Some automakers may have EVs sitting on lots, but none of them are Ford’s F-150 Lightning all-electric pickup, the automaker announcing Tuesday production is resuming after a lengthy closure to expand and retool the plant so it can produce 150,000 pickups annually.
The company said it has a 45-day backlog of orders for the Lightning, and was struggling to meet demand because of the constraints imposed by the size and inefficiencies in some parts of the Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan, just outside Detroit.
The move not only helps meet demand and improves quality, but should encourage more buyers, said Marin Gjaja, chief customer officer, Model e, during a livestream announcing the plans.
“This is certainly an important milestone for us with the plant now ramping toward its new capacity run rate which means shorter wait times for our customers on top of already announced lower pricing,” he said.
Ford just reduced prices on the Lightning a week ago, and the company’s changed prices on the all-electric pickup several times during the first half of the year, as other EV makers — particularly Tesla — have done the same.
Lower prices help drive threefold increase in web traffic and sixfold increase in orders, more than 50% for XLT trim level, the company noted.
Building more trucks
With the updates, the company expects to build more than 70,000 F-150 Lightnings by the end of the calendar year.
Full production is expected to begin Aug. 21, officials noted during the call. To make that happen, not only did Ford make physical changes to the space, it added 1,200 workers.
The total number of people building Lightnings is now 2,000, said Debbie Manzano, Ford’s director of Manufacturing. She said the additional 1,200 workers are a mix of employees brought over from the company’s nearby truck plant and new hires. The additions are partnered with experienced workers, like a buddy system, to accelerate the onboarding process.
The company will run three shifts when at full capacity. Manzano also noted the company’s Rawsonville and Van Dyke plants will begin ramping up production levels to meet the Rouge run rate. The facilities produce batteries and powertrains respectively.
Still some volatility
While the company is ramping up production, it took three weeks to complete the necessary changes and updates to get the plant up to 150,000 units annually.
However, Gjaja noted the production numbers in July and August will be low — in the 1,500 to 1,600 unit range — because production slowed to allow for the work to be completed. He expects sales in increase by late September, adding “for the first time, supply won’t be the barrier to entry” into Lightning ownership.
The goal is the ensure dealers have enough Lightnings on their lots that they can sell to a customer who wants one the same day they complete the purchase. Currently, U.S. dealers have an average of just one F-150 Lightning on their lots right now. He didn’t say what the ideal number of electric trucks per dealer would be, just that more will be coming by the end of September.