Ford of Canada has announced significant price reductions for its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck. In all, the reductions can be as much as $15,000. The company says it’s able to slash prices because of lower costs of raw materials and improvements to its production process, but there's another reality to consider.
Last week, we learned that a number of Ford dealers were now complaining about a surplus of electric vehicles, with buyers making themselves scarcer than anticipated. Price cuts are one way to draw more buyers in, as we've seen Tesla do in recent months with several of its products.
Meanwhile, Ford has temporarily closed its Rouge plant in Michigan, where the truck is manufactured, in order to make improvements. These will enable the company to triple the plant's annual output to 150,000 units by autumn.
That's all well and good, but the company will need buyers for all those additional units.
New pricing of the 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning
The starting price for the base Pro version drops from $74,000 to $59,000. For the XLT variant with standard range, the price melts by $10,000 to $69,000. With extended range, the price rises to $85,000.
The regular and extended-range versions of the Lariat model drop in price by $10,000 and $9,000 respectively, to $80,000 and $99,600.
For the top-of-the-range Platinum extended-range model, pricing drops from $121,000 to $115,000.
Surprisingly, the biggest price cuts are for entry-level models. This means one thing: Ford needs to move units.
Customers can order the model now, and Ford says that dealers have vehicles in stock.