Ford is cutting F-150 Lightning production due to waning demand
Ford is cutting F-150 Lightning production due to waning demand
Ford is cutting production of the electric F-150 Lightning pickup. Although sales increased by 55 percent last year, they're growing more slowly than the company anticipated.
Priced way too fucking high and Ford didn’t do anything about dealerships marking up on an already absurd price.
I will never forget test driving a Maverick and the salesman bragging about how his dealership put a $75k markup on the Lightnings just because they could.
Put a sour taste in my mouth for anything Ford ever again in the future.
That’s why dealerships need to die. Manufacturers don’t like that shit either, but dealerships have been banding together to lobby to remain a shitty middle-man that greatly marks up prices.
Manufacturers love the dealership model, because those shitty middlemen at the dealerships shield the manufacturers from direct contact with the consumer and all of the consumer's problems and complaints. And the dealerships absorb the costs of holding inventory and investing in the real estate square footage required to sell cars.
People like to hate on Tesla around here, but they were at least fighting the good fight against dealers. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason still counts.
This.
A friend of my parents desperately wanted one of the new Broncos, and they were just selling out everywhere, so they decided to work with the small local dealership and order one direct from Ford.
So they picked out every last detail, placed the deposit, and waited.
It was like 5 or 6 months then they finally got the call to come down, it was ready.
Well when they got there, the fucking piece of shit dealer tells them that he's increasing the price by 10k.
They ask why and what happened to the price they agreed on, and the guy tells them that basically these kinds of customer orders are the only way he can get more broncos from Ford, but he knows he can get more for this one so he's going back on their agreement. So they can either agree to the higher price right now, or go home empty handed and he will still sell it within the week.
I don't know how they walked out of that place not in handcuffs, because I'd have assaulted the guy.
They get home and call up Ford and Ford basically said, "Sorry you had to go through that, but we have no control over our dealers, so they can do that and neither you nor we have any recourse or any way around it."
Basically that story alone meant to me that A. I'll never drive a Ford, and 2. I will badmouth that little locally owned dealership any time anyone I know is considering using them, and I hope they go under.
The thing is, Ford can control that shit, they just have no desire or motivation to do so. Contrast that story with Subaru. Post pandemic when car prices were insane and demand was through the roof, Subaru of America mandated that all their dealers were not too MSRP on any new Subaru vehicles. If they found any dealership price gouging, they got one warning, then SoA pulled their fucking license to sell the brand.
Why would a salesman ever say that to a customer! Or even anyone!
You don't need to be smart to be a car salesman. I think it may actually be a hindrance.
I had a salesman tell me once that I could get a really good deal on an R32. Someone at the dealership took it out for a joyride and rolled it, but because it wasn’t insured, they slapped it back together and sold it with a clean title.
Another time I had a sales guy try to sell me a truck with 100k miles put on it in 12 months with no maintenance records.
I wondered the same lol.
But he was all around off putting.
I found the Maverick on their website and was amazed. It was a limited edition with all the features for around $40k if I remember right and was right around the corner from where I worked. So I knew I wanted it and went to see it as soon as I got off of work.
Walked into the dealership and asked them about their Mavericks. They said they had 4 available with one person actively signing the paperwork to take one of them home today. I asked about the available trims and they listed them but none matched the one I saw online so I felt I needed to now bring up the exact one I saw online (didn’t want to make it obvious I wanted this so they could upsell me, but when they didn’t list it off, I knew I lost my edge and might be wasting my time).
When the salesman saw the one on the website and the price he literally laughed and said they would never have anything like this for that price on their lot. He said they immediately put a $4,500 markup on all Mavericks.
I honestly wanted to walk when I heard that but my mom and her husband wanted to still give them a chance so we went on a test drive and that’s when he told us the markup on the Lightnings too.
He had also asked me about what I did for work and when I mentioned some of the stuff I did, he made a condescending remark to me too. Can’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember the feeling of disrespect.
Just all around was one of the strangest dealership visits I’ve ever had. Never found someone who made me feel like wanting to run so bad.
As I write this…makes me wonder if he didn’t like me and wanted to chase me off by being as off putting as possible.
Because this was during peak pandemic stock shortages when dealerships were selling everything they had with zero effort. They had a free years there where they had salesmen who never had to put any effort into selling a car.
I was surprised to see this headline because I remember how high the interest was when it was first revealed. What a shame that EV adoption is being hampered by price gouging. The industry is ripe for competition.
Put a sour taste in my mouth for anything Ford ever again in the future.
Sorry to tell you but that's not a Ford thing. That's a dealership thing. Ford has tried to control it but there's only so much they can do.
Dealerships were created and mandated to improve competition. Letting the OEM decide what prices they can charge would be completely antithetical to that.
They marketed the Lightning at $40-something-k, everyone wanted one. Then they only made them cost twice that, and "suddenly nobody wants one"
Same energy as "nobody wants to work anymore", really
No demand?? I want it. I just can't afford it. Do something about THAT.
An 800v LiFePo truck would actually be able to tow reasonably as chargers improve. You'd have to stop every 120mi and change for 10-15 mins but I could live with 15 min stops every two hours.
Plus they don't have thermal runaway and burn your fucking house down while charging.
Gas at Costco is 2.75. When it jumps back up to $4, they’ll start selling more again.
I think Ford’s bigger problem is that the R1T is a cooler truck that costs about the same.
After driving both I went with the lightning.
The R1T is cool. It’s a single person camping truck all the way. A little smaller, more capable of getting in and out of tight places that are predominately Jeep accessible. But the center rear seat is very uncomfortable, the payload capacity is lower both size and weight wise, and for me being forced in to one pedal driving was not ideal.
The lightning is wider, and heavier. But also more comfortable for everyone inside, can tow better, and I have loved having the power options, no need for a generator.
The audiences are similar but a bit different. I do think that Ford is nuts for saying there’s no demand. Make the ER pro for 50k and you could sell them all day. But you can’t even order that option, much less get it for that price. Maybe it costs more than to produce, but I’m willing to bet not. They would just need to be able to sell them direct to public to make it worth it and most states don’t allow for it.
My friend bought one for 80k and loves it.
Yeah wtf, I thought demand was nuts, just that no one could get ahold of one.
There was demand, and then you see a sticker that says $15,000 dealership markup and you walked away.
Initially, yeah. But it looks like things cooled after the initial wave of people who were eager for an EV pickup.
As someone that drives a truck for work, I’d love to have one but I don’t have the money for a new one right now.