The combustion version of the F-150 has long been a cult car in the USA and an important sales driver for Ford. Accordingly, the electric version, the F-150 Lightning, is considered a prestige project and a great source of hope for Ford. Executive Chairman Bill Ford even spoke of the “Model T of the 21st century” at the market launch in April 2022.
However, business with the battery-electric version is not going as well as Ford would have liked: production at the plant in Michigan was reduced from three to two shifts back in October 2023, and in April 2024 it was even cut to one shift per day. And now another major cut: production will be completely halted for six weeks, from 18 November to 6 January. Only one week of this was previously planned as a Christmas break.
“We continue to adjust production for an optimal mix of sales growth and profitability,” said a Ford spokesperson. As the news agency Reuters reports, sales of the F-150 Lightning more than doubled to 7,100 vehicles in the three months to 30 September. However, they still only account for 3.6 per cent of all F-Series pickup sales – the rest is made up of pure combustion and hybrid vehicles. CEO Jim Farley had also recently said in an earnings call: “We’ll reduce the losses short term on our gen one products and set us up to be a global competitor in the long term.”
Overall, Ford’s electric car business is not yet doing well either: in the first nine months of this year, the Model e division, in which the electric car business is bundled, accumulated a loss of 3.66 billion dollars. This is mainly due to the high expenditure on investments in development and the plants, coupled with low sales – meaning that the electric car division is missing out on revenue. In the third quarter, Ford Model e achieved a turnover of 1.2 billion dollars with 32,000 vehicles sold – or 37,500 dollars per vehicle. By comparison, the combustion engine division Ford Blue is still the largest division of the group and achieved sales of more than 26 billion dollars with 721,000 vehicles (-2%).
Due to the losses and the slower transformation to electric cars, Ford has repeatedly reduced investments in this area and announced more hybrid vehicles instead of new electric models. For example, the planned new three-row SUV will not be a BEV as originally planned, but a hybrid. For all-electric vehicles, Ford will prioritise the introduction of a new commercial vehicle in 2026, followed by two new pickup trucks in 2027 and other affordable models in the future.
bnnbloomberg.ca, reuters.com
