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Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

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Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#771

Post by jillesvangurp »

BeetleB wrote: post #48

It wasn't canceled for poor sales. It was canceled because it was too expensive to produce, and would not fund all their other EV/battery projects. They found a better road to profitability in that front.

Exactly. Their truck was apparently quite nice but expensive. And then dealers made it worse by adding a hefty markup to that. It would have done fine at a much lower price point. But that would have required a manufacturing cost level that Ford could not deliver:

There are a few reasons for that:

- Ford designed this as a one off vehicle, not as a platform to build multiple vehicles on. So, a lot of the manufacturing process is making components in low volume just for this truck that they are selling in small numbers. It never hit the economies of scale where they could optimize and lower cost.

- It's a big heavy vehicle that needs lots of battery. Batteries are expensive.

- The tariff situation made importing components from Mexico, China, and elsewhere prohibitively expensive. Ford can't source everything they need locally just yet.

All this drives the production cost up. When they launched the vehicle a few years ago, they were still able to import components. They had a shot at sourcing much cheaper batteries from China down the line. All that went away and locally produced batteries aren't as cheap.

Another factor is that it's a product that was designed to be premium and more expensive than the ICE F150 in order to protect sales of that. It was forever going to be compared to that in terms of performance and towing capacity. And the combination of being more expensive than that while having less range and even less while towing is not a great selling point.

Companies like Rivian or BYD that have no ICE truck sales to protect can operate differently. They simply make the best and most affordable vehicle they can without artificially making it needlessly expensive. Rivian isn't cheap of course but they sell well because it's a desirable product. And Rivian has done a lot of work to lower cost and is now introducing cheaper models on the back of that. BYD is cutting well below F150 ICE prices with their Shark truck. Because they can. Not for sale in the US of course but it makes F150 Lightning international sales a bit unviable. As a US only niche vehicle selling in the low thousands per year the Lightning had no future.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#772

Post by majestik »

billti wrote: post #13

I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift…

I was already a Tesla owner and I reserved a Cybertruck right after I saw the original Cybertruck Unveil live stream on November 21, 2019. The infamous one where the window glass shattered.

That was when it was supposed to cost around $35,000.

Four years later when my reservation was ready to order, on December 8, 2023, the CyberTruck cost more than $100k.

Because it cost almost 3x more than what was originally advertised, I cancelled the order. I know many other people who canceled for the same reason. Keeping in mind this was after several delays, so I and many others with reservations were already frustrated with the product before it became available to order.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#773

Post by phil21 »

nospice wrote: post #590
mrexroad wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. Sprinter vans, utility vans, or even minivans are far, far more useful for trades than modern pickups. Heck, my minivan was the goat for home renovations—it’d easily fit a dozen full 4x8 sheets of drywall/osb/ply/mdf/etc and I could still close the rear gate. I always got chuckles from guys awkwardly wrangling/securing sheets onto a pickup’s bed at the supply yard when I’d easily slide the sheets off the cart…

I think there's basically one 4x4 van on the market in the US right now. So you're making a pretty bad generalization here. In the Bay Area, it's probably true that a van would work well, although I lived in a mixed-income neighborhood and all the construction guys had beater pickups. But if you live in a place with snow and unpaved residential roads, 4x4 is pretty much a must (and pickups can be also be used for plo…

AWD is a luxury outside of the most extreme of extreme locations.

I grew up in Minnesota driving rear wheel drive cars to start. They worked fine even in the olden days where plows would take a couple days to clear the country backroads and even rock salt was applied sparingly due to the expense.

Not a single one of my vehicles had winter tires - all seasons were perfectly serviceable. You’d get stuck once in a great while but that’s what the bag of sand and shovel in the trunk were for.

Front wheel drive came along and made it easy mode.

All wheel drive is certainly something I love these days, but it’s an extreme luxury that makes winter driving laughably easy.

A basic utilitarian work vehicle does not need to be 4WD in 90% or likely even 99% of use cases anywhere in the country.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#774

Post by user34283 »

autoexec wrote: post #605
JPKab wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're labeling someone a "Nazi nut job" over nothing. It's juvenile and silly and screams "midwit overly absorbed into political news." Enjoy your unearned moral superiority. It's a thin blanket against the cold wind of mediocrity, but you do you.

> You're labeling someone a "Nazi nut job" over nothing. Nothing except his antisemitic tweets, his posts defending Hitler, his support of Alternative for Germany, his support of prominent white supremacists, his chatbot which praises Hitler, his endorsement of racist conspiracies, and the occasional "Sieg Heil". What exactly would "something" look like to you? Being morally superior to that is an exceptionally low b…

The man is officially a dear friend of Israel, he has never defended Hitler, he indeed supports the German far right party, his chatbot had an alignment issue that has been patched within 16 hours.

What you call a "Sieg heil" was an innocent hand gesture made once, and that hoax has been debunked by both the anti defamation league and the Israeli PM personally. You know this, yet you cannot let go of your hate.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#775

Post by nixass »

billti wrote: post #13

I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift…

> So many vehicles, especially in the truck space, are almost indistinguishable and lack any kind of imagination.

