Ford slashes the price of the F-150 Lightning EV pickup

The Ford F-150 Lightning is now a bit less expensive. The automaker announced today significant price cuts to its electric pickup, citing improved manufacturing efficiencies as the cause of the lower price.

The Lightning price cuts hit every trim level. The entry-level Pro work truck is now priced at $49,995, down from $59,974. The XLT trims received similar treatments, with their price cuts ranging from $9,479 to $8,479. The top trim level, the Platinum Extended Range package, saw the smallest price reduction of $6,079, dropping the vehicle’s price from $98,074 to $91,995.

Ford said in a released statement that several factors lead to the price cut.

“Shortly after launching the F-150 Lightning, rapidly rising material costs, supply constraints and other factors drove up the cost of the EV truck for Ford and our customers,” said Marin Gjaja, chief customer officer, Ford Model e. “We’ve continued to work in the background to improve accessibility and affordability to help to lower prices for our customers and shorten the wait times for their new F-150 Lightning.”

The Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan is temporarily closed to implement plant upgrades. When completed, Ford says it will have the capacity to produce 150,000 F-150 Lightnings a year, a three-fold increase over current levels.

Full-size trucks have long been a leading revenue driver for automakers and the EV pickup wars are heating up. General Motors and Chevrolet are nearing the release of its fantastic and expensive EV Silverado (read my early test drive report here), and Stellantis is inching closer to release an electric version of the RAM pickup. Likewise, Tesla just announced it had manufactured the first Cybertruck on its production line and Rivian is slowly rolling out its EV pickup, too.

Ford slashes the price of the F-150 Lightning EV pickup by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch