Ford tripling F-150 Lightning, doubling Mach E production in 2023
Despite an ongoing pause in F-150 Lightning production, Ford says it will boost output this year in response to overwhelming demand. Ford aims to triple Lightning and double Mach-E production as consumers continue gravitating toward its popular EVs.
The automaker has encountered some issues this year after pausing production on its popular F-150 Lightning in early February. During pre-delivery quality inspections, one of the vehicles displayed a battery issue prompting Ford to pause shipments nationwide while they investigated.
Ford has since fixed the issue, stating it will restart production on March 13 at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.
Ford has lots of manufacturing capacity that could be converted to EV production. Of course that requires investment, time to install, and critical materials such as batteries.
Timing may be an issue but i wouldn’t write them off. They probably will produce as many as they can sell once they are convinced the buyers are there.
Yeah… and that battery thing is what has halted production on the F150 EV.
It uses pouch batteries. Tesla… for what it’s worth… claims pouch batteries are much more prone to fire issues as well as losing battery capacity in big chunks instead of little chunks like the cylindrical ones. GM touted pouch batteries for a while… now they’re dropping pouches to move to cylindrical. Sandy Munro had a better explanation than I can give.
As for other manufacturing capacity, I’m not sure how fast they could convert. Assuming they had designs and tooling to do so. They certainly don’t have the tooling for other EVs now and I really don’t know if they have designs for other EVs. I would “guess” they could convert pretty fast as most people look at it but it’s not a trivial exercise of course.
More importantly… they don’t make money at EVs. And they will not have any means of competing with Tesla on pricing of EVs. That probably isn’t believable to the casual observer though… but it will gradually become evident. And Ford doesn’t have a comparable charge network.
Overall, I doubt Ford will avoid bankruptcy. Not in the next few years. But it’s death by a thousand cuts. The “new Ford” will be a lot smaller and may only make the big super duty pickup trucks. Timing? Another decade?
Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.