Ford Cuts F-150 EV Production

Ford is reducing the planned number of F-150 Lightning EV trucks by half from next year, Automotive News has reported, citing a company memo sent to suppliers.

Per the new plans, Ford will churn out 1,600 F-150 Lightning trucks a week beginning January, down from the initially planned 3,200 per week.

“We’ll continue to match production with customer demand,” a company spokeswoman said Monday, as quoted by CNBC.

EV demand this year surprised carmakers unpleasantly as it turned out to be slower than they expected. As a result, EVs piled on dealers’ lots and dealers warned this is an unsustainable situation. Some carmakers offered discounts to entice people to buy an EV but even these plus government subsidies were not enough to liven demand to the expected levels.

This has prompted carmakers to adjust their plans as they keep losing money on their electric vehicles. GM, which was losing more than $60,000 per every EV it sold in the third quarter, Robert Bryce reported in October. Following this disclosure, the company said it will abandon its goal to assemble 400,000 EVs between 2022 and 2024.

Yet optimism remains, with GM expecting substantial cost cuts in EV production next year as it focuses on higher-profit models, per a Reuters report from late November. Ford, for its part, essentially canceled some $12 billion in EV investments, including shrinking the spend on a $3.5-billion battery plant it planned to build in Michigan.

The reason, once again, was slower than expected EV uptake, along with rising labor costs and efforts by the company to reduce costs, CNBC reported at the time.

EV adoption is one of the main pillars of the energy transition alongside wind and solar power generation. Expectations have been grand and so have forecasts for adoption. Actual adoption, however, has been slow as people still worry about range and charger availability.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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