Ford Motor Co. suspended production and halted F-150 Lightning electric pickup shipments after a battery caught fire during a pre-delivery quality check. Production at Ford’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Mich., is stopped until at least Feb. 24. Ford said customers’ electric pickups are unaffected. An investigation is expected to conclude by the end of next week. The fire damaged three vehicles, but no injuries were reported. Ford believes it has identified the root cause and affected the population of trucks.
The company will continue to hold completed trucks until engineering and production changes are made; SK Innovation, a South Korean supplier with a factory in Georgia, supplies batteries. This production halt comes at an inopportune time for Ford, which has struggled with quality issues and recalls. It also stopped production of a popular product: Ford had nearly 200,000 reservations for the F-150 Lightning and sold over 15,000 in its first full year. Lithium-ion battery fires, which can burn very hot and take thousands of gallons of water to extinguish, have caused difficulty for firefighters in several Teslas after crashes. This has led to General Motors, Hyundai, and BMW recalls.
As the development of electric pickup trucks is just a step in realizing fully electric commercial trucks, this setback could significantly impact the proposed timelines of seeing more eco-friendly road options. With impending ecological regulations in many states, the halting of production and the danger introduced with these new batteries could cause significant delays in companies being able to meet those deadlines.
https://www.ttnews.com/articles/ford-halts-production-electric-f-150-after-battery-fire
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