Because utilitarian design and purpose of this vehicles has been established long time ago. Cybetruck "wanted to be different" but it fails in every aspect of its own "innovation". It's ultimately stupid vehicles with so many flaws that arguing it tried something is pointless. Like, having a man walking to North Pole in runners - he's not trying something new, he's straight stupid and should be treated like that

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#776

Post by PunchyHamster »

edgineer wrote: post #628
alexjplant wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one The modern US pickup truck isn't built for utility. It's a $60,000 four-door lifted luxobarge with leather interior and a short bed. It signals (perceived) wealth while preserving working-class alignment. It can also be justified by way of having to pick up used furniture for TikTok refinish and flip projects or bim…

That's opinion/stereotype, and unsupported. From Rob Cockerham's experiment (2002): "I guessed that 98% of all truck beds are empty" "In 25 minutes I had counted 150 trucks, and 99 of them had been empty. This 66% empty ratio was much lower than I had expected. I hadn't realized that so many trucks were being so successfully utilized." "The results were similar: 39% of the trucks were hauling goods, and 61 of them we…

I'd imagine that % changes heavily on hour in the day and road observed.

People using truck for work (tradesman etc) do it all thorough the day. People who just use it as status symbol get to work and back from work at given hour. Also probably more usage in weekend when people doing weekend project go shop and people not doing that don't even get out on the longer trips.

Sitting on one road for an hour (and looking at photos, far from peak traffic) is near meaningless

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#777

Post by PunchyHamster »

kulahan wrote: post #491
queuebert wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of touch with the working class. Some people practically live in these trucks. A little comfort goes a long way toward making their day bearable. Leather is easy to clean, power adjustment makes the seat more comfortable. Auto wipers, climate, etc., help them focus on the calls they're taking. And so on. Fleets of these are bought for commercial purposes as well. Companies wouldn't spend that kind of money…

Brother, people are scraping by right now. Auto loan defaults are nearing all-time highs. Car loan lengths are longer than ever. The average age of a vehicle on the road is something like 14 years old now. I promise you with all my heart, those luxobarges are not being purchased because they’re practical in any way, shape, or form. It’s 110% virtue signaling. I don’t get the recent internet trend of trying to excuse…

> I promise you with all my heart, those luxobarges are not being purchased because they’re practical in any way, shape, or form. It’s 110% virtue signaling.

not sure virtue signalling is best description here. I think "conspicuous consumption" is far better description of the process

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#778

Post by pbmonster »

BizarroLand wrote: post #566
saalweachter wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy a hitch for any vehicle and a brand new 8 foot trailer for For the "I need to sometimes pick up large objects" use case it's hard to beat.

I have 3 vehicles, an old project jeep, an old truck, and a sedan. Sedan handles 99% of my driving, but can't really tow anything. Truck handles all of my towing stuff, but gets ~14mpg which hurts so I don't drive it. Jeep is a jeep, it's always being worked on, but when I use it I'm using it to go ride around on dirt paths or for camping. It gets 17-20mpg when I'm driving it but I don't want to drive it often. If th…

> I would feel very uncomfortable towing an empty 4x6 trailer behind my sedan, not to even mention the occasional couch or dresser or bunch of boxes from helping a friend move.

Why? 1500 lbs rated tow hook on an average sedan should be no problem at all. And that's more than enough for a 4x6 with a couch and a couple of boxes. Might even get a slightly larger trailer so you don't have to take the couch apart.

I've towed 14' sailboats including all gear behind a Corolla, didn't even feel the trailer was there.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#779

Post by arcticbull »

grouchomarx wrote: post #20
billti wrote: post #13

I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics hurt it quite a bit. It is such a distinctive vehicle with a strong association with Elon, that there was an immediate brand association. It may have had poor sales anyway, but it certainly didn't help that many folks on the left, who are typically the most 'pro EV', had a large 'anti-Elon' shift…

>I think the timing of the Cybertruck starting deliveries roughly aligning with when Elon got heavily involved in politics That and also it's just a bad product. >That said, even though it's not to my taste, I do admire that they dared to do something different and took a big gamble on it. A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one edit: agree there's a market…

> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one

> 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#780

Post by arcticbull »

themafia wrote: post #704
kulahan wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brother, people are scraping by right now. Auto loan defaults are nearing all-time highs. Car loan lengths are longer than ever. The average age of a vehicle on the road is something like 14 years old now. I promise you with all my heart, those luxobarges are not being purchased because they’re practical in any way, shape, or form. It’s 110% virtue signaling. I don’t get the recent internet trend of trying to excuse…

> I promise you with all my heart You have such a deep misanthropic view that it's prevented you from seeing anything outside of it. You're preaching a faith not practicing an understanding of the world. > Nobody is buying a gigantic vehicle There are tons of contractors, laborers, small business and property owners who need the space or the utility of the vehicle. The reason these vehicles sell well is because they…

> According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.

> So what do people actually like about trucks? According to Edwards, the answer is counterintuitive. Truck drivers use their trucks very much like other car owners: for commuting to and from work, presumably alone. The thing that most distinguishes truck owners from those of other vehicles is their sheer love of driving. “The highest indexed use among truck owners is pleasure driving,” says Edwards. Truck drivers use their vehicles this way fully twice as often as the industry average. “This is the freedom that trucks offer,” says Edwards.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...

The F-series is the best selling car family in the US. Some of them are using it for its intended purpose sure, the majority are just using it as parent said, a luxobarge.

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