Ford Motor has prioritized production of its gas and hybrid F-150 and F-Series Super Duty trucks as it works to recover from losses connected to a fire at a critical aluminum supplier’s factory. The automaker’s all-electric F-150 Lightning did not make the list for this priority production.
Ford stated that assembly of the F-150 Lightning truck at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan will remain paused. According to Ford, the gas and hybrid F-Series trucks are more profitable for the company and also use less aluminum.
While Ford has highlighted sales growth for its all-electric F-150 Lightning truck, those numbers are still much smaller than its gas-powered F-Series trucks. Ford sold 10,005 F-150 Lightning pickups in the third quarter, a 39.7 percent increase year-over-year. To put that into context, Ford delivered 545,522 vehicles in the third quarter, and 207,732 of those were F-Series trucks. To date, Ford has sold 23,034 F-150 Lightning trucks in 2025, which is about 1 percent more than the first nine months of 2024.
A Ford spokesperson noted that while the F-150 is the best-selling electric pickup in the U.S., the company is focused on producing the gas and hybrid trucks as it recovers from the September 16 fire at aluminum supplier Novelis’ plant in Oswego, New York. The fire severely damaged the plant’s hot mill. Novelis said it expects to restart its hot mill by December 2025.
The spokesperson said that Ford has good inventories of the F-150 Lightning and will bring the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center back online at the right time, but does not have an exact date for that at this time.
The Novelis plant fire has been costly for Ford and has disrupted production of some of its most popular and profitable vehicles. The fire will cost Ford up to 2 billion dollars in earnings in the fourth quarter. That cost, combined with up to a 1 billion dollar headwind from tariffs, led Ford to lower its full-year profit guidance for 2025 to 6 billion dollars from 6.5 billion dollars.
Ford’s solution to recover 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. All hourly employees at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center will be transferred next door to work the third shift at the Dearborn Truck Plant.