NEWS: Jim Farley Posts Lightning Sales Tripled vs. 1H 2022

[jerhenderson]

So we’re throwing shade at Ford for their ramp up ?
They’ve been shipping electric trucks now for over a year and they announced it a year and a half after Tesla did.

I saw a one at the trail head yesterday - looked great

Ford threw a battery into an ICE frame. in no way shape or form is Ford amazing because it was faster to market with a truck. Ford was also saying they'd have an electric truck back in 2015.

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[cvalue13]

In 2017 they said they would have 40 electric models by 2022. Where are they? That was pure BS.

In 2018 Ford said by 2022 it have 40 electrified vehicles in its global lineup, of which 16 would be fully electric and the rest plug-in hybrids.

You aren’t trying to suggest to your readers that meant 40 entire vehicle platforms are you?!?

In 2018, Ford globally less than 40 vehicle platforms, across all of passenger, non-passenger, fleet and commercial, light and heavy duty, and at the same time with in 2018 were announcing they were exiting all but a few passenger platforms.

The 2018 assertion was that there would be 40 models available globally, but which model offerings across trim levels within platforms.

This is like public auto manufacturer parlance 101

And I bet you don’t have the slightest idea how many BEV or plug in vehicles Ford offers today.

You just constantly repeat and regurgitate unsubstantiated FUD. You’re basically just an unmitigated electric vehicle troll embedded within a pro-Tesla platform.

For anyone reading interested in honest discussion:

2022 All-Electric Models: 11-16 (depending on how you want to count fleet configurations)
Mach-E: 4 models
Lightning: 4 models
E-Transit: 3 models in 8 configurations (across cutaway, chassis-cab, cargo van)

As for total number of plug in/hybrid model offerings global offerings across retail and fleet, light and heavy duty, I can only quickly say there are 14 models the U.S. passenger/retail lineups alone

3 Escape plug-in hybrid
3 Escape hybrid
1 Explorer hybrid
6 F150 ICE hybrid

 

[LDRHAWKE]

The Ford Lighting cannot be mass produced profitably without a re-design and, even, then it's going to be impossible to sell them at a profitable price point because the aerodynamics of an F-150 and the heavy weight of a ladder frame and big non-structural battery are not going to be fixed by a re-design without changing the entire design concept. The problem is poor aerodynamics and heavy weight require too expensive of a battery to achieve a marketable range and a re-design isn't going to do much to fix that. It will still be a heavy, rust-prone ladder frame, a body with aero worse than a rectangular brick and a non-structural battery acting as dead weight.

Ford is losing *huge* money on everyone they build , in part because the battery needs to be too big, a minor re-design, and an increase in production throughput, while cheapening up some of the features, is not going to fix the underlying problem.

Anyone who thinks the Lightning will be able to compete with the Cybertruck doesn't know what the word "compete" means. It's not competing if you have to price each one below the cost to produce just to move them. And that's exactly what Farley admitted they will have to do for years to come (2030 I think he said).

Most people, even many employees at Ford, have no idea how much they lose on every EV they make. It's unsustainable as gas sales start to decline. I see huge debt in Ford's future. The chances they can service that debt through the next recession are slim to none. Farley, as much as I like him (personally, not as a hands-on manager), will be gone by then. The problem is he's a businessman, not an engineer. You need to be both to effectively transition from gas to electric.

All you have to do is watch the expression on his face as he tries to convince you everything is all good. Toyota, GM, and Ford will end up so deeply in debt trying to catch up and complete with Tesla using outdated manufacturing and marketing that bankruptcy is inevitable.......they have missread the radical changes coming.

 

[kbolt]

Ford has delivered roughly 7,000 Lightning pickups in the US market this year so far.

It would appear QoQ, Ford Lightning sales are down, again.

4291 delivered Q123
Seemingly ~3000 in Q223

Do you think Cybertruck has an affect? Is it all rates?

What do you guys think?

Sales are probably down because these trucks don't have NACS. When you buy a truck in 2023 that doesn't have NACS you're on outdated technology in spring of 2024 when they release NACS. Then when you go to sell the truck no one is going to want to buy it because it doesn't support NACS while every other truck does.

Buying a Lightning today is like buying a cassette tape when we have lots of streaming options.

 

[cvalue13]

Buying a Lightning today is like buying a cassette tape when we have lots of streaming options.

