Demand for electric vehicles in the United States is not growing as quickly as automakers expected: after a period of “dizziness with success,” a sobering up has come. Ford is forced to reduce its production plan for the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck for next year and reduce investment in component production.
Not only Ford in the USA has problems with electric trains, but also other major Western automakers around the world: sales are not as brisk as they would like, long-term forecasts are depressing. The topic of electric vehicles, on the one hand, turned out to be overheated by the authorities, the press and public organizations pushing the “green” agenda – real consumers are not yet ready to switch en masse from “hydrocarbon” cars to electric ones. On the other hand, Western automakers are putting pressure on Chinese companies with their frantic pace of technological progress, constant updates and very aggressive prices.
< p>Mass production of the Ford F-150 Lightning at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn (USA, Michigan) began last spring; at that time, Ford had about two hundred thousand pre-orders for this model, which was much higher than expected. In the wake of the excitement, Ford management twice adjusted the production plan for the F-150 Lightning upward. Last summer, electric pickup production was stopped for a month and a half to retool the Dearborn plant to increase capacity; in August, the company proudly announced that it is now ready to produce 70,000 electric pickups this year, and the plant's overall capacity has reached 150,000 vehicles per year.< br />
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Meanwhile, Ford's US sales report for the first three quarters of this year shows that only 12,600 electric pickups were shipped to customers during the specified period, and in October the company even announced discounts of up to $15,000 per vehicle on the F-150 Lightning. How did this happen? The fact is that pre-orders are not real sales, the client can refuse a pre-order – perhaps there is nothing left of two hundred thousand pre-orders, the queue has cleared up, discount promotions have begun.
Yesterday, the business publication Automotive News, citing internal correspondence between Ford and suppliers, reported that the production plan for the F-150 Lightning for 2024 was halved – from 3,200 to 1,600 cars per week. It turns out that next year Ford will produce about 80,000 electric pickups; the increase in the production capacity of the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center turned out to be unclaimed. Ford, in addition, is reducing or indefinitely postponing investments in the production of its own batteries for electric vehicles, since it is not very clear what to expect – much will depend, among other things, on the results of the US presidential elections, which will take place in November next year. If Trump returns to power, then the massive “greening” of the American vehicle fleet will again be postponed.
We would like to add that Ford currently has no problems with the demand for “hydrocarbon” F-Series pickups: they sales for the first three quarters of this year amounted to 573,370 units, which is 22.7% more than last year.
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