Ford has stopped taking reservations for the all-electric F-150 Lightning as it prepares to start making and shipping the new pickup truck in the first half of 2022. The company says it has collected 200,000 refundable $100 deposits for the Lightning since it debuted in May.
That means that anyone not already in line may have to wait a while to buy Ford’s first mass-market electric pickup truck off a dealer lot (or order one from the company’s website). Ford hasn’t said how many it plans to build in 2022, but Automotive News reports that the automaker is looking to build as many as 80,000 in 2023. The company has publicly said it wants to build that many in 2024 after originally targeting just 40,000 annually and has been hiring new workers to handle the demand.
The F-150 Lightning starts at $40,000 but can more than double depending on which version people buy. That base model is supposed to offer around 230 miles of range and has a more bare-bones interior, including a 12-inch landscape touchscreen display that runs Sync 4. Higher trims will come with the same 15.5-inch vertical touchscreen from the Mustang Mach-E, and there’s an extended range battery option that can push the range to around 300 miles. Towing capacity ranges between 7,700 and 10,000 pounds, depending on the configuration.
Reservation holders will be able to spec out their Lightnings starting in January, just a few months before the first trucks are supposed to ship.
As long as they start shipping on time, Ford will join Rivian and GMC as the only automakers with an electric pickup truck on the market. (Rivian started shipping its R1T pickup in October, while GMC’s electric Hummer pickup is supposed to start reaching customers by the end of this year.) Tesla’s long-promised Cybertruck has been pushed to next year, and CEO Elon Musk has said his company won’t start making them in large volumes until 2023.