Ford starts customer deliveries of the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck

The electric pickup trucks are coming. Ford has officially started delivering the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck to retail and fleet customers.

At Electrek, we have been talking for years about how electric pickup trucks are needed to accelerate EV adoption in the US, purely because of how big the pickup segment is in the country.

After years, it’s finally happening.

Rivian started delivering the R1T electric pickup late last year. It’s still slowly ramping up production and already has a few thousand vehicles delivered.

Now Ford is starting deliveries of the F-150 Lightning, which is extremely exciting since it is an electric version of the F-150, the best-selling passenger vehicle in the US.

Ford announced that it started production of the electric pickup truck last month, and they have since made their way to dealerships across the US. Some were delivered to fleet customers, but now we learned that the automaker started deliveries to its retail customers as well. The very first retail customer reported their delivery of the F-150 Lightning Forum, pictured above.

The Michigan resident reserved a Platinum Trim Lightning on May 20, 2021, and the reservation was transferred into order on January 7, 2022. It was built on April 18, 2022 – before Ford actually announced the start of production – and finally delivered this morning May 26, 2022.

As we previously reported, Ford quickly accumulated 200,000 reservations for the electric pickup and realized that the demand was much higher than anticipated. The company quickly ramped up its production and is now planning for an annual production rate of 150,000 units by the end of next year. This year, production is expected to be limited to about 40,000 units.

While this is not much compared to overall F-150 production, it is good to jump-start electric pickup trucks in the US. Next year, the Silverado Electric, Tesla Cybertruck, and more are expected to contribute to the electric pickup truck revolution in the US