Ford ramping up production again to try to meet demand for all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning.
Ford Motor Co., which shut down its reservation system for the all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck in an attempt to manage overwhelming response, will start accepting purchase orders this week, the company announced Tuesday. For the first time, reservations can be converted to actual orders. The earliest reservation holders will receive «invitations» by email on Thursday to place orders to purchase the truck, the company said. Deliveries begin in the spring. Ford said it will email potential customers in waves from when their $100 refundable reservation for Lightning was received. The number of emails sent by Ford to potential customers in coming weeks and months will depend on the number of reservations converted to sales. When one person declines, that increases the odds of someone else getting a truck that ranges in price from $39,974 to $92,000, depending on specialty items. For those who don’t receive invitations to convert for the 2022 model year, «there will be opportunity to order for future model years in due course,» Ford said in a news release. One issue that may influence the decision to purchase is delivery date, Darren Palmer, Ford general manager of battery electric vehicles, told the Free Press. Ford has already said it doesn’t expect to fill all orders in 2022. The Dearborn automaker said previously it planned to build 80,000 F-150 Lightning pickups annually at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn next year. Now Ford said it’s striving to double production goals to 150,000 annually. Ford said it would provide detail in coming months about the timeline. The company is working with suppliers to find out how quickly the company can ramp up production. A lot depends on supply chain issues and whether the automaker can get the parts needed. Factory operations also depend on the health of UAW workers and limiting the impact of COVID-19. Ford, which capped reservations for its F-150 Lightning at 200,000 in December, said it is doing all it can to increase the odds of filling orders sooner than predicted. “Our teams are working hard and creatively to break production constraints in order to get more F-150 Lightning trucks into the hands of our customers,” Kumar Galhotra, president of the Americas & International Markets Group, said in a news release. “The reality is clear: people are ready for an all-electric F-150 and Ford is pulling out all the stops to scale our operations and increase production capacity.” A task force of employees from manufacturing, purchasing, strategy, product development and capacity planning are finding ways to deliver the latest planned production increase, the news release said.
