Pre-orders of Ford’s F-150 Lightning EV have been halted amid a massive sales slump. Jim Farley, Ford CEO, confirmed this as well in an interview where he said the initial goal for the product was to produce around 70,000 to 80,000 units a year.
Ford originally planned on updating this production figure because of the volume of orders they were receiving from their customers, but it appears that instead, their plan has changed due to the overwhelming demand for this car.
Farley said that Ford would not produce these electric pickup trucks in tents, a dig at Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, years ago, decided to expand production by adding a tent to the company’s Fremont factory. “We want to build EV at the Rouge” factory near Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said.
The automaker is also developing a new electric vehicle based on a new full-size pickup platform, according to an earlier report. However, there’s nothing officially revealed yet.
Ford intends to double the production of electric vehicles by 2023, setting an ambitious goal to achieve this within five years. It appears Ford is stepping up their game lately when it comes to competing with rivals like Tesla and Volkswagen. This is their way of showing how serious they are about reaching the pinnacle in the field of electric cars.
The company now expects to produce 600,000 electric vehicles a year globally by the end of 2023. That’s double what it planned. And that’s prior to Blue Oval City and other EV manufacturing plants open.” Farley wrote on Twitter.
Blue Oval City is expected to start producing batteries by 2025 and could potentially work on three new battery gigafactories.
