Electric Ford F-150 Lightning Release Date is Summer 2022

Next spring, the electric 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning goes into production at the company’s all-new Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan. This announcement means the first versions of Ford’s new electric F-150 will find their way into customer driveways by the summer of 2022.

Rumors have flown that Ford would call the truck the F-150 Lightning, resurrecting a name used on a performance-tuned version of the F Series around the turn of the century. Ford has confirmed this rumor (it’s a natural fit for this use) and will reveal the new F-150 Lightning during a live presentation on May 19, 2021, at 9:30 p.m., Eastern time.

“Every so often, a new vehicle comes along that disrupts the status quo and changes the game … Model T, Mustang, Prius, Model 3. Now comes the F-150 Lightning,” said Ford President and CEO Jim Farley. “America’s favorite vehicle for nearly half a century is going digital and fully electric. F-150 Lightning can power your home during an outage; it’s even quicker than the original F-150 Lightning performance truck; and it will constantly improve through over-the-air updates.”

The electric F-150 is not a secret. The truck has undergone what Ford says is tens of thousands of hours of torture testing and millions of real, simulated, and lab-evaluated miles. Ford says the F-150 Lightning will offer the lowest expected lifetime ownership costs of any F Series model, up to 40% less than a gas-engine F-150.

Furthermore, thanks in part to dual electric motors, the F-150 Lightning will be more powerful than any F-150 to come before it and will be able to tow heavy trailers. In the summer of 2019, Ford used a prototype of the truck to tow 42 standard F-150 models loaded onto ten double-decker rail cars to demonstrate the potential capability of the vehicle. Together, the weight totaled more than one million pounds.

Ford built its new Rouge Electric Vehicle Center on the grounds of the century-old Ford River Rouge Complex near Detroit. In the past, the facility has produced the Model A, Thunderbird, and Mustang, among other models.

Ford is the source of information for this article. It was accurate on May 10, 2021, but it may have changed since that date.