The 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning recently entered its second phase of production at the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center as the all-electric Ford F-150 gets closer to its launch in the spring of 2022. Ford stopped taking reservations for the F-150 Lightning as it neared the 200,000 mark. Ford has been surprised by the level of interest consumers have shown in the electric pickup, which prompted it to double the model’s planned production recently, as well as ramp up production sooner than expected. Now, the automaker has informed Gary Crossley Ford that 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning order banks will open in January.
Ford will utilize a staggered or “waved” order conversion process as it converts reservations to actual orders. It’s currently unclear how many customers will be part of each wave, nor how many waves Ford will ultimately offer. However, production won’t ramp up to 80,000 units per year until 2024. Thus, depending on how many Lightning reservation holders convert them to orders, it’s possible that not all customers will receive a 2022 model.
Ford CEO Jim Farley recently revealed that Ford plans to ramp up F-150 Lightning production to 160,000 units annually in the coming years, which will require a large investment of “hundreds of millions” of dollars to achieve.
Farley believes that most Lightning reservation holders – 80 percent, to be exact – will convert them to orders. That’s significantly more than the 66 percent of 2021 Ford Bronco reservation holders that ultimately placed an order for a new SUV, but Farley points to rising prices in the new vehicle market, coupled with the low MSRP of the 2022 Ford F-150 Lighting as the catalyst behind what he expects to be a robust conversion rate.
Source: Ford Authority
