Last October, The Blue Oval announced that it was scaling back $12 billion in planned EV investments as demand for those types of vehicles tapered off a bit in the later months of the year. Part of that plan involves slashing scheduled 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning production in half, which means that at least some workers at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center were bound to be affected. Now, FoMoCo has announced that it will shift some of those workers to the Michigan Assembly plant – where the Ford Ranger and Ford Bronco are built – and it will also add a third shift to that facility, too.
Ford will move around 700 workers from the Rouge plant to MAP, but the automaker also plans to hire around 900 additional workers to fill out its planned 1,600-person third shift. The intentions of this move are quite obvious – to ramp up Ford Bronco and Ford Ranger production at MAP to meet customer demand, all while taking resources away from a model that isn’t quite selling as well as the company had hoped.
Interestingly, Ford also noted that the all-new, redesigned Ranger and Ranger Raptor are slated to launch this year in the U.S., seemingly confirming that both are still in the pre-production phase after each was originally scheduled to arrive last summer. In addition to adding a third shift at MAP, Ford will also begin building vehicles at the plant seven days a week, versus the five-day schedule it was operating on previously.
All of this is notable given the fact that both Ford Bronco and Ranger production were affected by the six-week-long targeted United Auto Workers strike last fall, which – combined with various supply chain issues – has severely hampered Ranger production, specifically. As for the Bronco, it experienced a short lull as a result, but production of the rugged SUV ramped up to near-normal levels by the end of 2023.
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Comments
I’m glad Ford is finally seeing the light and dialing down the electric trucks that few people want and ramping up the ones that are in demand.
does that mean they will produce 3 2024 Rangers in February or they just going to practice making the 2025’s.