Ford is increasing the price of their F-150 Lightning EV, all EVs to follow suit?
CNBC News has reported that Ford Motors is increasing the starting price of their all-electric F-150 Lightning pick up truck and cited the reason for this as “significant material cost increases and other factors.” Their full article is linked here.
Even by American standards, the price increase for electric vehicles (EVs) is quite big, the starting price is now almost USD47,000 up from just under USD40,000, that is an increase of around USD6,000 up to USD8,500 for the higher specced models.
Now imagine how much more the rest of the world has to pay after factoring in conversion rates. Yeah, EVs just got a whole lot less appealing to me.
Ford did however mention that these price increases will not affect customers who have already ordered their EVs and are awaiting delivery but will affect an undisclosed number of reservation holders who have yet to order their vehicles.
Inflation and rising costs of just about everything are a major problem almost everywhere and this is the driving factor behind many automakers increasing the price of their EVs. Before Ford, General Motors increased the price of their Hummer EV among other brands like Rivian Automotive, Lucid and Tesla all doing the same too.
A recent report by consulting and research firm, AlixPartners concluded that the cost of EV batteries more than doubled during the global Covid-19 pandemic and one can’t help but wonder if this had anything to do with Ford closing orders for the F-150 Lightning last year after receiving over 200,000 reservations and recently reopened orders.
For the moment it is still unclear how long customers who have ordered the F-150 Lightning EV have to wait as Ford has only sold about 4,400 units since it began delivering in May but a spokeswoman did confirm that deliveries of new orders are slated to begin around late September this year.
Ford also stated that the standard battery in the F-150 Lightning EV is expected to have a better range with a 10 mile to 240 mile (roughly 16km to 386km) increase while larger battery EVs can expect an increased range of up to 320 miles (515km).
However, now the thing that worries me is that despite Malaysia being slower in adopting EVs, for most of the world, EVs are more common than petrol cars. In fact in regions like Europe, there are laws to prohibit buying petrol vehicles in the near future and only allowing one to buy an EV.
With this kind of momentum towards EVs, it is only a matter of time before Malaysia has to follow suit but can we keep up with the already crushing cost of living with our weak economy?
What happens if and when all EV manufacturers increase the cost of ownership? Will the average Malaysian be able to survive?
