Some are saying that no Lightnings will be built the remainder of tis year due to a Fire that destroyed part of the Novelis aluminum plant in New York earlier this month

The fire issue is expected to cause a 1 billion dollar profit loss to Ford.

"Ford paused production of the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning and two of its large SUVs last week. The downtime could extend into further weeks due to an aluminum shortage, those familiar with the situation have said. It is unclear how many, if any, hourly workers are impacted yet, given some may be moved to other jobs".


https://www.usatoday.com/story/cars/...%20next%20year.

 

Thanks for keeping the forum informed.

The impact to new truck and SUV sales is obvious... but an impact that doesn't come immediately to mind pertains to the production of collision replacement parts.

Aluminum skinned body panels are more often replaced rather than dollied out and repaired, and if parts for the production line are in short supply, it makes one wonder about the availability and backordered wait time for collision repair parts.

Thus, the loss of the Novelis plant can potentially impact existing Ford truck and SUV owners, not just prospective ones.

 

Another article

Ford is halting F-150 Lightning production to focus on more profitable gas and hybrid trucks

https://electrek.co/2025/10/23/ford-...s-and-hybrids/

 

I read about the fire last week but the article above is what came out this morning.

So, is Lightning production pausing for both reasons or did Ford change their story? The article went on to say that Ford is adding another 1000 jobs and extra shifts to maintain production needs for the petro trucks.

 

Both reasons can be the case at the same time. The production of lightning was halted after the fire, and will continue to be so, since Ford has to decide where the available aluminum stock should go to keep production running.

Though judging by the number of Lightnings on dealers lots near me with some units I have seen having been there for closing on 2 years now, seems like halting production was inevitable anyway even before the fire, and the fire was the perfect face saving cause to use as causation.

 

I agree with your statement in the first paragraph Ford needs to allocate their limited Aluminum resources to the most profitable F-150 ICE production. I don't know the fate of Ford Lightnings in the near future.

Here locally I don't see any Lightning lot queens lingering on dealer lots. I just did a search on cargurus.com for my zip code and there are 221 NEW 2025 Lightnings listed for sale and no earlier year New Truck models listed The 2025 model year Lightnings came up on the market about 7 months ago, so locally the oldest new NEW Lightning listed for sale is less than 7 months old. Definitely none have been on a dealer lot for 2 years. By comparison there are 1,948 F-150 NEW ICE trucks listed on the same site using the same parameters.

Saying all this, while driving my Tesla, just today in 30 minutes I saw 3 Lightnings on the road and only one Cybertruck. I also saw well over 20 new Tesla Model Y Junipers. The Lightning is stealth and hard to spot, even for a Lightning owner. I pulled up behind one today at a red light. I didn't recognize it as a Lightning initially but it struck me as a beautiful Spotless Shiny Black F-150. Then I realized it was a Lightning only because of the light bar across the tailgate. I even took a picture. When the light changed he took off like a bat out of hell. I'm sure he was enjoying the thrill of the massive quiet acceleration. Time stamp on picture was today at 2:47pm

 

I assume you are trying to show there are many more ICE F series waiting to be sold than Lightnings. So in your example it would extrapolate to that that the Lightning sales volume roughly equates to 1/9 that of the ICE F Series.

According to Ford

https://fordauthority.com/2025/10/fo...arter-2025-q3/
So far this year Ford sold 597k ICE F series, versus 23k Lightning. I am no mathematician but I think 23k is not quiet 1/9 of 597k. So in your area dealers are stuck with far more Lightnings in inventory days than ICE F series. If it keeps pace with national wide sales trend, you should see about 75 Lightnings for sale in the same area as 1948 units of F series.

If my math is not right, please do let me know.

 

No, Your math appears to be on target but you are reading too much into my reply.

I was just trying to see if locally here the dealers have excessive quantity OLD new stock sitting on their lots as you are seeing in your area. That doesn’t appear to be the case at least here.

Brandon Ford, which claims to be the largest Series selling F series Ford dealer in the country, has 463 new F-150s and only 3 New Lightnings in stock according to their web site. The Black Lightning that I took a picture of today had a Brandon Ford sticker on the lower left tailgate. That surprised me because, full disclosure Brandon Ford historically never embraced the EV transition.

