The Ford Motor Company moved to pause production and shipments of its electric Lightning F-150 truck model soon after a battery fire erupted at one of the company’s facilities in Dearborn, Michigan.
The Detroit Free Press reported on February 15 that a battery fire had occurred in a vehicle holding lot, resulting in damage to two vehicles as well as a visit from the Dearborn Fire Department.
Detroit News noted there are no reports of any injuries resulting from the fire.
A company spokesperson, Emma Bergg, confirmed the fire had happened but said the company had “no reason to believe F-150 Lightnings already in customer hands are affected by this issue,” per the Free Press.
As Breitbart News noted on Tuesday, Ford originally ascribed the order to stop shipping and producing the model to standard quality control inspections:
The automaker discovered the issue during its “pre-delivery quality inspections,” the outlet’s Joel Feder noted, citing Ford representative Emma Bergg.
“The team is diligently working on the root cause analysis,” CNBC quoted Bergg as saying.
Ford F-150 Lightning pickup trucks are shown in production at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center on April 26, 2022, in Dearborn, Michigan. The F-150 Lightning celebrated its official launch today at the plant, making it the first full-size all-electric pickup truck to go on sale. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
Production at Ford’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn will not restart until “at least the end of next week,” Bergg told the Free Press, which noted the facility’s 750 workers will be temporarily laid off while the stop-build order is in effect.
Bergg told the Free Press the company is working out a tentative timeline for restarting production and anticipates the pending investigation’s findings will inform the company’s engineering and production processes:
“We believe we have identified the root cause of this issue. By the end of next week, we expect to conclude our investigation and apply what we learn to the truck’s battery production process; this could take a few weeks. We will continue holding already-produced vehicles while we work through engineering and process updates.”
This roadblock comes as Ford struggles to fulfill 200,000 reservations dating back to before December 2021, the Associated Press noted.
TechCrunch reported in 2022 that the company planned to rapidly scale production of the vehicle, the goal being to “nearly double production capacity of its upcoming electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck to 150,000 vehicles a year by mid-2023.”
The AP noted that 15,000 Lightning F-150s had been sold in 2022.
“We are not aware of any incidents of this issue in the field,” Bergg clarified, per the Free Press.
You can follow Michael Foster on Twitter at @realmfoster.