Ford CEO Jim Farley Totally Regrets Ford F150 Lightning Pickup

[ClevelandBeemer]

Exactly.
I had to wait until Jan 2024 to get a Pro with 9.6kW PPOB for under $50k with the tax credit up front, plenty of them available by then.

Unfortunately the damage was done by 2024. Ford needed to max production capacity early on to get word of mouth out there since they didn’t market the truck at all. Especially for fleets.

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[CD4TNF]

Linda Zhang is (was?) the Chief Engineer on the F150 Lightning project:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Zhang?wprov=sfti1#

Thank you Linda wherever you may be, for building the best truck I've ever owned.

Here's some interviews and news clips of Linda, including from @Aminorjourney .

 

[CD4TNF]

In all of this discussion, we need to remember that the Lightning was primarily a reaction to the Cybertruck announcement. With the consumer interest and Elon’s sales projections, Ford needed a product fast to protect the company’s base profit maker. The Lightning is over engineered and risk adverse design but it was never going to be profitable unless they sold 100’s of thousands a year. But we need another 5-10 years of battery technology and charging infrastructure to support those kinds of sales.

Thank you for point this out. I just looked up the waitlist.

End of 2021 Cybertruck had 1.2million reported on the waitlist.

End of 2021 the Lightning waitlist had 200,000.

Big difference trying to compete with those waitlist numbers.

For context in Dec 2021 the hype was real:

• Ford stopped accepting reservations for its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck on Wednesday.
• Ford says it has raked in nearly 200,000 reservations. That's years of production capacity.
• "We've closed reservations so we can start accepting orders," the company said.

That means some reservation holders won't get a 2022-model-year truck. "Invitations to order a 22MY will continue to be sent to reservation holders until 22MY production is fulfilled. Remaining reservationists will be invited to order in subsequent model years," the spokeswoman said. Non-reservation holders will get the opportunity to place an order "for later model years," she said.

After seeing high demand for the truck, Ford announced in September that it would invest an additional $250 million and hire more people to accelerate the truck's production. The automaker initially planned on volumes of 20,000 per year, Farley told Automotive News.

https://www.businessinsider.com/for...ations-closed-production-release-date-2021-12


Then we had record inflation in the 2022 economic bounce.

 

[davehu]

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a70394562/interview-jim-farley-ceo-ford-motor-company/

Not as much as I regret buying a Ford

the subject line of this post is totally bogus. Nowhere does Farley say "he regrets the Lightning. click bait

 

[davehu]

I think that Ford over reacted to the initial customer excitement with reservations, the plant expansion was a waste of money, should have waited a couple more years before considering increasing production capacity.

Remember how many folks interested in the basic Pro? These folks were disenchanted when they could not place orders due low availability, many walked away not being convince to pony up for a higher trim.

Covid's impacted all aspects of the economy, but the substantial constraints of technology, made it harder for way too long to produce product at planned prices.

Federal incentives going away and the aluminum supplier capacity restrictions were the nail in the coffin.

Exactly. along with range anxiety

 

[swajames]

The relevant paragraphs for anyone not inclined to click. Added brackets to clarify speaker.

The F-150 Lightning seemed to be selling well at first, but after you'd expanded to meet higher-than-anticipated demand, it didn't go as planned. Looking back at the Lightning, would you do it differently?

[Farley]I totally would've done it differently. I mean, look, we didn't know what we didn't know.

When did you realize you'd done EVs wrong?

[Farley]When we ripped apart a Tesla with Doug Field [Ford's chief officer for EVs, digital, and design, formerly of Apple and Tesla]. I was just absolutely flabbergasted. The Mach-E's wiring harness was 70 pounds heavier and 1.6 kilometers longer. We didn't know what was going on in [Tesla engineers' ] minds. But now we understand. They had no prejudice. We had prejudice. We'd gone to our supply-chain person and said, "Buy another wiring harness." [Tesla] said, "Let's design the vehicle for the lowest, smallest battery." Totally different approach.

You left out an important answer that was between the two you posted.

[C&D] For me, it's hard to escape the fact that COVID's effect on car sales was record profitability, as limited numbers of silicon chips were diverted to the most expensive vehicles, which sold remarkably well, perhaps faking out a generation of product planners. Because ultimately, there's a limit to how much people can afford to pay.

[Farley] COVID totally was a false signal. Post-COVID, and during the chip crisis that was a result of it, there was such high demand for all vehicles. If you could build a vehicle, you were going to sell it basically at 30 or 40 percent higher prices than before COVID. And I guess it didn't take us long to learn that our internal-combustion-engine prejudice was so high that we hadn't designed the [electric] cars right. We had a Mustang [Mach-E], we had an E-Transit, we had a Lightning, and people loved these products. The problem was they were never going to pay the cost we put into the vehicle.

 

[Zprime29]

the subject line of this post is totally bogus. Nowhere does Farley say "he regrets the Lightning. click bait

Blame Car and Driver, that's what they titled their article. I read it before seeing it linked here, was a little miffed at getting suckered. I'm going to blame it on lack of sleep.