While Sarasota Ford is big time into EVs. They have multiple L2 chargers on site and a couple of new DC Fast chargers open to the public. The majority of their sales force employees drive Lightnings. They currently show 211 new F-150s and 28 new Lightnings in inventory. That’s where I bought my current Lightning. Most times I stopped by there they had at least one Lightning parked in the delivery overhang waiting for a new owner to pick it up. They know the product and they move Lightning inventory quickly. Their 28 Lightnings won’t last long.

 

Has Ford heard about Sarasota Ford's success in moving Lightnings? Seems like they should be directing as many units as they can to that location. With Q3 Lightning sales benefiting from pull-ahead demand before the Sep 30 federal tax credit deadline and still couldn't break 24k, they will need all the help they can get if they wish to match 2024 sales numbers.

 

This is all going to play in auto industry's favor. Limited supply equals limited production which equals higher demand and unreasonable prices.......again. I was actually proud of Ford WRT Lightning pricing, it had finally fallen closer in line to ICE vehicle pricing and now this.

I'm wondering how many days of inventory Ford has stored away and can the aluminum supplier get back on their feet before Ford exhausts their inventory? And lastly, if Ford is using a sole source US based aluminum supplier then maybe someone with 14 business degrees should be running the company.

 

With all the noise and low sales numbers nationally, the Ford Lightning is still the most sold EV Trucks.

i don't know that Ford directs inventory model mix. It would seem to me that the dealers themselves decide which models they want for lot inventory.

Back 7 months ago when I bought my 2024 Lightning Sarasota Ford was loaded with Lightning inventory. Last year Ford used the "Refreshment Centers" to store inventory. A buyer would "order" a new Lightning and Ford would match a truck in stock at the refreshment center and send it to the dealer. I think there were only 2 refreshment centers in the nation but I may be wrong. From order to delivery it took less than 10 days.

Early in 2025 Ford abandoned the Refreshment Center policy and Sarasota Ford took as many as they could get from refreshment centers for their lot inventory. Brandon took ZERO.

Looking at the 3 Lightnings currently in stock at Brandon they appear to be freshly built since August. Only one is in stock and 2 are in transit. they may be customer orders, not for stock. The 450s I special ordered and bought from them also were listed on their site.

Looking at the BLEND DATE on the Window Stickers of the 29 Lightnings showing in stock at Sarasota, they all are less than 6 months from build date. 120250429 BLEND at top of Sticker shows it was scheduled to be built 04/29/2025.

Without the Tax Credit it would be interesting to see how fast they are sold or not sold.

 

This dis-proportionally impacts Ford so I am not sure if it will manifest itself the same way the Corona thing did. Ram is re-introducing the 5.7 Hemi in their 1/2 tons and GM has a lot of ground to claw back after their 5.3 and 6.2 issues. Ford doesn't have a lot of room to maneuver if GM and Ram try to take advantage of the weak spot in Ford's supply chain.

 

That Yahoo! Finance article that stated that Ford is canceling Lightning was false reporting, according to a Ford representative on the other forum. I hope that's true. I had expected them to keep Lightning going through the '27 model year before pulling the plug (pun intended) in favor of the new T3 platform truck.

As far as the fire and supplies of aluminum sheet ... it's smart for Ford to use the resources to make the most profitable trucks. I understand that decision fully. Hopefully in Q1 2026 when the plant is back up and running Ford can resume normal production.

 

Canceling is a strong word but it won't surprise me if a direction change is done, given Ford has probably not surpassed the projected first year unit count since the start of the Lightning sales, and the Lightning are unprofitable. Any ICE vehicle would have been canceled had it not been massive federal, state, and local incentives given to the Lightning and what seemed like prevailing federal direction prior to Nov 2024.

 

Ford isn't the only company impacted by the fire. If it is serious enough that Ford is pausing production of the lightning then it is serious and Ford is smart to divert resources to their main bread and butter.

Some really big aluminum can and end makers which supply big beer and beverage companies also count that plant as just one of their major suppliers and it is impacting them and their production.

So what is really interesting to me is the politics of who gets priority here on what supply is avaliable. There are some really big companies competing for that and already trying to source offshore in the meantime and the tariffs play into that cost.