Ford May Soon Kill Off The F-150 Lightning To Focus On Smaller, Cheaper EVs

It's been a little more than three years since Ford officially revealed the F-150 Lightning, the fully electric version of its popular full-size pickup truck, and in that time, Ford's seen sales steadily tick up. In Q3 this year, Lightning sales were even up nearly 40%. Unfortunately for Ford, sales never quite took off in the way it was hoping, and there's a good chance many of those Q3 sales were motivated by Republicans' decision to end the federal EV tax credit. And according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, it may soon be lights out for the Lightning.

It doesn't sound like Ford's executives have officially made the decision to kill off their electric truck, but per the WSJ's report, they're seriously considering it. On the one hand, it cost them a lot of money to develop, and year-over-year sales have been increasing, but on the other hand, it's only on track to sell about 30,000 Lightnings this year, which isn't very many when you're Ford, and you expect to sell more than 750,000 F-Series pickups this year. It also doesn't help that the least-expensive Lightning you can buy now starts at about $55,000, which is a lot more than the roughly $40,000 base price we were originally promised. 

Now that Republicans have gotten rid of the federal tax credit, the effective cost of buying a new F-150 Lightning is even higher than it was back in September, which isn't great news at a time when Republican economic policies are also making everything more expensive. As Adam Kraushaar, owner of the Lester Glenn Auto Group, told the WSJ, "The demand is just not there. We don't order a lot of them because we don't sell them." 

On top of that, it also didn't help that a recent fire at a supplier's factory caused an aluminum shortage that forced Ford to temporarily pause Lightning production, and we also know Ford has delayed the next-generation F-150 for at least a year, as it attempts to figure out the best way forward.

All told, Ford has reportedly lost about $13 billion on EVs since 2023, which, even in the business world, is a lot of money. That's partly because Ford made sure it had the capacity to build as many as 150,000 F-150 Lightnings per year, easily more than three times the actual demand. If Ford had been able to convert initial interest — it allegedly received more than 200,000 reservations for the Lightning — into higher sales, the massive investment in EVs may have been worth it, but that's just not what happened.

As Ford admitted recently, the kinds of customers who are interested in EVs tend to be more interested in smaller, less expensive options. But while some of its competitors appear to be giving up on all things electric, even if Ford does kill off the F-150 Lightning, it's still working on new EVs that people might actually want (and be able to afford) to buy. Back in August, the Michigan-based automaker revealed that it had developed both a new EV platform, as well as a new production system that would allow it to build several new EVs more cheaply and might even allow it to compete with the Chinese automakers currently threatening to eat Ford's lunch.

While Ford says it plans to build several different EVs on its new platform, the first vehicle we'll see is a new truck. Except, instead of being big enough that you might think crushing children was part of the official design brief, it will be smaller and, perhaps most importantly, cheaper. According to Ford, its upcoming smaller electric truck will start at about $30,000 without any tax credits and offer as much passenger room as a Toyota RAV4, while also being just as quick as a four-cylinder Mustang.

That truck, however, isn't expected to go on sale until sometime in 2027, so if Ford did decide to kill off the F-150 Lightning, it would be a while before its new, smaller alternative hit dealer lots. Then again, if sales aren't high enough to justify continuing to build the Lightning, then maybe it's for the best, at least from Ford's perspective.