The upcoming Ford F-150 Lightning will have a gas generator as it pivots away from larger electric vehicles

Ford announced Monday that it will end production of the all-electric F-150 Lightning as part of a broader company-wide change to its plans for electric vehicles. Instead, Ford will sell what’s known as an “extended range electric vehicle” version of the truck, which adds a gas generator that can recharge the battery to power the engines for more than 700 miles.

The company has not announced when the new F-150 Lightning will go on sale, or how much it will cost. Ford said it will report a $19.5 billion charge on special items, most of which will be recorded in the fourth quarter, since this broader pivot will impact multiple auto and battery plants.

That means Ford’s next-generation all-electric truck — internally dubbed the “T3” — is now dead. It was T3 It’s supposed to be a clean design, Unlike the Lightning, which had EV technology built into the design of a gas-powered vehicle. Ford confirmed to TechCrunch that it is also abandoning that Plans For the next generation of commercial trucks. The current model, E-Transit, will continue.

“Ford no longer plans to produce select larger electric vehicles as commercial viability has been eroded by lower-than-expected demand, higher costs and regulatory changes,” the company wrote in a statement.

The company still plans to launch a midsize electric pickup truck in 2027, the company confirmed Monday. The platform that powers that truck — born out of skunkworks software led by former Tesla executives Doug Field and Alan Clark — will also underpin other future Ford vehicles.

“Instead of spending billions more on large EVs that now have no path to profitability, we are allocating that money to higher yield areas, more hybrid trucks and vans, longer range EVs, more affordable EVs and entirely new opportunities like energy storage,” Ford President Andrew Frick said on a call with reporters.

Ford open The F-150 Lightning is due in 2021, two years after it first announced plans for an all-electric Mustang, the Mach-E. Ford has teased a $40,000 price tag for the Lightning, which was supposed to be a flagship product for the $22 billion electric vehicle company.

Like most large electric trucks, the F-150 Lightning has struggled in the American market. Part of that is because the $40,000 price tag never materialized for most buyers, as that base ride was specifically aimed at fleet customers. Ford has finished selling About 7,000 lightning bolts per quarter over the past two years, with a peak of around 11,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Electric vehicles have faced a lot of headwinds since the F-150 Lightning was first introduced. Tesla has launched a dramatic price war to counter declining sales, which has eroded the weak (or negative) margins of legacy automakers. Donald Trump’s reelection, combined with Republican control of Congress, has led to a reversal of many Biden-era policies that were intended to encourage the sale of electric vehicles.