Following a nine-week hold on F-150 Lightning allocations to dealers, Ford has announced it will be resuming shipments. Meanwhile, Tesla reportedly delayed Cybertruck deliveries. The rumor is that it needed to address some quality concerns. But the reasons assumed vary and the company hasn’t said anything about the issue, and likely won’t since it disbanded its PR department years ago. However, this may not be the victory for Blue Oval that it appears.
Despite stalling deliveries of the all-electric F-150 pickup, your author has noticed there still seemed to be a more-than-healthy number of trucks sitting around on nearby Ford lots. But it hasn’t just been the EV, gasoline and hybrid versions of the F-Series (including gasoline models) also saw a production slowdown and swelling inventories. Ford has attributed the matter to quality issues that needed to be addressed. But it has not specified what exactly was causing the problem.
The skeptics among you will undoubtedly assume this was cover for declining interest in full-size pickups. Of particular concern would be the Lightning, which has been the center of a minor scandal after Ford rolled back production targets and laid off a meaningful portion of the production team. However, the automaker has indeed been doubling efforts to address quality control issues that had upset its consumer base.
At the same time Tesla’s Cybertruck, which is still new enough to be in that honeymoon phase with its key demographic, is reportedly suspending deliveries to address some unknown problem. According to The Verge, numerous owners and reservation holders have claimed that reports of a sticky accelerator pedal being the cause. The alleged issue is that the throttle (not technically the correct term for something using an all-electric powertrain) pedal cover is getting hung up.
While the situation was said to be easily overcome by a press of the brake, an issue like that would still be something the manufacturer undoubtedly wants to address before more are shipped out to customers. However, none of this has been confirmed beyond there being a few people leveling complaints and theorizing that this is why the company pressed pause. We’ll keep tabs to see if it shakes out to be anything serious.
[Images: Tesla; Ford]
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