Ford Lightning Sales Languish

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 5, 7:30AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Ford Lightning Sales Languish — © jetcityimage / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

What company needs this kind of headline? A CNBC reporter wrote, “GM overtakes Ford as second-best seller of EVs in U.S. but still trails Tesla by a wide margin.” Ford management has expected for a long time that it would be the American electric vehicle leader. The primary reason for the current problem is the slow sales of the F-150 Lightning, Ford’s electric flagship. Ford sold only 4,291 in the first quarter of the year. (These are the biggest electric vehicle business failures in American history.)
[in-text-ad]
Lightning should have a big advantage as it comes to market. There are millions of gasoline-powered F-150s on the road. That is a huge and unprecedented pool of possible buyers.

Ford’s launch stumbled out of the gate. It has raised Lightning’s price four times. It would be hard to find a better way to anger customers. The base model’s sticker has gone from about $40,000 to $60,000. That puts it out of reach for many potential customers.
[nativounit]
Battery fires, recalls and assembly lines shuttered because battery defects signaled the Lightning would be another quality management problem. Ford already has admitted the quality of its vehicles is well behind that of its major rivals.
[wallst_email_signup]
Ford’s PR team, which often tries to distract investors, wrote, “Production of F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E continues to scale to targeted annual run rates of 150,000 units and 210,000 units, respectively, by year’s end.” That does not matter if Ford cannot sell them. Add to that a ridiculous comparison: “Ford’s EV sales grew 41.0 percent in the first quarter on sales of 10,866 electric vehicles.” The improvement was against extremely low numbers.
[recirclink id=1213143]
The Lightning has a long way to go to be a sales success. In the near term, it will have competition from Tesla, Chevy and Ram. Also, electric pickup sales are unlikely to catch gas-powered sales for several years.

It is best that Ford refrain from highlighting Lightning sales, at least for now.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.