Ford Gets a Correction to Our F-150 Lightning Story

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 27, 9:20AM EDT

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Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) insists it has faith in its F-150 Lightning, despite The New York Times reporting that it would halt production of the electric pickup.
Is the truck’s poor sales record something to be proud of?

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Ford Gets a Correction to Our F-150 Lightning Story — © TennesseePhotographer / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) asked for a correction to our “Ford to End Production of Failed F-150 Lightning.”

Here is their correction:

F-150 Lightning is the best-selling electric pickup truck in the U.S. – despite new competition from CyberTruck, Chevy, GMC, Hummer and Rivian – and delivered record sales in Q3. Right now, we’re focused on producing F-150 ICE and Hybrid as we recover from the fire at Novelis. We have good inventories of the F-150 Lightning and will bring Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REVC) back up at the right time, but don’t have an exact date at this time.

Here is our response:

Ford’s comment about the Lightning is a claim that it is good to be a 5 feet, 3 inches tall person in a room of people who are 5 feet tall.

For a start, the production information comes from The New York Times: “The company also said it has stopped making an electric version of its popular F-150 pickup.” That is in the headline about Ford’s earnings. In the body of their story: “Because of the fire and slowing sales of electric vehicles, the company has stopped making the F-150 Lightning electric pickup.”

Ford always stuns us when it talks about being first in the segment. The company took the brand of the top-selling vehicle in the past five decades and launched an electric version. Then it congratulated itself for selling only 85 of these a day through the first three quarters of this year. Thus, Ford took one of the greatest brands in auto history and turned it into a multibillion-dollar debacle.

Executive Chair Bill Ford told the Detroit News that the Lightning was the most important product of his career. He added, “Anytime you have a radical change to your most successful product, you really are betting the company.” I have not heard him say Ford lost that bet.

The company increased the price of the Lightning three times in 2022. Some of that was apparently because it did not anticipate “significant material cost increases.” One of the largest car companies in the world should have foreseen such a significant change.

Ford said it planned to build 150,000 Lightnings in 2022. And it said it would ramp to an electric vehicle (EV) production rate of 600,000 in 2023. Ford has only sold 69,000 EVs through the first three quarters of 2025. It will be lucky to sell 90,000 for the entire year.

Astonishingly, Ford is proud of being in first place in the electric pickup segment with nine-month sales of 23,034 Lightnings through the third quarter, up a staggering 1%. That’s a record to be proud of.

Ford Stock Price Prediction and Forecast 2025–2030

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.