March 29, 2024

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If you didn’t reserve an electric F-150 Lightning already, get ready to wait years to buy one

2 min read
The Ford F-150 Lightning.

The Ford F-150 Lightning.Tim Levin/Insider

  • Ford stopped accepting reservations for its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck on Wednesday.

  • Ford says it has raked in nearly 200,000 reservations. That’s years of production capacity.

  • “We’ve closed reservations so we can start accepting orders,” the company said.

If you haven’t reserved a spot in line for Ford’s upcoming electric truck, the F-150 Lightning, you’re in for a long wait.

The Blue Oval stopped accepting reservations for the much-hyped pickup on Wednesday as it prepares to start fulfilling orders in 2022, a company spokeswoman confirmed to Insider. “We’ve closed reservations so we can start accepting orders,” reads a message on Ford’s website.

In January, Ford will begin inviting reservation holders to configure and order their trucks, the spokeswoman said, with customer deliveries set to start in the spring. But Ford’s massive bank of Lightning preorders means it could be years before some people who placed a deposit actually receive their trucks. Anyone who missed the boat on reservations will need to hang tight until orders open more widely. That wait will be even longer.

Ford F-150 Lightning

The Ford F-150 Lightning.Tim Levin/Insider

Ford has raked in nearly 200,000 Lightning reservations, CEO Jim Farley told Automotive News last month. Even if a large chunk of those people doesn’t go through with the purchase, those orders will keep the company busy for years. Ford hasn’t said how many Lightnings it plans to build in 2022 and 2023, but it aims to ramp up production to 80,000 trucks annually by 2024.

A Reuters report from August placed production targets at 15,000 for 2022 and 55,000 for 2023.

That means some reservation holders won’t get a 2022-model-year truck. “Invitations to order a 22MY will continue to be sent to reservation holders until 22MY production is fulfilled. Remaining reservationists will be invited to order in subsequent model years,” the spokeswoman said. Non-reservation holders will get the opportunity to place an order “for later model years,” she said.

After seeing high demand for the truck, Ford announced in September that it would invest an additional $250 million and hire more people to accelerate the truck’s production. The automaker initially planned on volumes of 20,000 per year, Farley told Automotive News.

An electric version of the most popular vehicle in the US, the F-150 Lightning is a huge deal for Ford and the broader auto industry’s move toward cleaner vehicles. It starts at $40,000 for a basic work truck, and pricing can push past $90,000 for a fully-loaded model.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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