Holding out hope for the Ford F-150 Lightning to hit our shores? It’s not going to be here before the end of 2024.
Ford has confirmed the final part of its plan to bring five electrified vehicles Down Under before by 2025, and it’s not the F-150 – instead, it’s an as-yet unrevealed version of the Puma small SUV.
Ford Australia boss Andrew Birkic told CarExpert it’s still on the wish list, but says the brand is working to get the petrol F-150 range (and its new local remanufacturing partnership with RMA) off the ground.
We’d wager huge demand for the car in the USA also has a role to play.
Ford was forced to close its order books in December 2021, before production had even started, and in 2022 announced plans to double its production output in an attempt to get cars to customers sooner.
More recently, it put production on pause to investigate a (now-rectified) battery problem… before announcing plans to once again increase its output to meet rampant demand.
Were it to be confirmed for Australia, it’d take on the electric Ram ute confirmed for our market last week.
While Ford has been making pickup trucks since before most of us were born, its work in the electric vehicle space has been much more limited.
It leased Ranger EVs to American customers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, then introduced a Focus Electric around a decade later that was little more than a compliance car.
Now, it’s in the midst of a rollout of electric vehicles.
While crosstown rivals General Motors and Stellantis have committed to a bevy of vehicles across multiple segments and multiple brands, Ford has arguably had more of a laser focus with its F-150 Lightning, E-Transit, E-Transit Custom and Mustang Mach-E leading the charge.
It’s primarily on these four pillars that Ford is setting its aspiration to have EVs account for 50 per cent of its global sales volume by 2030.
MORE: Everything Ford F-150
