Ford Motor has put its F-150 and F-Series Super Duty gas and hybrid trucks at the top of its production priority line as it tries to recover from losses linked to a fire at a critical aluminum supplier plant.
The automaker’s all-electric F-150 Lightning didn’t make the list.
Ford said Thursday that assembly of the F-150 Lightning truck at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan will remain on hold. The reason, according to Ford: F-Series gas and hybrid trucks are more profitable for Ford and use less aluminum.
While Ford has pointed to increased sales of its all-electric F-150 Lightning truck, those numbers are still dwarfed by its gas-powered F-Series trucks.
Ford sold 10,005 F-150 Lightning pickups in the third quarter, up 39.7% year over year. To put that into context, Ford delivered 545,522 vehicles in the third quarter, 207,732 of which were F-Series. Year to date, Ford has sold 23,034 F-150 Lightning trucks in 2025, about 1% more than the first nine months of 2024; according to recent sales figures.
A Ford spokesman noted that while the F-150 is the best-selling electric pickup in the U.S., the company is focusing on natural gas and hybrid trucks as it recovers from a Sept. 16 fire at aluminum supplier Novelis’ plant in Oswego, New York that severely damaged its hot mill. Novelis said he expects it restart its hot grinder until December 2025.
“We have a good inventory of the F-150 Lightning and will bring back the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REVC) when the time is right, but we don’t have an exact date at this time,” said spokesman Ian Thibodeau.
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The fire at the Novelis plant was costly for Ford and halted production of some of its most popular and profitable vehicles. The fire will cost Ford as much as $2 billion in earnings in the fourth quarter, the automaker said Thursday in third-quarter earnings. That cost, combined with a headwind of up to $1 billion from tariffs, led Ford to cut full-year profit guidance for 2025 to $6 billion from $6.5 billion.
Ford’s solution to recoup fire-related losses is to increase F-Series production volume by more than 50,000 trucks in 2026 by adding a third shift. The plan is expected to create up to 1,000 new jobs, and all hourly workers at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center will be moved next door to work the third shift at the truck plant in Dearborn.
