Ford reportedly cutting F-150 Lightning production next year

Ford Motor Co. will reportedly soon reduce the number of F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks it builds on average every week.  

In a message to suppliers, the automaker said “changing market demand” led to it adjusting its planned Rouge Electric Vehicle Center production of the pickup to an average of 1,600 per week, according to Automotive News. That will reportedly begin in January.

Ford “will continue to match Lightning production to customer demand,” a company spokesperson told FOX Business on Tuesday. 

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The Rouge Electric Vehicle Center, which opened in Dearborn, Michigan, in 2021, received upgrades over the summer meant to lift its targeted annual F-150 Lightning run rate to 150,000, with the facility’s operations picking back up at the beginning of August, according to a press release.

There had earlier been plans of averaging 3,200 per week in connection to that, Automotive News reported.

The reported F-150 Lightning production slowdown comes after Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said during Ford’s third-quarter earnings call that the company was “being judicious about our production and adjusting future capacity to better match market demand” for its electric vehicle (EV) business “given the dynamic EV environment.”

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“For example, we have taken out some Mustang Mach-E production, and we are also slowing down several investments, including making a decision with SK On to delay the second BlueOval SK JV battery plant in Kentucky, and we have also said we are evaluating our BlueOval Battery Park Michigan plant to determine the best path forward,” he said. “In fact, all told, we have pushed about $12 billion of EV spend, which includes capex, direct investment and expense.”

The “ultimate success” of the company’s EV transition “will be driven by our Gen 2 and Gen 3 products, which will be cost-optimized and guided by the learnings of our first-generation vehicles that are currently in the market,” according to Lawler.

Ford reported earlier this month that people in the U.S. had purchased over 20,300 F-150 Lightning trucks since the start of the year. That figure, which represented a 53.6% year-over-year increase, included sales of nearly 4,400 in November, according to the company. 

It has been producing the electric pickup since April 2022.

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The company, which produces combustion, electric and hybrid vehicles, forecast that it will see an adjusted EBIT in the range of $10 billion to $10.5 billion for the year.