Ford’s next F-150 Lightning will have a gas generator as it pivots away from large EVs 

Ford is ending production of the fully-electric F-150 Lightning as part of a broader companywide shakeup of its electric vehicle plans, the company announced Monday. In its place, Ford will sell what’s known as an “extended range electric vehicle” version of the truck, which adds a gas generator that can recharge the battery pack to power the motors for over 700 miles. 

The company did not share when the new F-150 Lightning will go on sale, or how much it will cost. 

The pivot will come with a substantial price tag for Ford. The company will take $19.5 billion hit to reshape its EV business strategy. Most of those charges, including an $8.5 billion writedown of its EV assets, will be recorded in the fourth quarter. Ford said $5.5 billion in cash to be charged through 2027.

The shakeup affects numerous factories and workers. It also means Ford’s next-generation all-electric truck – internally dubbed “T3” — is now dead. The T3 was supposed to be a clean-sheet design, as opposed to the Lightning, which had electric vehicle technology that was shoehorned into a gas vehicle design. Ford confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s also abandoning plans for a next-generation commercial van. The current model, the E-Transit, will continue.

“Ford no longer plans to produce select larger electric vehicles where the business case has eroded due to lower-than-expected demand, high costs and regulatory changes,” the company wrote in a statement. 

The company is still planning on releasing a mid-sized all-electric pickup truck in 2027, the company confirmed Monday. The platform that powers that truck – born out of a skunkworks program led by former Tesla executives Doug Field and Alan Clarke – will also underpin other future Ford vehicles. Ford said it is still on track to begin producing cheaper lithium iron phosphate batteries in 2026. Those LFP batteries, which will be built at the BlueOval Battery Park Michigan in Marshall and use technology licensed from China’s CATL, will be used in the mid-sized truck.

“Rather than spending billions more on large EVs that now have no path to profitability, we are allocating that money into higher returning areas, more trucks and van hybrids, extended range electric vehicles, affordable EVs and entirely new opportunities like energy storage,” Ford president Andrew Frick said on a call with reporters.  

Ford revealed the F-150 Lightning in 2021, two years after it first announced plans for an all-electric Mustang, the Mach-E. Ford teased a $40,000 price tag for the Lightning, which was meant to be a flagship product for the company’s $22 billion push into electric vehicles.

Like most large electric trucks, though, the F-150 Lightning struggled in the U.S. market. Part of that was because the $40,000 price tag never materialized for most buyers, as that base trim was targeted specifically at fleet customers. Ford wound up selling around 7,000 Lightnings per quarter over the last two years, with a peak of nearly 11,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024.

EVs have faced a lot of headwinds since the F-150 Lightning was first introduced. Tesla kicked off a dramatic price war to counter falling sales, which ate into legacy automakers’ thin (or negative) margins. The re-election of Donald Trump, along with Republicans taking control of Congress, has led to a reversal of many Biden-era policies meant to encourage the sale of electric vehicles.