An interesting report has emerged this week, indicating that there is a relatively high number of new all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup trucks available for purchase right away from dealers in the United States.
According to CarEdge, there are more than 8,000 Ford F-150 Lightning listed – 8,128 as of writing this article – in various versions that are marked as new. For reference, the number of used vehicles is below 400 (398 to be precise).
Through the end of September, Ford sold 12,260 F-150 Lightnings in the US (up 40 percent year-over-year), including 3,503 in the third quarter (down 46 percent year-over-year). The cumulative number is 27,877 units.
If we combine the numbers – vehicles sold (27,877) and listed by dealers (8,128) – then it turns out that the total is over 36,000. This provides us with the production numbers since the beginning of 2022 and indicates that unsold vehicles account for 22 percent of all vehicles produced. Well, the share might be lower if there are vehicles at the manufacturer’s parking lot/in transit to dealers.
The report about those numbers was shared on the X platform, owned by Tesla’s boss Elon Musk, who posted a comment “Wow,” which we can interpret as a surprise. However, the original post from AJ (@alojoh / X) wrongly indicates that roughly 30 percent of the vehicles ever manufactured remain unsold. That’s because the author divided 8,012 units by 27,877, instead of by the total.
Anyway, it’s an interesting data point, potentially indicating demand issues for all-electric pickup at the offered prices. The Ford F-150 Lightning is a new model with a long queue of reservations, so we would not expect thousands of vehicles waiting for customers.
Let’s note that Ford lowered prices this summer quite considerably (Elon Musk said at the time that the Ford F-150 Lightning is a “good vehicle,” but “somewhat expensive”). Later, the Flash trim was announced, and a new wave of discounts emerged (up to $15,000) in October. Meanwhile, Ford is experiencing further production issues at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan.
On top of that, yesterday it was revealed that General Motors intends to delay the production start of all-electric pickups at its second EV plant (Orion Assembly), mentioning demand among the reasons. We can’t be sure, but perhaps there is a billion-dollar question here as to whether OEMs can attract a high number of customers at the anticipated price point.
