2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Team Surprised By The Interest It’s Generated

Just yesterday, Ford CEO Jim Farley told Automotive News that the automaker has doubled its planned annual global EV production by 2024, up to 600,000 vehicles per year. This move comes on the heels of stronger than expected demand for the automaker’s all-electric products, including the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning, 2022 Ford E-Transit, and Ford Mustang Mach-E. However, Farley also revealed some interesting tidbits regarding the Ford F-150 Lightning and how interest in the EV pickup has far exceeded the automaker’s initial expectations.

Farley revealed that Ford has secured nearly 200,000 reservations for the F-150 Lightning, which is up from 120,000 just a few months ago. Additionally, he expects that “north of 80 percent” of those reservation holders will convert them to orders when the truck launches next spring. Ford has already announced that it was doubling F-150 Lightning production at the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center and investing an additional $850 million to do so.

Originally, Farley said the F-150 Lightning team projected that it would sell around 20,000 units per year of the all-electric pickup, and noted that strong demand for both it and the Mustang Mach-E truly surprised the automaker. “We’re kind of learning this new muscle after 118 years of ‘how do you scale’ and not have all the answers – in the middle of a chip crisis,” Farley said. “We’ll see how it plays out, but that’s what we’re targeting.”

As Ford Authority recently reported, the majority of F-150 Lightning reservation holders are not only first-time EV buyers – 75 percent have also never owned a Ford vehicle, either. Luckily, they won’t have to wait much longer for deliveries to begin, as the EV pickup just entered its second phase of production – while will be used to prove out quality before full-scale production begins in a few months.

We’ll have more on the F-150 Lightning soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for the latest Ford F-Series news, Ford F-150 news, F-150 Lightning news, and non-stop Ford news coverage.