Ford to idle F-150 Lightning EV plant in Dearborn for weeks

[Scorpio3d]

https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North America/US/2024/10/02/sales/Q3 2024 Sales.pdf
Lightning sales are up significantly for the year and closing in on sales of the Ford Ranger!

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[MountainAlive]

Not a chance. In fact, the trades people in the building are being surveyed for a month layoff. Any trades that want to work while the REVC is down will be loaned out to other buildings. Basically, the place will be a ghost town.

Bummer. That’s good inside info though.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Though I don't have access to recent stickers to measure weekly production, when I last had samples I was projecting they would be around 50,000 trucks by early November. That could be a lot less in reality.

For the heck of it, I did a scan of local dealerships with inventory on the lot, there are VIN's in the 53,000+ range, it's possible they got as many built unless some of the spec builds were scuttled.

 

[Newton]

It seems likely to me that they are stopping production until they have NACS available. Once a NACS Lightning is on the lot, the CCS version would require a huge discount to sell and then you have the problem of trying to sell the NACS when a truck next to it is $10,000 less - and then neither sell.

Ford Osborned themself *and* relied on Tesla to keep their commitments which really shows poor judgement from the top in my opinion. It will work out eventually.

 

[Newton]

GM’s EV sales soar as Ford makes only modest gains

Electric vehicles (EVs) gave a boost to General Motors (GM), but not so much to rival Ford Motor (F).


GM reported overall third-quarter U.S. sales declined 2% year-over-year to 659,601, but EV sales skyrocketed 60% to 32,095.1


The EV boost was driven by its newly launched Chevrolet Equinox EV, which had 9,772 sales in its first full quarter on the market, and Chevrolet Blazer EV, which posted a jump to 7,998 sales from just 19 a year ago.2


Rory Harvey, president of GM Global Markets, said the company's EV portfolio "is growing faster than the market because we have an all-electric vehicle for just about everybody, no matter what they like to drive."

But I suppose that is “all lies”, too.

 

[davehu]

Can’t help but wonder what this means for the truck’s software and support moving forward - I’m guessing it’s not good. They’re probably moving those resources away from the Lightning, at least for now - which could mean fewer, buggier OTAs and even longer wait times for responses from Ford on any issues (or no responses at all). That would be shortsighted on Ford’s part as word of mouth from existing owners could start to trend down, discouraging future buyers, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they started pulling operational people away from the business units in the red.

don't dispair on the software resources front. remember that the ICE F-150 and the hybrid share the same software, save for battery management and charging.

 

[invertedspear]

Would not surprise me if they never restart production. The economics Just don’t work for Ford. On top of that demand is just too low.

Problem is the investment is already made. They make up against that initial loss with the slim profit on each unit. No reason to stop making them if they’re selling, but they are making them faster than they sell, so they have to slow down. It would be foolish to fall for the tax-dodging accounting lie that implies they lose thousands per unit as that number takes the plant investment into account.

 

[Pioneer74]

It seems likely to me that they are stopping production until they have NACS available. Once a NACS Lightning is on the lot, the CCS version would require a huge discount to sell and then you have the problem of trying to sell the NACS when a truck next to it is $10,000 less - and then neither sell.

Ford Osborned themself *and* relied on Tesla to keep their commitments which really shows poor judgement from the top in my opinion. It will work out eventually.

IMO, you won't see NACS on this generation of Lightning.

 

[WhalerDon]

Can’t help but wonder what this means for the truck’s software and support moving forward - I’m guessing it’s not good. They’re probably moving those resources away from the Lightning, at least for now - which could mean fewer, buggier OTAs and even longer wait times for responses from Ford on any issues (or no responses at all). That would be shortsighted on Ford’s part as word of mouth from existing owners could start to trend down, discouraging future buyers, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they started pulling operational people away from the business units in the red.

The assembly plant is a totally different division of the company from the engineering groups that do software and design. Pausing production at a plant has no short term effects on the engineering groups.

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