Ford Motor has put its gas and hybrid F-150 and F-Series Super Duty trucks at the top of the production priority line as it attempts to recover from losses connected to a fire at a critical aluminum supplier’s factory.
The automaker’s all-electric F-150 Lightning didn’t make the list.
Ford said Thursday that assembly of the F-150 Lightning truck at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan will remain paused. The reason, according to Ford: the gas and hybrid F-Series trucks are more profitable for Ford and use less aluminum.
While Ford has highlighted sales growth of its all-electric F-150 Lightning truck, those numbers are still dwarfed by its gas-powered F-Series trucks.
Ford sold 10,005 F-150 Lightning pickups in the third quarter, a 39.7% increase year-over-year. To put that into context, Ford delivered 545,522 vehicles in the third quarter, 207,732 of which were F-Series. To date, Ford has sold 23,034 F-150 Lightning trucks in 2025, about 1% more than the first nine months of 2024, according to recent sales data.
A Ford spokesperson noted that while F-150 is the best-selling electric pickup in the U.S., the company is focused on producing the gas and hybrid trucks as it recovers from the September 16 fire at aluminum supplier Novelis’ plant in Oswego, New York that severely damaged its hot mill. Novelis said it expects to restart its hot mill by December 2025.
“We have good inventories of the F-150 Lightning and will bring Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REVC) back up at the right time, but don’t have an exact date at this time,” said spokesperson Ian Thibodeau.
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The Novelis plant fire has been costly for Ford and disrupted production of some of its most popular and profitable vehicles. The fire will cost Ford up to $2 billion in earnings in the fourth quarter, the automaker reported Thursday in its third-quarter earnings. That cost, coupled with up to a $1 billion headwind from tariffs, led Ford to lower its full-year profit guidance for 2025 to $6 billion from $6.5 billion.
Ford’s solution to recover fire-related losses is to increase F-Series production volume by more than 50,000 trucks in 2026 by adding a third shift. The plan is expected to create up to 1,000 new jobs and all hourly employees at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center will be transferred next door to work the third shift at the Dearborn Truck Plant.
