Ford's Electric Truck
Ford Is Already Doubling Production of the F-150 Lightning Pickup
In response to consumer demand Ford is upping its production of the F-150 Lightning, the all-electric pickup it rolled out to great fanfare a few months ago. Increasing production will bring the output to 150,000 vehicles per year at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in the Blue Oval’s hometown after deliveries begin in the spring. The announcement comes as the company has received nearly 200,000 reservations for the first electric version of America’s most popular vehicle and as General Motors Co. is set to reveal virtually its all-electric Chevrolet Silverado on Wednesday at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.
Congress, despite all of its well-covered partisan bickering, did a lot of work in the past year to prepare the ground for the shift to domestic electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing, and the lion’s share of it was in the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package that includes funding to build out essential stuff like the charging stations that will someday replace gas stations.
But we should be doing more. There’s an international competition for this industry. China is a solid decade ahead of the U.S. in building up EV manufacturing capacity, and it isn’t being shy about it.
To keep pace, Congress should pick up the competitiveness bill passed by the Senate last summer, which funds R&D in all kinds of emerging industries, and get it to President Biden’s desk in 2022. Help manufacturers make more in America.
