Ford Lightning production slashed

Ford is cutting production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pick-up by half, from 3,200 to 1,600 vehicles a week. The company said it was matching production to demand, but as Quartz noted on Friday, what that means is “people don’t like electric trucks as much as we thought they did”. The same could be said of “normal” electric cars in the US, at least between the coasts. A combination of high costs, slow rollout of charging infrastructure and Elon Musk’s increasingly lunatic behaviour has damaged Tesla’s image as the US market leader and dimmed general enthusiasm for electric driving. EVs accounted for 31 per cent of new light vehicle sales in China in the first half of last year and 24 per cent in Europe but only 13 per cent in the US. That number has since fallen to 10 per cent. Solid state batteries could re-juice the US EV market if they lower costs, extend range and shorten charge time – as Toyota and, more recently, researchers at Harvard have promised. The Harvard team says its new battery has ten times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion. If so, that could change everything. In the meantime, the slump in appetite for the Lightning is a sure sign that middle America has taken a look at batteries and opted, on the whole, to stick with what it knows.