As a lightning owner, who, in six months will have an adapter for NACS super charging, I humbly submit that my vehicle is instead this

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

no dude.

7,000. MAYBE 7,000 trucks this YEAR so far. Not 21,000.

The point is that they are rejoicing over nothing, and wasn’t H1 2022 when the Lightning first came out? Of course there would be a slow ramp.

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

Sales are probably down because these trucks don't have NACS. When you buy a truck in 2023 that doesn't have NACS you're on outdated technology in spring of 2024 when they release NACS. Then when you go to sell the truck no one is going to want to buy it because it doesn't support NACS while every other truck does.

Buying a Lightning today is like buying a cassette tape when we have lots of streaming options.

Not the best analogy since cassette tapes were many generations (cassette -> dvd -> md -> dvd -> mp3 -> streaming) whereas CCS is one generation back, but understood nonetheless. That said, Ford is giving buyers a CCS -> NACS adapter.

 

[CyberGus]

Real men play vinyl

 

[Flaskman]

I sold my F150 because it kept breaking down. That may have something to do with it.

 

[cvalue13]

That said, Ford is giving buyers a CCS -> NACS adapter.

Worth double-clicking on a distinction:

CCS-NACS adaptors for L2 have been around a long time. I’ve charged at NACS destination chargers. $100 adaptor.

the step change coming is instead a NACS supercharger adaptor, which means not only enabling L3 charging, but also the NACS automatic “communication” between the charge station and the vehicle for identification within the connector, payment, etc., with Ford and Tesla cooperating to have the Lightning software flange with the Tesla supercharging software and vice versa

 

[HaulingAss]

Ford threw a battery into an ICE frame. in no way shape or form is Ford amazing because it was faster to market with a truck. Ford was also saying they'd have an electric truck back in 2015.

I agree, but 2015? Ford introduced their all-electric F-150 at the 2008 SEMA auto show, SEVEN years before 2015!

 

[CyberGus]

I sold my F150 because it kept breaking down. That may have something to do with it.

FORD = Fix It Again Tony!

oh wait

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

Worth double-clicking on a distinction:

CCS-NACS adaptors for L2 have been around a long time. I’ve charged at NACS destination chargers. $100 adaptor.

the step change coming is instead a NACS supercharger adaptor, which means not only enabling L3 charging, but also the NACS automatic “communication” between the charge station and the vehicle for identification within the connector, payment, etc., with Ford and Tesla cooperating to have the Lightning software flange with the Tesla supercharging software and vice versa

I meant the DC Fast charging CCS->NACS adapter, as announced by Ford.

 

[cvalue13]

Orrrrr, at least to some observable degree, despite a 100 years of efforts to explore the electric market, the market simply wouldn’t support then-available conditions for EV - at least not for a massive scale manufacturer that isn’t in the position of a start-up level of scale and risk absorption? And such a massive scale manufacturer is not best positioned for such a market space, any more than in any other disruptive technology?

Or maybe - here’s a wild thought - the truth is somewhere between, because the world’s a complicated place?

What’s weird is trying to have it both ways. “Tesla is so incredible because it took extraordinary risk and accomplished almost supernatural feats in turning the world around on this point,” meanwhile “anyone could have done it and that Ford didn’t is an abomination”

