Ahead of the big F-150 Lightning electric pickup launch, Ford (F) may already have a sellout.
According to reports over the weekend, when customers tried to order an F-150 Lightning on Ford's website, they were told the truck was no longer available.
“Due to high demand, the current model year is no longer available for retail order. Contact your dealer for more information,” was posted to the F-150 Lightning order page.
However Ford has since updated its website and that message no longer appears. Customers are able to build and price an F-150 Lightning, although after the process is completed customers can only submit their email address for "updates."
Yahoo Finance reached out to Ford, and a company spokesman says the model year isn’t sold out, but that it is “not accepting any more reservations.” This last part is no surprise as the company said back in December that it would stop accepting Lightning reservations as the total number reached 200,000. The question is whether Ford customers will be able to actually buy a F-150 Lightning this year (without paying a big dealer markup), or have to wait until the 2023 model year.
Nonetheless, the F-150 Lightning rollout is looking like a huge success, and this Tuesday (4/26), the company is officially launching the vehicle with a big party at an event in Dearborn, Michigan, at Ford’s Rouge assembly plant.
Dubbed “F-150 Lightning Strikes,” Ford says it and UAW (United Auto Workers) leaders will host customers and employees to celebrate the start of production for the F-150 Lightning. Ford says the event will commemorate the “first-ever full-size all-electric pickup to go on sale” from the same facility that Henry Ford produced virtually every Model T component.
Ford has said it has expanded the Rouge facility’s production capabilities to build 150,000 F-150 Lightning pickups annually, double what it had originally planned. Overall, Ford says it is on track to deliver more than 2 million electric vehicles a year globally by 2026, which would be a third of the automaker’s global volume.
And if this weren't a big enough week for the company already, it plans to announce first quarter earnings this Wednesday (4/27) after the market close.
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Pras Subramanian is a senior autos reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.
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