Ford Now Dropping All-Electric F-150 Lightning Amid $13B EV Losses

My family has a long history with Ford trucks. Among my earliest memories is riding in the 1950 Ford F-1 my Dad had when he was farming; the Old Man later kept a 4-wheel-drive F-250 on his place for various chores. I've had a bunch, from a 1984 Ford Ranger, two Broncos, a 1999 Ranger, and now the F-350 Super Duty we call the Behemoth. I like Ford trucks, and reckon I'll keep on driving them.

On Tuesday, Ford gave me more reason to favor them by finally dropping the F-150 "Lightning," an all-electric version of Ford's famous top-seller.

Ford Motor Co. is pivoting away from its once-ambitious electric vehicle plans amid financial losses and waning consumer demand for the vehicles in lieu of investment in more efficient gasoline-engines and hybrid EVs, the company said Monday.
The Detroit automaker, which has poured billions of dollars into electrification along with most of its industry peers, said it will no longer make the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, instead opting for an extended range version of the vehicle.

Let's do some translation here: By "extended range version," they likely mean a hybrid, at least. And, of course, the traditional gas-powered F-150 is still available. Bear in mind that an electric car is one thing, but an electric truck that may be expected to haul or tow a load is quite another; towing and hauling can dramatically cut an electric truck's range.

This change was, let's face it, inevitable. And it's not just the F-150 that's changing.

Ford will also introduce some manufacturing changes; its Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center — part of the BlueOval City campus and once the future of Ford’s EVs and batteries — is being renamed the Tennessee Truck Plant and will produce new affordable gas-powered trucks instead. Ford’s Ohio Assembly Plant will produce a new gas and hybrid van.

There's a good reason for these changes; in the first place, we have to presume that the wailings of climate scolds, and now-defunct subsidies from the Biden administration, were part of the reasoning behind producing these things in the first place. Those no longer apply.

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And, of course, there's this:

The company has lost $13 billion on EVs since 2023 and said it expects to take a $19.5 billion hit largely in the fourth quarter due to the EV business.
“This is a customer-driven shift to create a stronger, more resilient and more profitable Ford,” CEO Jim Farley said in a statement. “The operating reality has changed, and we are redeploying capital into higher-return growth opportunities: Ford Pro, our market-leading trucks and vans, hybrids and high-margin opportunities like our new battery energy storage business.”

Allow me to translate: by "....customer-driven shift," Mr. Farley means "nobody was buying the furshlugginer things." When he says "The operating reality has changed," he means, "the federal subsidies are gone."

That's fine. The economy and the regulatory environment change, and companies like Ford are required to change with them, or perish. At least, at present, Ford is moving in a direction that makes economic sense, and that's a good thing.

The Ford F-150 is one of the best-selling vehicles in automotive history. It's an American legend, and its design and engineering spill over into the other trucks in the Ford line, including the Super Duty trucks and the smaller Ranger and Maverick lines. The F-150 has been the best-selling American truck every year since 1949. In 2025 to date, sales of new F-150s are still nearly double that of the second-place contender, the Toyota RAV4. You can't argue with success, and Ford may now be poised to hold the F-150 in that top spot for a while longer.

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