DETROIT — Less than a year after Ford Motor Co. opened a gleaming assembly plant at its historic Rouge Complex to build the F-150 Lightning, it’s already tearing apart some of the walls to expand, according to a report by Automotive News.
Ford is growing the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center by 50 percent while workers inside continue building Lightnings around the clock. It’s a delicate dance between production and construction, with autonomous robots maneuvering truck frames past stacks of steel beams and other building materials blocked off by orange caution tape.
The urgency to boost output for a product executives say will define the company’s future as much as the Model T did in its infancy highlights the massive stakes in the still-nascent electric pickup market. While Ford rushes to boost volume, its crosstown rivals are plotting to cut in with newer entries as Detroit’s decades-old truck war evolves for the EV age.
General Motors plans to begin shipping the Chevrolet Silverado EV in a few months, starting with a work truck in the spring and a loaded-up consumer version later in the year that will top $100,000. It will follow that with the GMC Sierra EV pickup in 2024, around the time Stellantis plans to launch the Ram 1500 EV, which will be revealed in concept form this week at CES in Las Vegas.
“We expect it to be relentless,” Darren Palmer, general manager of Ford’s battery-electric vehicles, said of the competition. “We welcome that. It’s great for the industry because we’re going to push each other to go further.”
Beyond the Detroit 3, startups Rivian and Lordstown Motors are selling their own electric pickups, and Tesla has said its Cybertruck, originally promised for 2021, will reach customers by the end of 2023.
Read the full report by Automotive News.
Source: https://rvbusiness.com/ford-gm-and-ram-primed-for-relentless-ev-pickup-battle/