• “Within a year, I hope, we shall begin the manufacture of an electric automobile,” Mr. Ford told The New York Times in January 1914. “The problem so far has been to build a storage battery of light weight which would operate for long distances without recharging.” [Then electric starter motors were invented for gas vehicles, which meant they no longer needed hand cranks and were far cheaper to produce/purchase.]
• “Ford Motor resurrected its electric-car efforts… in the late 1950s…. Ford said that road testing of a new production electric car would begin in 1968. In June 1967 unveiled its experimental all-electric Comuta minicar. … At the unveiling, the company said that practical electric cars would become “feasible within the next 10 years…. In 1976, Thomas J. Feaheny, vice-president for powertrain research at Ford, said, “I’m pessimistic that we'll see many electric cars in the near term.”
• After California reaffirmed its California zero-emissions mandatesin 1996, Ford needed to produce and sell at least several thousand electric cars by 2003. The company responded with two electric vehicles: the Think City microcar and the Ford Ranger EV pickup. In 1999, Ford Motor Co. plunked down $23 million to buy Think Global – a Norway-based company that had been developing a funky, lightweight, plastic-bodied EV since 1991. After investing another $100 million in battery development, Ford in Nov. 1999 went into production of the Think City. … Ford had hoped to lease about 5,000 Think City cars but only managed to find about 1,000 customers.
  “We don't believe that this is the future of environmental transport for the mass market," said Tim Holmes, a Ford spokesperson. By August 2002, Ford Motor Co. gave up, putting its Think division up for sale.”
• The Ranger EV was built from 1998 to 2002 – the era of General Motors’s EV1. The nominal sticker price was set at $52,720, but Ford supported an affordable three-year lease program that put nearly all the vehicles into government fleets…. The electric pickup faced a number of quality problems including diminished range after about 25,000 miles of use. … Only 1,500 Ranger EV trucks were made over those four years. Most of them were taken back by Ford and subsequently destroyed.”
• The company unveiled its Focus Electric at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show…. The EV variant, which went into production by 2011, used a 23 kilowatt-hour battery pack officially rated to provide 76 miles of range…. When it was introduced, the Focus Electric was the only pure EV that looked and drove like a so-called normal car. … To keep sales flowing, Ford in 2013 Ford dropped the price by $4,000 and offered a $6,000 dealership incentive, reducing the net price to $29,200. By the following year, that became the Focus Electric’s standard price.
• Even as Ford increased the size of the battery in 2017 to 33.5 kilowatt-hours – expanding its range to 115 miles – the Focus Electric was an also-ran. All told, Ford sold about 9,300 units before the company killed the Focus Electric (and most of its cars) in April 2018.”
• There were other short-lived Ford EVs. In 2010, Ford retrofitted a few hundred Transit Connect delivery vehicles to run purely on electricity. The company ran a pilot program to create a plug-in hybrid version of the Escape Plug-in Hybrid. And in 2011, it unveiled the Ford Evos, a plug-in hybrid GT concept with gull-wing doors.
• To get its EV program back on track, Ford announced in Dec. 2015 that it would invest $4.5 billion in “electrified” solutions (including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, pure EVs, self-driving cars, and all kinds of mobility services).
  
  
• On Sept. 7, 2018, Ford issued a teaser image for the first vehicle to be produced in the company’s new EV era. It showed the profile of Mustang-inspired 300-mile electric SUV, which is expected in 2020.

 

[azjohn]

The Ford Lighting cannot be mass produced profitably without a re-design and, even, then it's going to be impossible to sell them at a profitable price point because the aerodynamics of an F-150 and the heavy weight of a ladder frame and big non-structural battery are not going to be fixed by a re-design without changing the entire design concept. The problem is poor aerodynamics and heavy weight require too expensive of a battery to achieve a marketable range and a re-design isn't going to do much to fix that. It will still be a heavy, rust-prone ladder frame, a body with aero worse than a rectangular brick and a non-structural battery acting as dead weight.

Ford is losing *huge* money on everyone they build , in part because the battery needs to be too big, a minor re-design, and an increase in production throughput, while cheapening up some of the features, is not going to fix the underlying problem.

Anyone who thinks the Lightning will be able to compete with the Cybertruck doesn't know what the word "compete" means. It's not competing if you have to price each one below the cost to produce just to move them. And that's exactly what Farley admitted they will have to do for years to come (2030 I think he said).

Most people, even many employees at Ford, have no idea how much they lose on every EV they make. It's unsustainable as gas sales start to decline. I see huge debt in Ford's future. The chances they can service that debt through the next recession are slim to none. Farley, as much as I like him (personally, not as a hands-on manager), will be gone by then. The problem is he's a businessman, not an engineer. You need to be both to effectively transition from gas to electric.

With a F150 redesign from the ground up , use front and rear castings( Toyota is said to be interested) would be a good start. Ford needs to work on vertical integration which they are very poor at, Sandy Munro has a few videos on this subject he was a 10 yr Ford employee as an engineer.

Ford is supposed to have a 2nd generation Lightning being released in 2025 along with EV trucks from GM and Ram. Small improvements are being made with drivetrain efficiency but the big changes need to be batteries or similar power source they need to be more power dense. If I can get similar mileage that I get from my ICE truck I would be good with that. The NACS port will be a big help

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