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- Ford had to literally tear down its factory walls to keep up with demand for the electric F-150.
- Darren Palmer told Insider that Ford was surprised by the volume of orders for the Lightning.
Ford’s F-150 truck looks set to retain its crown as America’s best-selling vehicle for the 41st year in a row.
After launching an electric version last year, it received nearly 200,000 orders for the Lightning opened and had to close its order book last December in a bid to catch up.
“That surprised us – I think it surprised a lot of people in the industry, how ready people are for electric vehicles,” said Darren Palmer, who heads Ford’s electric vehicle (EV) program.
The level of demand has forced Ford to take some drastic action to boost the number of Lightning trucks it can build in Michigan.
“They’re actually building a factory that’s about the same size next to the one that’s in production right now,” Palmer told Insider. “We had to tear the walls back down and start over.”
Despite recently committing $50 billion to its EV program over the next four years, the success of an electric F-150 is never certain.
Linda Zhang, Lightning’s chief engineer, told Insider at first she had to convince her colleagues to buy the car. Now it’s winning over customers who have never owned an EV, as well as younger drivers who have never bought a Ford before, Palmer and Zhang said.
Dealing with the surge in demand is a “huge job,” Palmer said: “It’s going to take most of this year and some of next year just to convert reservations – and I’m confident we haven’t opened it yet for a year and a half.”
A wave of positive reviews for the Lightning means more orders are likely to follow, he added, but first it needs to convert many existing reservations. Palmer could not confirm when this would happen.
In the meantime, Ford will try to increase production from the existing factory to double its annual output to 150,000 annually.
Supply chain problems
Dealing with demand has not been helped by supply chain issues caused by the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Ford was forced to halt deliveries of some of its vehicles due to a lack of the automaker’s famous blue badges.
A bigger issue is the continued shortage of semiconductor chips, although Palmer said Ford is prioritizing supplies for its EVs. Still prices for trucks have been forced up by a wave of restrictions, which raised the F-150 Lightning Pro by $5,000 last month in the second price increase this year.
Geopolitical factors helped influence the company’s decision to move some production closer to home, along with a massive supply chain restructure after $1 billion in unexpected costs last quarter.
Palmer thinks the Lightning will go down in history as the vehicle that brought EVs into the mainstream in the US. He says there’s more to come, with a renewed focus on in-car technology in the next phase of Ford’s EV program.
“The things we’re going to bring in the next three years are crazy. They’re doing things that cars haven’t done before,” he added.
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