Demand for the electric version of the F-150 pickup truck is so strong that it could turn Ford Motor Company into the Tesla of electric pickup vehicles (EPVs).

This week, the U.S. automaker announced that it is planning to double production of the F-150 Lightning to 150,000 trucks per year to accommodate the high demand for the first all-electric version of America’s top-selling vehicle.

“With nearly 200,000 reservations, our teams are working hard and creatively to break production constraints to get more F-150 Lightning trucks into the hands of our customers,” said Kumar Galhotra, president of The Americas & International Markets Group at Ford Motor Company. “The reality is clear: People are ready for an all-electric F-150 and Ford is pulling out all the stops to scale our operations and increase production capacity.”

The scaling of operations is the crucial factor for cutting EPV costs and prices so they can reach the mass market. And Ford has a long tradition of doing just that.

Conventional automobile makers have been very slow to embrace the EV revolution for various reasons.

One of them is they didn’t want to write off their significant capital investment in fuel-burning cars. Also, they didn’t want to assume the risks associated with the commercialization of radically new technologies and products. They let startups like Tesla take these risks.

Finally, the technology was successfully tested so traditional automobile makers threw their hats in the ring. They are coming up with their EV models trying to catch up with Tesla.

Investors are following suit, warming up to the idea that electric cars will be the cars of the future. That’s why they have been chasing after the shares of Tesla.

But Robert R. Johnson, professor of finance at Heider College of Business at Creighton University, thinks Ford and GM are better investment bets in the future of the electric vehicle-making industry.

“Many investors are currently betting that Tesla will be the big winner in the electric car sweepstakes,” Johnson said. “In fact, Tesla is really sucking all of the air out of the automobile industry from an investor’s standpoint. Given all of the attendant problems with Tesla management, its huge debt load and atmospheric valuation, I believe that a much more prudent investment is GM or Ford at forward PEs of 9.1 and 11.5 times, respectively, rather than Tesla at a forward PE of 137 times.”

Johnson is also concerned about other valuation metrics like price-to-sales ratios (P/S), which are used to measure the margin of safety for different investments. The lower the P/S, the higher the margin of safety.

“Tesla sells at an atmospheric P/S ratio of 27.9 times, while GM and Ford sell at 0.73 and 0.72 times sales, respectively,” he said.

“Investors committing funds to Ford and GM have a much higher margin of safety than those in Tesla," he said. "And, they also have solid corporate governance and management teams in place, unlike Tesla. We have all seen some of the emotionally unintelligent decisions that Mr. [CEO Elon] Musk has made in the past.”

While it is too early to say who the winner of the race is to bring electric cars to the mass market, one thing is clear. Ford is well-positioned to get to the finish line with the F-150 pickup truck.

Panos Mourdoukoutas owns shares of Ford.