Dive Brief:
- Ford Motor Co. is furloughing 700 of the approximately 2,000 hourly employees at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, which manufactures the automaker’s electric F-150 Lightning pickup, a company spokesperson confirmed in an email.
- The temporary layoffs are due to supply chain issues and delivery backups unrelated to the ongoing United Auto Workers strike, the spokesperson said.
- Ford did not say when the furloughed employees would return to work.
Dive Insight:
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that a UAW official said Ford was considering cutting one shift at the plant due to slowing demand for the electric pickup. The automaker sold 3,503 F-150 Lightning pickups in Q3 after selling 6,464 during the same period last year, a 45.8% year-over-year decline. While sales are up 40% year-to-date compared with last year, that figure paints a rosy picture since Ford started producing the electric pickup in April 2022.
"It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that our sales for the Lightning have tanked," the memo said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
But Ford expects F-150 Lightning sales to increase in Q4 after the automaker increased production capacity at the Rouge plant over the summer, with production resuming in August after a delay that began in July. Ford said the factory upgrades would triple its annual output capacity to 150,000 vehicles.
Ford also said it is improving battery raw material costs and continuing work on scaling production and cost to lower the price of the F-150 Lightning. In July, Ford reduced the price of the base model F-150 Lightning Pro from $59,994 to $49,995. The price adjustments make most F-150 Lightning models eligible for up to $7,500 in electric vehicle tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act.
The current UAW strike is also impacting Ford’s truck production after UAW President Shawn Fain on Thursday directed 8,700 union members to strike at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, its largest and most profitable U.S. factory.
The strike shut down production of some of Ford’s most popular and profitable vehicles, including Ford F-250–F-550 Super Duty Trucks, Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs. The vehicles built at the plant generate $25 billion a year in revenue for Ford. The automaker also says the strikes in Kentucky and Chicago could impact more than a dozen additional facilities.
Reuters reported on Friday Ford is temporarily laying off another 550 employees beginning Monday. The layoffs include around 300 employees at Ford’s Ohio transmission plant, 250 at four Michigan plants and 12 at Ford’s plant in Chicago.
Ford said Monday it had furloughed an additional 106 employees at its Sterling Axle Plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, due to the ongoing strikes against its Chicago Assembly Plant and Kentucky Truck Plant. The automaker has temporarily laid off 268 of the nearly 2,200 employees at its Sterling plant.
Ford said it had furloughed nearly 2,600 autoworkers as of Oct. 16.
