The Ford F-150 Lightning is a curious vehicle. Engineered to basically be an F-150 with an electric motor, it was a good faith effort at shortcutting its way into the electric truck market. It didn’t quite work as planned, and an ill-timed fire at the automaker’s aluminum supplier basically doomed the slow-selling Lightning. Now that Ford isn’t making them, they’re in high demand.
Today is, obviously, the 10th anniversary of the knighting of Rod Stewart, so I might keep The Morning Dump a little briefer than usual.
While used Lightnings are selling well, new BMWs continue to dominate the luxury market in the United States. The UAW ticket led by Shawn Fain absolutely cleaned up in elections, so I should talk about that. And China and the EU have come to a deal on hybrids.
The Best Proof That The EVs Are Just Too Damn Expensive
I don’t think I’ve driven an F-150 Lightning, but I remember David rraving about it when it first appeared on the market. This was a vehicle that made a lot of compromises in order to share parts with the normal F-150, which wasn’t a bad strategy. Given that the F-150 Lightning was initially priced at a level somewhat competitive with gas-powered trucks, it seemed possible that the Lightning could have been a hit.
Relative to other electric trucks, the Lightning did well, it’s just that there wasn’t enough demand for new electric trucks that cost upwards of $60,000. Even when Ford lowered the cost of the Lightning it wasn’t enough to stoke sufficient volume to offset all the money the company was losing building them.
When Ford’s main aluminum supplier caught on fire (twice), the resulting shutdown hit F-150 production hard, and the company prioritized profitable gas pickup trucks over unprofitable EVs, eventually killing the Lightning.
Now that you can no longer buy a new Lightning (unless one is hiding on a lot somewhere), the truck is suddenly extremely popular. As my old buddy Kyle Stock reports, it’s Lightning Time:
The typical Lightning is changing hands in about 20 days in the U.S., versus 44 days for the average used vehicle. The price has steadily risen to $50,000, an increase of 4% since the start of the year, according to Edmunds.com.
And nearly one-third of used Lightnings are being sold by dealerships that peddle other brands. Typically, those stores would flip a used Ford to a Ford dealer, according to Douglas, but many are electing to list the car directly to tap red-hot demand.
Chase Norris, a county planner in Colorado ski country, recently ditched his gas F-150 for a used Lightning. At $40,000, he considered the vehicle both a major upgrade and a bargain.
This is the best evidence yet for there being some demand for electric vehicles once you knock a few percentage points off the cost. The running costs are also probably much lower if you can charge at home and avoid expensive gas.
If this is a good sign for anyone, it’s Ford itself, which is about to reveal the much cheaper Ford Fathom electric pickup truck.
BMW’s Pretty Good Year
BMW is the one German automaker I think is doing it generally right. I know that not everyone is on board with every decision the brand makes. As an E39 owner I have feelings about new BMWs. Those feelings are never sadness or disgust, however. And when I get to drive one I remember how much I still enjoy them.
That’s showing up in sales, with BMW extending its overall lead in the luxury space with more than 100,000 sales in Q3, which is a little more than Lexus (93k), and Mercedes-Benz (76k). Audi sales aren’t out yet, though it’s clear they’ll still be low.
How’s the brand doing it? Here are some details via Automotive News:
“Our dealers and our brand continue to buck the trend of what’s happening in the premium space overall,” Tom Shanley, BMW of North America’s executive vice president of operations, told Automotive News.
U.S. sales of the 3 Series jumped 46 percent to 11,256 in the third quarter.
“That’s one of our most affordable vehicles for an entry point in the premium space,” Shanley said. “That really drove some additional performance.”
The market for luxury crossovers and SUVs continues to be robust, Shanley said, with the BMW X3, X5, X6 and X7 each posting gains in the third quarter. BMW dealers will receive a key product this month with the launch of the redesigned X5 crossover.
Good, reasonably (for what they are) priced cars, across a large range of segments, isn’t a bad way to do it.
Shawn Fain Easily Wins Four More Years As UAW President
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain’s hard-nosed tactics helped his union win historic contracts with automakers. Those same tactics seem to be a little more problematic within the union, with the court-appointed monitor singling out Fain for retaliating against people who disagreed with him or he didn’t like.
Members of the UAW didn’t seem to be bothered by the alleged transgressions.
The incumbent UAW president claimed victory in a news release late Friday, Oct. 9. Fain was overwhelmingly reelected by UAW members in the union’s leadership elections, securing the post with over 68% of the vote. Rich Boyer, the UAW’s current vice president who has been at odds with Fain for years, came in second place with just over 13% of the vote. In total, nearly 100,000 votes were cast.
It is a striking referendum on the popularity of Fain, who led the union through widely publicized strikes against the Detroit Three automakers in 2023 just months after taking office for the first time. Fain has catapulted into the political circuit, too, becoming a common figure at rallies for pro-labor Democrat politicians and candidates.
Success is alluring.
EU Limits Hybrid Imports
The EU was so laser focused on Chinese EVs it sort of forgot to regulate Chinese hybrids. It sounds like resolution to this issue is coming, with the European Union restricting hybrids to 350,000 imported per year. In theory, this applies to everyone, in practice, this is about Chinese cars.
