on Twitter.

Here's one that came through. Well, that's Elon Musk there, but we also got one from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying, which Elon Musk do you like more, one who supports Ukraine, one who supports Russia? It gets better, Pras.

After that, another tweet here coming down from the President of Lithuania saying, dear Elon Musk, when someone tries to steal the wheels of your Tesla, it doesn't make them the legal owner of the car or of the wheels, even though they claim both voted in favor of it, just saying. Sort of alluding to what was considered a sham vote over on annexation in these territories. And finally, this one coming from Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, which we can't read the full tweet to you, but you get the gist.

F off is my very diplomatic reply to you, Elon Musk. So here's the thing. It's-- Elon Musk is no stranger. He does like to weigh in on these things. But was this a way to distract from the stock price yesterday?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You know, I didn't think about that as a distraction from the production numbers. But I will say that, you mentioned it in your tease to this segment, is he must-- he needs to stay in his lane, right? Musk has already got--

- He doesn't know how to.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: He doesn't know how to.

- He likes to be part of the conversation.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Or, at least show that he knows what the answer is to every problem. You know, he's-- look, when it comes to EVs, robots, space, digging, right, Boring Company, those are his lanes. That's a lot on his plate already. To weigh in on geopolitical concerns like Russia versus Ukraine and then on buying Twitter, things like that, these are all distractions that he's kind of shown in the past he could actually have these distractions and still make his company successful.

So at a certain point, we got to ask, are you still-- are you taking on more than you can chew? Are you in too many lanes at once? I think he's really getting kind of smacked down here by a lot of people who know more. And the Garry Kasparov stuff, we didn't even talk about that. He said Garry Kasparov, what have you done lately?

This guy has been in jail. He was beaten by the Russians. He's head of the Human Rights Foundation. You know, he clearly doesn't know much about Garry Kasparov, right? So I know, again, he's a brilliant guy, but he just is kind of-- he needs to go back in his lane.

- Something tells me he still really enjoyed all the attention that he got from this.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, it's the Kanye effect, right? How do you sell more cars? Start more controversy. I think that's sort of what's going on.

- Yeah. This is a new one though, I have to say. I mean, the President of Lithuania and Ukraine weighing in. Well, we'll see. We'll continue to watch. Pras, thanks for that.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah.

- Stopping by.