Ford Motor Co. will slash production plans for its electric F-50 Lightning pickup trucks by about half in 2024, according to reports late Monday.
CNBC and Automotive News reported Ford
F,
will make a major strategic shift due to “changing market demand,” reducing its planned Lightning production to about 1,600 a week at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Mich., down from recent plans to produce 3,300 a week.
A Ford spokesperson said via email that the company would “continue to match Lightning production to customer demand.”
In August, Ford reopened the Rouge facility after a six-week shutdown to expand the plant and triple its manufacturing capacity to 150,000 vehicles a year.
U.S. electric-vehicle sales have been growing, but not at the same fast rate as last year, and automakers have been scaling back on EV spending.
Ford cuts prices for the electric F-150 by as much as 17% in July in an effort to gain market share.
In October, Ford reported lower-than-expected quarterly earnings, which included an adjusted loss of $1.3 billion for its EV unit, which was wider than Wall Street expected. Ford said that customers interested in EVs were “unwilling” to pay the vehicles’ premium prices, and the company paused billions of long-term investment in EVs due to that disconnect.
Last month, Ford resumed building an EV battery plant in Michigan that had been put on hold by the autoworkers’ strike, but scaled back its size, reducing its cell output from enough for 400,000 vehicles a year to 230,000.
Ford shares were little changed in after-hours trading Monday. The stock is down about 5% year to date, compared to the S&P 500’s
SPX
20% gain in 2023.