 

[Piquette]

I love my ‘22 Lightning’s Lariat ER. It is my fourth electrified Ford vehicle, starting with a 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid, followed by a 2010 Fusion Hybrid, a 2013 C-Max Energy (which Ford also killed) and now my Lightning.

I hate the fact that a battery module can fail at any time without warning (I have already had to have 2 replaced at different times), which necessitates being without my truck for 2 weeks while Ford gets around to sending my dealer the parts to replace the bad modules.

Will/should I buy another electrified Ford in the future?

 

[Zaptor]

Ford sold out the 2022 production (though brief) and demand was so strong that they even raised prices of 2023s (remember?). Downward price adjustment only happened after price caps for new EV tax credits were legislated. I think that Ford’s mistake was in ever suggesting that a Lightning would be an under-$60k truck. Ordinarily, one would expect the development expense of a new-generation vehicle to be recovered over years of production, and hundreds of thousands of units- but that the cost of materials, parts, and labor to build that new vehicle would be less than the selling price, on Day One. I doubt that any F150 Lightning ever built sold for even the cost of the parts (including massive battery pack) to build it. The marketing for Lightnings should have been aimed at people who were already willing to pay $60k+ for a new Tesla, but wanted a traditional full-size electric truck.

Hard agree. Should have been marketed as a premium product from the outset, never a $40k work truck that a CPA fresh out of school could have told them wouldn't pencil out. I think your $60k number for a base is dead-on ($59,995 plus delivery!) and the Pro shouldn't exist. Oh well, at least we picked up a couple before they killed it...
-Zap

 

[Effonefiddy Lightning]

This is what happens when the government forces people or companies to do something they otherwise wouldn't have.

 

[davehu]

advertising wouldn't have saved the lightning. Range and particularly range in cold weather and/or towing. And $70k Plus was a problem. But I'm glad I got one when I could. Last vehicle I'll ever own.

 

[Firn]

I mean...

A lot of folks seem to think Farley is the only guy at all in a multi billion dollar company, and that he has dictator like powers. Hell, I only have a few guys on my team and I have been beating them up for YEARS to change their ways, Ford has 180,000 AND shareholders to answer to.

It seems a lot of folks also want Tesla like engineering, but don't realize how crappy tesla like engineering IS. Everything they do is about making it as cheap as possible. I'm not saying they are complete trash, but they are not great cars.

The point of the Lightning was to make a Truck that is electric. Vehicles like the GM entries do well, but unibody Avalanches are not exactly the rage amongst truck buyers. I think the sales numbers agree with that.

Ford "lost money" because they could, Absolutely no car is profitable if you have to roll billions of infrastructure cost into it. But our government let them write down their losses on EVs, so why not jump on it. The Lightning was just the scapegoat (since the Mach-E sells better). They were basically handed a billion dollar check, and they can just bank that and come out with something new in a year or 4, which they were already planning to do! Seriously, they got a few billion in write offs and all they had to do was end a truck they were ending anyways.

I get the bitterness, but folks need to calm down a little. And yes, Ford has made mistakes, I'm not saying they have not, but i think a lot of folks just want someone to be angry at.

 

[roddiaz1]

The relevant paragraphs for anyone not inclined to click. Added brackets to clarify speaker.

The F-150 Lightning seemed to be selling well at first, but after you'd expanded to meet higher-than-anticipated demand, it didn't go as planned. Looking back at the Lightning, would you do it differently?

[Farley]I totally would've done it differently. I mean, look, we didn't know what we didn't know.

When did you realize you'd done EVs wrong?

[Farley]When we ripped apart a Tesla with Doug Field [Ford's chief officer for EVs, digital, and design, formerly of Apple and Tesla]. I was just absolutely flabbergasted. The Mach-E's wiring harness was 70 pounds heavier and 1.6 kilometers longer. We didn't know what was going on in [Tesla engineers' ] minds. But now we understand. They had no prejudice. We had prejudice. We'd gone to our supply-chain person and said, "Buy another wiring harness." [Tesla] said, "Let's design the vehicle for the lowest, smallest battery." Totally different approach.

Why would they wait so long to crack open a Tesla?!?! Clearly 100+ years of "tradition" are hampering innovation. Should have gone pure skunk works with a clean sheet of paper to develop EVs. That said, the Lightning was a great pro-type. I'm glad we got one.

 

[roddiaz1]

Seems to me that we bought $120,000 trucks for $70,000.

If it hadn't been for COVID, we might have gotten them for $45k -$50k.

 

[Ventorum94]

If it hadn't been for COVID, we might have gotten them for $45k -$50k.

I don’t see how a vehicle that cost $120k to build could have ever sold for $45-$50k. Covid economics was probably a lifesaver for the Lightning. The prices of all new vehicles inflated to crazy new heights, making a truck which needed to be sold for $80k a real possibility, and giving Ford cover to only lose $50k per vehicle. I suspect that what really drove the cost up was foreclosing the possibility of importing battery packs from China. The legislation that renewed the EV tax credit also necessitated U.S. manufacture of batteries- a good idea in principle, but added significantly to the cost of bringing American EVs to market.

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