When Ford electrified its best-selling pickup truck, it pulled out the stops. The F-150 Lightning could look just about equivalent to different variations of the pickup, but it surely's smoother, sooner, and clearly far, much more environment friendly than those that run on gasoline, diesel, or hybrid energy. However the way forward for the nation's best-selling electrical truck could also be unsure.
That's in line with a report in The Wall Street Journal, which claims that Ford's administration is “in lively discussions about scrapping” the Lightning. Manufacturing had already been suspended a number of weeks in the past on account of an aluminum scarcity following a destructive fire at a provider's manufacturing facility in New York, which Ford estimates could lead to as a lot as $2 billion of losses to the corporate.
Whereas Ford informed Ars it doesn't touch upon hypothesis on its future product plans, the automaker mentioned that “F-150 Lightning is the best-selling electrical pickup truck within the US—regardless of new competitors from CyberTruck, Chevy, GMC, Hummer and Rivian—and delivered file gross sales in Q3.”
“Proper now, we're centered on producing F-150 ICE and Hybrid as we recuperate from the fireplace at Novelis. We've got good inventories of the F-150 Lightning and can deliver Rouge Electrical Automobile Heart (REVC) again up on the proper time, however don't have an actual date at the moment,” a Ford spokesperson mentioned.
Ford was the primary of the home automakers to deliver a full-size pickup EV to market. However like Basic Motors, it has discovered that pickup truck clients haven't flocked to electrical propulsion in something just like the numbers predicted pre-pandemic. As we discovered final week, GM has additionally scaled again its EV manufacturing, and final month Stellantis introduced that it has ceased growth of an all-electric model of its Ram 1500.
As for Ford, a second-generation F-150 Lightning has been postponed in favor of a less expensive, a lot simpler-to-build electrical pickup, which is due in 2027.
