Ford puts six-week pause on manufacturing electric F-150 pickups

Ford is temporarily halting production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck in the face of slowing demand for battery-powered vehicles.

The Detroit automaker announced Thursday that it would pause manufacturing of the pickup truck for several weeks beginning in mid-November.

Ford employees will resume manufacturing of the F-150 on Jan. 7.

The move comes after Ford made several price cuts to its F-150 models earlier this year. The cuts were put in place after Ford paused production due to quality issues.

“We continue to adjust production for an optimal mix of sales growth and profitability,” Ford said in a statement on Thursday.

Ford has been scaling back its EV plans, saying in August it was killing a planned three-row electric SUV and pushing back a new electric version of the F-150 pickup.

The company has instead thrown more investment into hybrid vehicles, which combine an electric motor with a gasoline engine.

Ford said this month its EV sales in the US are up 45% this year and sales of F-150 Lightning more than doubled to 7,100 in the three months ending Sept. 30 — thought they still represent just 3.6% of all F-Series pickup sales.

The company in April cut production of the F-150 Lightning to one shift after it announced in October 2023 it would temporarily cut one of three shifts at its Michigan plant.

Ford CEO Jim Farley, who told a podcast earlier this month that he is enamored with a Chinese-made Xiaomi sedan that he had specially flown into the country from Shanghai, has said one of the main solutions to slowing EV sales growth is bringing production costs down.

That is a key goal for the future health of the company, which is expected to lose about $5 billion on EVs this year alone.

Ford this week reported third-quarter net income of $900 million, or 22 cents per share, hurt by a $1 billion charge it took over the decision to cancel production of the three-row EV SUV in August.

Its shares fell by more than 10% on Tuesday. The shares were down 1.3% at $10.34 on Thursday afternoon.

Farley has told employees that the automaker needs to speed efforts to improve quality and lower costs, and that manager bonuses, which are tied to those metrics, would be slashed to 65% of their total, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Farley recently introduced a new performance system where company bonuses are directly tied to progress on key goals in an effort to change the 121-year-old automaker’s culture to hold employees more accountable.

He made the announcement about the lowered bonuses at a town hall on Wednesday.

“I’m proud of the progress but we’re not satisfied at all,” Farley said in a third-quarter earnings presentation on Monday.

With Post Wires