Ford Motor Co. restarted production of F-150 electric Lightning pickup truck as it bets price cuts will spark demand for fully-electric vehicles among a broader swath of US drivers.
Customers have had to wait on orders as Ford restocked vehicles after battery issues halted production at the plant this spring. It paused output for another six weeks this summer to retool the Dearborn, Michigan, facility. The company expects F-150 Lightning sales to “significantly increase” in September and October as production ramps and it fills back orders, executives said Tuesday.
“We are expanding capacity right now, we’re going to be filling that capacity, we’ll have to see how the market plays out,” said Marin Gjaja, chief customer officer for Ford’s model-e unit. “The demand is there. We now have the supply to match it.”
Ford has slashed prices for the F-150 Lightning by as much as 17% to capture more share of the nascent US EV market and fend off competition coming from Tesla Inc. and General Motors Co. The price cuts enable all but the priciest pickup trims to qualify for as much as $7,500 in consumer EV tax credits.
Ford reiterated its plans to boost capacity to 150,000 trucks a year by the third quarter. It’s training an additional 1,200 workers to help increase supply, the company said.
The price cuts have helped drive sixfold increase in orders and threefold increase in web traffic, Ford said Tuesday.
(Updates with sales expectations in second paragraph.)
