Ford Is Significantly Increasing F-150 Lightning Production

Ford has been seeing serious interest in its F-150 Lightning and F-150 Lightning Pro trucks, the first all-electric takes on their F-Series line. That interest includes some 200,000 reservations, so there were some concerns that production would lag behind demand for the first few years of Lightning production and lead to the sort of absurd mark-ups and shady dealer antics that have afflicted Bronco buyers over the past year. Ford has responded by significantly increasing its production plans, now targeting an eventual capacity of 150,000 trucks per year from their Dearborn production plant.

The news comes after a similar announcement for the Mustang Mach-E, which is scaling up to 200,000 units produced per year by 2023. With the two announcements, Ford now says that they expect to have the capacity to build 600,000 EVs within two years.

In addition to the new production plans, Ford has begun its first wave of order conversions for the 200,000 reservation-holders that had applied to purchase Lightnings. The reservation list is long, so those orders will still only be offered in smaller waves to would-be owners over the course of the year. In theory, the system will allow Ford to convert reservation-holders to future owners in an orderly way and still keep expectations for delivery timelines in check for those who do order a truck.

Ford says that more than 3/4ths of the 200,000 Lightning reservation-holders are new to the company, so converting those reservations into orders effectively will be a significant step forward for the company's electric plans. Doing so efficiently would go a long way to ease concerns remaining from the current Bronco rollout.