Jim Farley Tells Why Ford Slashed F-150 Lightning Price — Without Saying 'Tesla Cybertruck'

Ford Motor Co F CEO Jim Farley shed more light on why the company cut the price of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup earlier this month at the company’s earnings call on Thursday.

What Happened: The CEO explained that the company cut the price of the F-150 Lightning to create an order bank for a tripling in production.

“We didn’t cut the price of the F-150 by $10,000 to create an order bank for our current production rate. It’s for a tripling,” the CEO said.

Earlier this month, Ford cut prices on its least expensive version of the F-150 Lightning by $9,979. Several other trim packages were cut between $8,479 and $9,479 and its most expensive platinum trim model was cut by just over $6,000. 

The company said then that its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan will seek to triple its annual run rate to 150,000 F-150 Lightning trucks beginning this fall following an upgrade.

“The ramp on F-150 in September is really significant. We always knew that we had to build an order bank that looked nothing like the original F-150 Lightning order bank because our production is tripling,” Farley said.

Why It Happened: The cut brought the tag on the vehicle down and closer to $50,000 but it is still above the Lightning’s launch price.

Several analysts have pegged the price cut to an impending price announcement by Tesla TSLA for its upcoming Cybertruck. The Cybertruck is expected to be up against the Lightning and Rivian Automotive‘s electric trucks R1T and R1S.

"While Ford said the cuts reflect improvements in scale and battery raw materials costs, we believe Ford wanted to get in front of imminent Tesla Cybertruck pricing for the September delivery event," Future Fund Managing Partner Gary Black said.

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Read Next: Ford CEO Jim Farley Echoes Elon Musk On EV Pricing, Scales Down Production Targets

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