The upcoming Ford F-150 Lightning will have a gas generator as it pivots away from larger electric vehicles

Ford announced Monday that it will end production of the all-electric F-150 Lightning as part of a broader company-wide change to its plans for electric vehicles. Instead, Ford will sell what’s known as an “extended range electric vehicle” version of the truck, which adds a gas generator that can recharge the battery to power the engines for more than 700 miles.

The company has not announced when the new F-150 Lightning will go on sale, or how much it will cost.

The axle will come at a hefty price tag for Ford. The company will receive $19.5 billion to reshape its business strategy in the field of electric cars. Most of these charges, including an $8.5 billion writedown on electric vehicle assets, will be recorded in the fourth quarter. Ford said $5.5 billion in cash will be available through 2027.

The change affects many factories and workers. It also means that Ford’s next-generation all-electric truck — internally dubbed the “T3” — is now dead. The T3’s design was supposed to be clean, unlike the Lightning, which had electric vehicle technology incorporated into the design of a gas-powered vehicle. Ford confirmed to TechCrunch that it is also abandoning its plans for a next-generation commercial truck. The current model, E-Transit, will continue.

“Ford no longer plans to produce select larger electric vehicles as commercial viability has been eroded by lower-than-expected demand, higher costs and regulatory changes,” the company wrote in a statement.

The company still plans to launch a midsize electric pickup truck in 2027, the company confirmed Monday. The platform that powers that truck — born out of skunkworks software led by former Tesla executives Doug Field and Alan Clark — will also underpin other future Ford vehicles. Ford said it is still on track to start producing cheaper lithium iron phosphate batteries in 2026. The LFP batteries, which will be built at BlueOval Battery Park Michigan in Marshall and use technology licensed from China’s CATL, will be used in the midsize truck.

“Instead of spending billions more on large EVs that now don’t have a path to profitability, we’re allocating that money to areas with higher revenues, more hybrid trucks and vans, longer-range EVs, more affordable EVs, and entirely new opportunities like energy storage,” Ford President Andrew Fricke said on a call with reporters.

Ford will unveil the F-150 Lightning in 2021, two years after it first announced its plans for an all-electric Mustang, the Mach-E. Ford has teased a $40,000 price tag for the Lightning, which was supposed to be a flagship product for the $22 billion electric vehicle company.

Like most large electric trucks, the F-150 Lightning has struggled in the American market. Part of that is because the $40,000 price tag never materialized for most buyers, as this base trim was specifically aimed at fleet customers. Ford ended up selling about 7,000 Lightnings per quarter over the past two years, with a peak of about 11,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Electric vehicles have faced a lot of headwinds since the F-150 Lightning was first introduced. Tesla has launched a dramatic price war to counter declining sales, which has eroded the weak (or negative) margins of legacy automakers. Donald Trump’s reelection, combined with Republican control of Congress, has led to a reversal of many Biden-era policies that were intended to encourage the sale of electric vehicles.