Ford (F) has halted production of its electric pickup truck at the Rouge EV Center in Michigan following a fire at an aluminum supplier’s factory. The F-150 Lightning will remain on pause as Ford focuses on more profitable gas and hybrid F-Series trucks.
Why is Ford pausing F-150 Lightning production?
Ford reported third-quarter earnings after the market closed, beating top and bottom line expectations. Despite the strong performance, it wasn’t all good news.
A fire at Novelis’ aluminum plant in Oswego, NY, which Ford relies on for its F-series, is causing the company to halt production of its electric pickup, the F-150 Lightning.
Ford warned the fire could cut into pretax profits by up to $1 billion more than it initially expected. To offset the losses, the automaker announced plans to add up to 1,000 new jobs to significantly increase production of the F-150 and F-Series Super Duty trucks. In 2026, Ford aims to boost production by over 50,000 trucks.
Meanwhile, the electric pickup is being left on the back burner. Ford said that “F-150 Lightning assembly at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center will remain paused.”
The move comes as Ford prioritizes “more profitable” gas and hybrids, which the company said use less aluminum.
All hourly employees at the Rouge plant will be transferred next door to the Dearborn Truck Plant to join the new third crew.
Ford will add up to 900 jobs at the Rouge Complex and 100 new positions at the Kentucky Truck Plant to boost output. When or if Ford will restart F-150 Lightning production remains up in the air.
Top comment by FC
I just visited the Rouge plant last week and watched a new F-150 come off the line every 52 seconds. It was so interesting to watch. I was really interested to learn more about how they take every Lightning around the parking area to Ford’s own private DC charging station that has probably 20-30 chargers, but nobody I talked to knew anything about the chargers. I inquired if the battery packs were installed at low SOC for safety reasons and then charged prior to transport, or if they just test every truck charges, but again no answers. I will say in my 3 hours there I saw a steady stream of Lightnings. Every truck coming off the line is sold before it’s built. It seemed like every 3-4 minutes a new Lighting was born, but I don’t know if they were being built during both 10 hour shifts, or just one. Another thing… All F-150s are inspected for defects by a cell phone using an AI software developed by a Ford employee. It’s a recent innovation at certain Ford plants. Lightnings come out of a different building at Rouge than the rest of the F-150s, so I didn’t get to see them marrying packs to chassis. It was obvious the Lightning was originally promoted heavily by Ford execs, but the lack of knowledge by the staff made it seem like a forgotten product now. It won’t shock me to see it discontinued completely after this hiatus.
Although it hasn’t quite lived up to expectations, the F-150 Lightning is still America’s best-selling electric pickup, outpacing the Tesla Cybertruck and Rivian R1T. Ford sold a record of over 10,000 electric pickups in Q3 for a total of 23,034 through the first nine months of 2025.
Ford Blue and Pro, the automaker’s ICE and software/commercial businesses, posted strong growth in the third quarter.
Meanwhile, Model e, its electric vehicle business, lost another $1.4 billion in the third quarter. That’s up from the $1.2 billion loss in Q3 2024. Ford’s EV business lost $3.6 billion through September.
Ford said roughly $3 billion of it is from its previous generation EVs. The other $600 million is due to investments in its next-gen electric models.
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