Ford F-150 Lightning Plant Working on One Less Shift

Published on October 16, 2023 in Electric by The Car Guide

Ford, which set a goal to triple F-150 Lightning production in 2023, reaching 150,000 units, must now revise its plans and eliminate one of three shifts at the Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan.

The move is effective starting today but no one knows how long it will last. Some 700 jobs are affected. The automaker said it will rotate the shift that is being cut.

Apparently, this has to do with multiple constraints including supply chain issues and not the ongoing auto workers strike in the U.S., which last week hit Ford’s biggest plant, located in Kentucky and producing Super Duty trucks.

Make no mistake, though: the severe drop in F-150 Lightning sales across the border is a big reason why, too. Ford’s electric pickup fell 46 percent in the third quarter of 2023 compared with the second quarter.

"It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that our sales for the Lightning have tanked," said a union official last Friday in a memo that The Wall Street Journal got a copy of.

This setback in F-150 Lightning production comes just three weeks after Ford announced it was suspending all construction work at a new LFP battery plant in Michigan—again, not due to the strike, but rather because the company is having second thoughts about the site’s profitability when it opens in 2026.

Compared with nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) batteries currently powering the Ford Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, lithium iron phosphate batteries are very durable and tolerate more frequent and faster charging while using fewer high-demand, high-cost materials, which would help Ford contain or even reduce EV prices.

In a statement, a Ford spokesperson said a final decision regarding the company’s investment in the LFP battery plant has yet to be made.