The current generation Ford F-150 Lightning is dead, Ford officials confirmed Monday.
It was recorded in a group of EV news and announced that The next generation Lightning will be an Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV)Ford backpedaled in its announcement that the current F-150 Lightning would not survive 2025.
“We actually ended production of the 2025 Lightning just this month,” Andrew Fricke, president of Ford Blue and Ford Model e, said in a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon. “This was a response to a lot of market realities and customer preferences.” Production will not resume for future models, ending the Lightning as a model in Ford’s lineup until a gas-generator version arrives later.
Production of the F-150 has already been temporarily halted as well, after a supplier fire limited F-150 production. Ford has chosen to prioritize restarting its production Gas-burning trucks, because they are more profitable and popular. This led to Rumors returned in November that it was the F-150 Lightning It was disappearing, but the company confirmed that production at the plant would resume.
“We have good inventory of the F-150 Lightning and will bring the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REVC) back online in due course, but we do not have a specific date at this time,” a company spokesperson said via email.
Well, it will definitely happen eventually. But they won’t build this truck. Instead, Ford employees are being sent to the Dearborn truck plant to support the third production shift for F-150 gas and hybrid trucks, as the automaker tries to recover from the aluminum plant fires.
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Source: Ford
It is a painful death For a product that was supposed to change the industry.
It’s hard to remember the days of electric vehicle optimism before 2023, but I distinctly remember hearing about the F-150 Lightning in 2021. Road and path At the time, electric vehicle options were growing, but they were weak on the ground. The announcement came like a bombshell: America’s best-selling car was going electric. I thought that’s it. The electric car revolution was really happening, and more quickly than I thought, I thought at the time.
But Ford and I were wrong. Despite high expectations, the F-150 Lightning was not a transformative vehicle for the electric vehicle world, the American auto market, or the truck sector. The company at one point planned to achieve up to 150,000 annual sales. The real number did not exceed 40,000 units per year.
The Lightning will be replaced by an Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV) model, with a gasoline-powered range extender. That’s the concept that informs Monday’s Ford release.
Photo by: Ford
Ford can rightly say that the electric vehicle market has grown more slowly than anyone expected, and that the Lightning still managed to be the best-selling electric truck this year. But this death is at least partly self-inflicted.
Ford claimed the Lightning would start at $40,000, but presented an expensive product that typically costs between $60,000 and $90,000. Its commonality with the F-150 itself has become a problem. The Lightning falls into the same segment as gas trucks that look identical, offer similar equipment, are more familiar to their target audience and cost $10,000 to $15,000 less.
This made it difficult to sell all the time, which is why Ford has offered generous incentives on the Lightning for years. But this made Ford’s electric car division completely unprofitable. Add to that the economics of large electric vehicles that are, according to Ford’s CEO, “unsolvable,” and the issue is solved. The company will focus on EREVs for its larger electric vehicles, at least for now.
The news also comes a full two months after Ford announced a Home energy management software for lightningwhich allows owners in select markets to store cheap electricity during the day and even return it to the grid.
On today’s call, Ford reiterated his support for… Universal electric car Platform, its upcoming “skunkworks” EV project that will power a $30,000 full-size pickup truck starting in 2027. But for larger trucks and vans, the automaker is focusing on gas power — at least in part.
Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com.
