While the world waits with bated breath (probably not) for Tesla Cybertruck production, the other automobile makers who have said they’re going to are moving forward with their plans to actually put a truck on sale.
Today’s example is Ford. When Ford announced the F-150 Lighting, the company said it’d be on sale by the end of Spring of 2022. While technically that gives the company until late June to make deliveries, it looks like it might be delivering ahead of schedule.
Twitter user Sergio Rodriguez tweeted that he has a build date of the week 04/18/2022.
What a message to wake up to! My F-150 Lightning ⚡️ is scheduled for production! This is pretty exciting! I can’t wait! #Ford #LightningStrikes #Lightning #ElectricVehicles #sustainable #green pic.twitter.com/p6VtX6PBp3
— Sergio Rodriguez (@LyftGyft) February 24, 2022
While the first batch of trucks will undoubtedly need to go through an extra round of quality checks and extended validation, it appears that Ford is right on schedule with its plans to get Lightning customers their trucks on time.
With some 200,000 reservations for the F-150 Lightning, it’s going to take time for the company to fulfill all the orders. Ford CEO Jim Farley recently tweeted that his company will be expanding global EV production capacity to 600,000 units by the end of 2023. While not all of that production capacity will go to Lightnings, a good portion likely will.
Rivian is already delivering its electric truck, the R1T, to customers as we speak, and GMC has delivered at least 1 Hummer EV to a customer in the last calendar year. More of those are likely coming down the pipeline soon.
The F-150 Lighting won’t be the first electric pickup truck on sale in North America, but it will be the first full-sized truck that isn’t geared specifically for the lifestyle buyer.
The Ford F-150 Lighting Pro trim is designed to be the fleet and work truck hero, while folks who want to go full luxury can opt for a Platinum.
Soon, there’ll even been a half-ton offering from Chevrolet with the Silverado EV, and we recently drove an HD all-electric pickup truck prototype from Magna that has components that’ll appear soon in one of the Big 3’s trucks.
On the other hand, Cybertruck is still facing delays. Will it eventually see the light of day? We hope so. It’s a unique design that appeals to a certain segment of people, and getting more people into electric vehicles is not a bad thing. It’d just be nice to see more than one or two prototypes occasionally driving around and here more steady plans on when people who put down reservation deposits will actually see their trucks.
In the meantime, the rest of the world is moving forward with electric trucks. We’re looking forward to driving all of them, including the Lighting, soon.
