The F150 Lightning Just Got Nearly $10,000 Knocked Off Its Price. Is It Now A Bargain?

the F-150 Lightning it's Ford's first all-electric F-series pickup and since its launch last year approximately 19 000 examples have been sold to the end of the second quarter this year that's far less than the original 40 000 Vehicles Ford had said it would make in the first year of production that was in part we're told because of Parts shortages in the automotive industry combined with the usual headaches of the first year of production and an extended month-long shattering to Ford's Rouge production facility in Detroit to deal with a battery manufacturing defect that caused a vehicle in final inspection at the facility to catch fire while Ford chose to deal with some of the part supply issues and the effects of inflation on the cost of those parts by removing certain options from certain F-150 Lightning models it also put up the price of its electric truck multiple times in the last year with the latest price increase as of this spring putting the MSRP of most F-150 Lightning models a full 40 percent higher than they were at the launch last year and that's priced a lot of would-be F-150 Lightning customers out of the market despite that however sales have remained pretty steady and Ford has sold out of most of its 2023 model year allocation but on Monday this week some good news came at last for F-150 Lightning customers namely that Ford has slashed the price of its F-150 lightnings by between 6 and 10 000 this means that if you're in the market for a 20 t24 F-150 Lightning you could be paying a lot less than you might have thought you were going to need to this time last week so today I'm going to Deep dive into the new pricing ask if these price cuts are going to bring the F-150 Lightning into the reach of more consumers look at how it compares to the competition and see if there's any differences now to what we saw from the trucks at launch foreign [Music] before I get too far into this video Let's just add a disclaimer here I am a Ford F-150 Lightning customer and I happen to be lucky enough to own an F-150 Lightning Lariat extended range that I was able to NAB at a local dealer here in Oregon for MSRP I'll come back to my truck a little later on in the video but first let's look at the history of the F-150 Lightning price structure and remind ourselves why Ford's initial pricing never quite worked out as well in the real world as it did on paper when Ford launched the F-150 Lightning last spring its headline starting price for the standard range F-150 Lightning Pro got many many people excited sure it may not have had some of the bells and whistles of higher trim variants but for a starting price just shy of 40 000 US Dollars it looked on paper at least as if Ford was going to be the very first automaker to make a truly Affordable Electric truck but while there were limited numbers of F-150 Lightning standard range Pros available for the public to buy AKA retail buyers the majority of F-150 Lightning Pros ended up on fleets adding insult to injury the extended range variant of the F-150 Lightning Pro wasn't available to private buyers only Fleet customers could actually order one which meant that anyone wanting to get behind of the wheel of an F-150 Lightning with extended range we'd need to put down just shy of 65 000 with mandatory destination charges included that was for an XLT Extended range and that fact did put a lot of those early hand raises off those not put off by this were then solely picked off by those series of price Rises that Ford blamed on inflation and parts availability with the F-150 Lightning family costing a full 40 more last week than they were at launch this means the F-150 Lightning Pro standard range was retailing from just shy of 62 000 after destination charges and the XLT Extended range remember that's the cheapest extended range F-150 Lightning for retail buyers commanding the same nearly 81 000 price tag as the lariat extended range I purchased last year the lariat extended range last week by the way was selling for nearly 88 000 after destination charges while the range-topping Platinum ticked a few boxes and that was well over a hundred thousand dollars Ford also slowly removed standard fit items from the F-150 Lightning as those prices went up things like heated steering wheels with higher trim variants that came from the factory with a whole slew of cool features slowly dropping what was standard fit items or optional extras or indeed Ford just axing them completely simply put Ford put prices up while lowering what you got for your money inside the vehicles with consumer interest rates now more than double what they were last year for many types of loans it's not just the 40 price increase that made the F-150 Lightning a bad choice but the cost of actually borrowing the money to get one but that's not to say Ford has struggled to sell them it has again on paper sold out of 2023 model year trucks partly because demand has outstripped Supply and partly because Ford had to hold production of the F-150 Lightning for about a month between February in March to identify that manufacturing defect with the F-150 Lightning's battery pack that's the one I told you earlier caused one vehicle to catch fire at the Rouge production facility while undergoing final inspection and It ultimately led to a small recall of affected trucks luckily though the tide is turning Ford has just completed a big production-lined upgrade at the Rouge production facility to Triple its production volume in order to reach the targeted 150 000 examples it hopes to roll off the production line this year and those upgrades were told combined with a drop in pricing for battery raw materials means that Ford has been able to execute a sizable price cut across the F-150 Lightning family as Ford published on Monday this chart is directly from the company you can now get an F-150 Lightning Pro standard range for just shy of 52 000 US Dollars including delivery and destination charges for factor in up to seven and a half thousand US dollars in federal tax incentives for eligible customers and the effective price drops to just under forty five thousand dollars I'll be doing an F150 to F-150 comparison in a second but let's look at the rest of the electric truck lineup to see how it Compares just a few weeks ago Chevrolet basically killed the idea of a forty thousand dollar work truck variant of its Silverado EV and also confirmed that retail customers cannot order any work truck variants of the Silverado EV meaning the starting MSRP for that particular truck is more expensive than the most expensive F-150 Lightning if you're not a fleet customer lordstown's endurance is effectively no more and the rivian r1t currently has a starting price of just under seventy five thousand dollars fees included but before incentives sure the Tesla cyber truck is still unknown and of course Elon Musk was quick to jump onto Elon net to tell everyone that he thought the F-150 Lightning was overpriced which is something I'm sure will come back and bite him in the bum in the future and it might just