Ford Halts Production of F-150 Lightning Electric Truck Over Battery Issue

Faults in high-voltage automotive batteries can cause overheating and intense fires that can take hours to put out. For several months in 2021 and 2022, General Motors had to stop producing and shipping its Chevrolet Bolt electric compact after a manufacturing glitch was found to have caused a number of fires. G.M. corrected the problem, replaced the battery packs in all the Bolts it made from 2017 to 2021 and resumed production last year.

Tesla cars have also been involved in a number of fires caused by damaged or faulty batteries.

Ford is the largest producer of E.V.s in the United States after Tesla. In addition to the F-150 Lightning and the E-Transit, Ford makes an electric sport utility vehicle, the Mustang Mach-E. The Mach-E uses a different battery pack from the Lightning.

Ford has more than 200,000 reservations for Lightnings, but has been unable to increase production beyond about 2,000 to 2,400 a month. By the end of last year, it had sold slightly over 15,000. The truck is made in Dearborn, Mich., and its battery pack is made by a South Korean supplier, SK On, in Georgia and Hungary.

The battery issue has cropped up as Ford is trying to cut costs and return to profitability. It lost $2 billion in 2022.

On Monday, Ford said it planned to build a $3.5 billion battery plant in Michigan with technology and help from a key Chinese supplier, Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited, known as CATL, the world’s largest supplier of automotive batteries.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/business/ford-f150-lightning-battery.html