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Ford has confirmed it has reduce a piece shift at its plant the place the flagship F-150 Lightning electrical pickup is produced, amid declining demand within the US.
“We’re adjusting the schedule on the Rouge Electrical Automobile Middle due to a number of constraints, together with the availability chain and dealing via processing and delivering autos held for high quality checks after restarting manufacturing in August,” mentioned Ford in an announcement provided to media, together with Yahoo Finance.
The Blue Oval has confirmed 700 jobs can be affected by the shift reduce, and that this isn’t associated to the continued United Auto Staff (UAW) strikes at different factories.
Late final week The Wall Avenue Journal cited a memo from a UAW chief relating to how demand for the F-150 Lightning electrical pickup is faltering within the US.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine that our gross sales for the Lightning have tanked,” mentioned the UAW chief, as reported by The Wall Avenue Journal.
Ford started producing the F-150 Lightning at its Rouge Electrical Automobile Centre facility in April 2022 after round 200,000 orders have been taken.
The corporate has elevated the manufacturing goal on the facility twice, to an annual manufacturing charge of 150,000 autos.
Manufacturing of the F-150 Lightning has been paused numerous occasions, with the latest being on account of a battery subject that was ultimately traced again to being “uncommon incidence” and never a design flaw.
The Blue Oval additionally lately imposed worth cuts of as much as US$10,000 (A$15,780) for the F-150 Lightning within the US.
A US$7500 (A$11,835) federal tax credit score stays out there on the Lariat and Platinum trims.
Ford reported within the third quarter of this 12 months gross sales for the F-150 Lightning fell 46 per cent year-on-year to 3503 examples. The Blue Oval has mentioned, nonetheless, it expects gross sales for the flagship electrical pickup to extend within the fourth quarter of this 12 months.
For now it’s unclear if this non permanent discount in F-150 Lightning manufacturing will have an effect on the timeliness or chance of it coming to Australia.
Buyer deliveries of the domestically remanufactured combustion-powered F-150 are set to begin in November, although the 2 trim ranges are solely out there with the three.5-litre EcoBoost twin-turbo V6 petrol engine.
Ford Australia has beforehand mentioned it’s conscious of the F-150 Lightning, in addition to the F-150 Hybrid, V8, and Raptor choices. It hasn’t dominated out bringing them Down Beneath, however solely as soon as the remanufacturing course of is established and demand for the EcoBoost has been confirmed.
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