Ford's EV Graveyard

Ford Motor Company may pull the plug on production of its electric F-150 Lightning truck model. Due to “unprecedented demand” in 2022, Ford ramped up production and planned to sell up to 150,000 Lightnings annually. According to Inside EVs, the company only sold 33,000 electric trucks last year, "and likely sold them at a substantial loss."  As EV subsidies sunset and losses continue to pile up, growing concerns about what will become of Tennessee’s nearly $1 billion investment in a Ford EV and battery manufacturing plant that was supposed to bring jobs to West Tennessee seem inevitable.

In 2021, the Tennessee General Assembly sealed the deal with Ford to build BlueOval City during a contentious special session that drew ire from Tennesseans. At the time, constituents and legislators were desperately calling for a special session to address Covid-19 mandates that were destroying small businesses and forcing employees to choose between a vaccination and a paycheck. They only got their wish after the legislature hammered out an agreement with Ford in a separate session. Adding insult to injury, the special session that produced Tennessee’s COVID omnibus bill came with a carve-out enabling Ford to require masks in the workplace.

Since then, the Ford BlueOval rollout has continued to be less than savory. Last August, the automaker delayed production of its next-generation electric pickup truck at the West Tennessee plant until 2027. At the time, Ford continued construction of the BlueOval City campus while assuring stakeholders that the decision to delay was an attempt to improve profitability and that 3,000 workers would be employed at the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center.

Three months ago, Ford pumped the brakes on Tennessee EV production for a second time and delayed the production of two next-generation EVs until 2028. The move stalled the production of EV pickups that were to be produced at BlueOval facilities in Stanton, Tennessee—foreshadowing Ford’s current indecision regarding the future of the F-150 Lightning.

It’s not breaking news that the EV industry has been buoyed by subsidization, distracting from the root rot that inevitably occurs when incentives outpace innovation. Overpromising and under-delivering occurs so often in the “innovative” energy sphere that it might as well be the standard epitaph scrawled on every headstone in this American graveyard of false starts and failed endeavors.

But Ford isn’t quite ready to give up on the F-150 Lightning dream just yet. Once subsidies dry up and the competition thins out, Ford CEO Jim Farley seems hopeful that the company can shift gears into the “partial electrification” space—and maybe just another delay or two in the meantime. That said, the clock may be ticking a bit louder in Tennessee given that the state included a clawback clause in the BlueOval City deal if Ford doesn’t deliver on jobs promised.

As of this writing, no final decision has been made regarding the fate of the EV F-150 Lightning Truck model. Perhaps Ford is too big to fail, but it seems fair to surmise that the delay of Tennessee’s investment fits right in with the landscape carved by the chainsaw of fluctuating subsidization: outdated EV charging stations rotting in city parking lots, dysfunctional solar panels adorning rooftops that serve as nothing more than expensive paperweights siphoning off resale value, and ghost towns built for workers that are never hired.