Still, that’s a lot of cars, and a victory for Chinese automakers. What does the EU get out of it?
In parallel, China will remove tariffs on some auto parts and halve duties for shoes, ice-cream and olive oil, the document says. Those moves, which will also apply temporarily, would cover about €4 billion worth of exports.
The two sides will also discuss ways to ease export controls and licenses, in particular regarding the supply of rare earths and permanent magnets, according to the document. The EU and China also agreed to exchange more information on their respective export restrictions.
Ice cream! Olive Oil!
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Well, now that I said it, here’s Sir Rod Stewart with “Young Turks.” Young hearts, be free tonight.
The Big Question
What’s the best used EV deal right now?
Top photo: Ford
Best deal: Taycan. Ideally cross tourismo in mamba green.
Hearing Young Turks makes me wonder, does the delay in GTA6 mean a generation of kids has grown up listening to old songs without immediately thinking “Oh yeah, from K-DST”?
I had rosemary and olive oil flavoured ice cream recently. You’d think it would be a fairly interesting flavor but in truth it was a bit vanilla
IMO the F-150 Lightning faced a mini Volt style backlash. It became a target of irrational hate largely bolstered by incorrect information. I STILL see people saying it was $100,000+ at MSRP.
Aside from Tesla, the EV market is simply wild. The only thing we can predict with certainty is that whatever decision any of the Big Three takes will prove to have been the worst possible decision: Cancelling the Bolt? BAD. Bringing the Bolt back? BAD. Introducing an electric truck? BAD. Cancelling the electric truck? BAD. Introducing an electric muscle car? BAD. Fine, the last one was predictable.
Kinda just seems like nobody trusts the big three to execute. Give it another couple of decades, and I’m sure Tesla will be in the same camp.
There’s a lot of history with the big three to learn from. Good and bad.
“Ice cream! Olive Oil!”
When I was doing my bachelor’s degree near Shanghai, I used to get all my groceries at a gigantic Metro (not to be confused with the underground train) supermarket. Aisles and aisles of imported European food, olive oil, wines, Italian cereals, sausages, all stuff that you couldn’t find elsewhere.
Then Covid hit, Metro sold their Chinese branch to some local retailer, and all that fancy stuff disappeared overnight. Luckily Costco opened a branch near my university, been going there ever since. Still manage to find some reasonably priced French stuff, probably thanks to Costco France.
I was confused when I read this.
You write BMW’s Pretty Good Year but then you show a photo of what looks like a Toyota minivan.
A good year for BMW, a bad year for our eyes.
A used PowerWheels at a garage sale.
Clever. This needs to be a COTD! Come on Mercedes, this is a brilliant comment!
I’ll up the ante by further Autopianization:
A 1980 PowerWheels AMC Concord.
I remain suspicious (without evidence) that Ford canceling the Lightning was a combination of accounting shenanigans and bending to the current administrations hatred of everything even vaguely “Green”. I live in a suburb of Houston and I definitely see plenty of them floating around (probably more than Cybertrucks, which I know is a low bar) so it’s not like they weren’t selling even with the high price. Even if they were losing money on them how much of that was allocating the R&D/manufacturing investment to this one model that really is going to be used for the next 10 years.
Maybe. But people hate Musk because he was working with Trump. Odd that they would intentionally target EVs being that they were working together. It could be argued that the insane price of gas is helping the EV market now more than anything. Ford – like all the big three – bail on their EVs before they catch on. Buyers might be fearful that they are buying a car that will not be on lots next year. Most times that is tough for owners as it kills resale and any support of it. Trucks are multi year commitments by the buyers.
I’m not sure that the seeming resurgence in popularity of the Lightning on the used market is necessarily a good sign for Ford’s upcoming Fathom.
I don’t think the Fathom is going to attract the same group of people who are interested in a used lightning. That’s like saying if the F-150 was canceled, everyone would go crazy for the Maverick rather than go to a competitors full-size, body-on-frame product. I think the current Lightning buyers like it because of its similarities to the ICE version of the truck (despite the obvious efficiency drawbacks).
Ford was heavy into the development of the next-gen Lightning, but canceled it a couple years ago. It was going to be on it’s own platform, no longer based on the ICE version of the truck whatsoever, and planned to include goofy quirks and things that everyone at the time thought EVs needed in order to sell. In fact, side profile shape of the Fathom is strikingly similar to the profile that was to be the next Lightning (also see: the Pikes Peak F-150 SuperTruck). I’m not so sure that next Lightning if it had come to fruition would be as attractive to the current Lightning buyers either. Just look at the sales numbers of the lightning vs the other full size EV trucks that were not based on their ICE counterparts.
Great point. It’s puzzling to me that they feel the need to make the EV versions so goofy looking. 100 lighting bolts, blue accents all over the place – and the worst one – why do all EVs have to have the solid headlight across the entire front and a a taillight that crosses the entire rear? Why can’t EVs just have normal headlights? Then they wonder why regular F-150 buyers aren’t buying the EV version? Even the name is lame with an electric related name.