Ford pauses F-150 production due to battery issues
Ford has paused production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck and deliveries of new vehicles due to a possible problem with the battery. However, there is currently no sales stop.
According to a Ford spokesperson, the potential battery problem was identified during quality checks prior to delivery. Ford is not yet giving details of the nature of the problem. However, it says that the company is not aware of any incidents related to the potential problem in Ford-owned vehicles and customer-owned electric pickup trucks.
A sales stop has not been issued. All F-150 Lightning trucks already built and at dealerships have been released for scheduled delivery. Once this buffer is used up, deliveries will have to be paused at a later date due to a lack of supplies.
The fact that Ford is not yet communicating an exact timetable has a simple reason: the engineering team is currently still looking for the exact cause. “It depends on how long it will take to carry out the root cause analysis,” the spokesperson said. It is also not clear from which production date the vehicles will be held back.
Ford uses battery cells from South Korean manufacturer SK On for the F-150 Lightning. The cells for this vehicle are produced in the first SK battery factory in Georgia, from which, for example, the VW plant in Tennessee is also supplied for the US production of the ID.4. However, since Ford does not provide any further information on the possible problem, it is unclear whether the cause lies with the battery cells or in the assembly of the supplied cells into ready-to-install battery packs. A media report from South Korea suggests that it may indeed be the battery cells. “We are investigating the matter,” a spokesperson for SK On is quoted as saying by the Korea Times.
The only thing that is clear is that for the model, which is already in demand in the USA (Ford has already had to increase the planned production capacity several times), the waiting times will now become somewhat longer – if the problem can be fixed quickly, perhaps only by a few days. Due to the high demand and the increased purchase prices, Ford had also raised the price of the F-150 Lightning several times – meanwhile, the model costs almost 39 per cent more than at market launch.
0 Comments