There’s bit of bad news coming from Ford this morning. The automaker confirmed to the world Friday (Jan. 19) what it told suppliers a few weeks ago, announcing a drastic cut to production of its full-electric F-150 Lightning trucks, down to 1,600 models a week from 3,200, CNBC reports.
Ford worded the production change as simply “matching F-150 Lightning production to customer demand,” which is code for “people don’t like electric trucks as much as we thought they did.”
Car companies love selling SUVs and trucks—which they’ve been doing a lot of in recent years—because they cost more and get bought by people with fatter wallets. The small Ford Escape starts at about $30,000, the medium-sized Explorer starts at $37,000, and the large Expedition starts at more than $55,000. When car sales slowed down early in the pandemic, big vehicle sales were sturdier than were sales for subcompacts.
A lot of those companies were pinning their hopes on repeating that pattern during the ongoing EV transition, but it hasn’t quite been working out the same way for trucks. Yahoo! Finance noted last year that the compromised capabilities and higher sticker prices for electric trucks has made the market a tougher nut to crack than previously expected. Karl Brauer, an analyst at iSeeCars, told the outlet that the difference between an electric SUV and an electric truck is that “the overwhelming majority of truck buyers purchase their vehicles to satisfy real-world demands that no other vehicle can satisfy. It appears electric trucks aren’t yet capable of satisfying those needs.”