out price Ford but Tesla also has a reputation for promising a price and then either killing the entry-level model or adding a fair bit to the sticker price that's exactly the same thing we've just been complaining about with Ford and Chevrolet so it's not exactly unusual in the industry right now also Rising prices for raw materials has made it more common along with dealerships getting greedy which of course is something Tesla doesn't have to worry about but let's see what happens because let's instead look at how the F-150 Lightning compares to gasoline F-150s because in the comments for these videos people regularly tell us that the F-150 Lightning is overpriced and you shouldn't buy one but it turns out it isn't at least not after this up to ten thousand dollar price cut for base level Ford pickup truck fans the cheapest F-150 you can get brand new today is the F-150 XL which starts from just under 34 000 US Dollars and that is substantially less than the starting price of the F-150 Lightning Pro standard range but that is for a truck with fewer seats and two rather than four-wheel drive if we want to make their playing field a little more even the nearest F-150 with a SuperCrew cab that's gasoline is the XL supercab variant which is nearer to 41 000 US dollars in its base trim if you add in four-wheel drive which is what the F-150 Lightning pro has you're looking at 47 160 US Dollars which frankly makes the F-150 Lightning Pro standard range quite a good deal I should of course note here that the Excel variant of the gasoline F-150 is slightly more plush inside than the F-150 Lightning Pro but then you're also not paying for gas at under 20 miles per gallon in stock form as you would be with the gasoline F-150 XL so let's look at the higher end at this point I should probably acknowledge that the F-150 gasoline variants and the electric variants don't necessarily easily cross shop between the two different field types however if you want a specific feature on the F-150 gasoline variants it's often a lot easier to just get that as an optional extra rather than paying for a massive bulk package that adds a huge amount to the price which is what you tend to see with the F-150 Lightning if we look at the lariat which is the version of the F-150 Lightning I own and you look for a comparable gas a lean version you're going to be looking at about 78 and a half thousand US dollars if you actually add in all of the things that the F-150 Lightning Lariat extended range I own has that means all-wheel drive towing package Pro power takeoff and all of those other extras that my truck has the the tow hitch scales and the heated everything it is a little cheaper than the electric but not by much and if you spec the electric version just right again you might be eligible for tax incentives which lowers your effective price to be less than the gas version even though of course you would have to wait until your taxes get done at the end of the year to get that extra money back next however if and this is a big deal the gasoline F-150 can on average tow more than an electric version but then the electric ones can be filled up at home while you sleep and are much cheaper to operate so it's give and take on both sides and yes your F-150 Lightning extended range can also run your home in a power cut more easily than a gasoline truck at least when the home integration system that someone will charge you a lot of money for actually works which in my experiences apparently dependent on the phases of the Moon or more accurately a faulty Bluetooth connection that's not been fixed yet not the internet phoning homes I erroneously said in a previous video on this channel about my truck but for what it's worth I think my own personal F-150 Lightning was a great buy for my personal situation I live in a rural area have to carry a lot of gardening and woodworking equipment not to mention stuff for the animals and I regularly road trip with large amounts of camera gear that wouldn't easily fit in anything except an electric van and there aren't any electric vans that offer the kind of range that the F-150 Lightning extended range can I also regularly tow multiple times a month in fact and we have quite frequent power cuts that even if we didn't have the fancy home integration system that doesn't actually work properly could easily and has easily been alleviated with the truck's stock Pro Power onboard takeoff but we also have a second vehicle that we use most of the time our Chevrolet bolt EV and in fact the truck doesn't get driven if we don't need its extra capabilities and our small electric hatchback is sitting on the driveway and available and honestly most people don't need a massive pickup truck so is the F-150 Lightning now a good deal after those price Cuts yes does it Miss some of the features that were originally included a standard that you don't have to pay extra for it seems that there are a few things the Locking luggage area under the rear seat is now an optional extra it came as standard on my truck I don't think you get some of the adapters I got for free with the truck and I couldn't figure out whether heated steering wheels are back or not so your mileage may vary should you get one though well that depends if your needs are real and you value work first and foremost absolutely if you're going to use it in Anger to tow and carry and do all of the truck things that trucks have been used for for 70 plus years yeah if you just want a trophy truck though honestly do yourself and everyone else a favor and get a car instead we have way too many big vehicles on the road being driven by just one person who never actually carries anything in it and on that note we're done with today's video if you have comments drop us a polite note below you can reach out to us in the Discord chat 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going where is the original lampshade iMac is it okay and it is it's it's back here uh it's running sorbet leopard which as you probably know if you watch this enough it's my favorite go-to for G4 based uh machines this one is running sorbet leopard it is running amazingly well it has not been on for the best part of three months and literally I just plugged it in and turned it on and it works and honestly it does make me smile obviously it's it's one of the most iconic IMAX that's ever been made and I have to tell you on one of the news channels I regularly watch there is a political commentator who has I think it's the 21 inch the widescreen version of this machine complete with a Harman Kardon sound system and it sits on his desk when he is on TV being a pundit for for MSNBC and it is so great to see it and I always get a big smile on my face seeing that iMac on his desk behind him I don't think I've ever seen it working but you get to see mine working and if you have an old iMac like this tell me what you use yours for I would love to hear put your thoughts in the comments below

Channel: Transport Evolved

Views: 17,365

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Id: 6CFxFVnLmow

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023