Ford F-150 Lightning Battered In 2024

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 4, 9:19AM EST

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Ford F-150 Lightning Battered In 2024 — © 2024 Ford F-150 XLT front view (BY-SA 4.0) by Deathpallie325

Ford Motor (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) sold 530,660 vehicles in the US in the fourth quarter, up an impressive 8.8% from the same quarter the year before. Its EV sales were less impressive. They rose only 16.3% to 30,176. Sales of its EV flagship F-150 Lightning were down 10.1% to 10,703. This number shows how hard it has been for Ford to get an early return on investment from its multi-billion EV investment.

Looking at it another way, only 5.6% of Ford’s fourth-quarter sales were EVs. Ford remains a gas-powered vehicle company. Its large F-series gas-powered full-sized pickup had sales of 214,814, which made it the best-selling truck in the US for the 48th year. Ford remains a truck company more than a car company.

Ford’s EV sales aren’t strong by any measure. Tesla still has about half the US EV market. According to The New York Times, GM is in second place.” Its electric-vehicle sales in the quarter more than doubled, to nearly 44,000, making G.M. the second-largest E.V. seller after Tesla,” the newspaper reported.

Ford management can only be partially held responsible for its EV struggles. President Biden set the goal that 50% of all vehicles sold in the US by 2030 would be EVs. His goal included plug-in hybrids. The industry is not selling EVs at nearly the pace necessary to reach that goal.

Americans continue to be wary of EVs. The reasons have been listed regularly. One is the pace at which EVs charge. Another is the number of charging stations. Yet another is how far an EV will go on a single charge.

In 2021, Ford said it would invest $30 billion in its EV initiatives. It has backed off. One of the most aggressive retreats is the manufacture of F-150 Lighting units. Early last year, Ford slowed Lighting production at one of its plants.

Investors have suffered the consequences of Ford’s EV problems. They are almost certainly the most significant contributor to Ford’s stock price drop, down 15% in the last year. The S&P 500 is up 26% over the same period. GM’s stock is 46% higher.

The Lightning was Ford’s best chance at an EV breakthrough. It carried the name Ford’s best-selling vehicle. If Ford could not make the Lightning work, it had little chance of EV sales working at all.

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.