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Comment by jmugan | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a truck guy, but the Ford Lightning looks pretty cool. I wish it wasn't so expensive.

A lot of the covid supply chain high prices were(and are being) captured by car dealerships who then used a portion to buy off politicians to stop car companies from selling cars directly, on top of existing laws.

E.g. https://reason.com/2023/06/15/florida-doubles-down-on-anti-c....

So car companies couldn't build a rainy day cash fund or increase wages or pay bonuses(or pay dividends to shareholders). Dealer markups on some high demand vehicles are still insane, easily 10k to 20k+. I wish more car companies could sell directly like Tesla does(which is banned from selling in several states including Texas where they have a big new factory).

> Dealer markups on some high demand vehicles are still insane, easily 10k to 20k+.

So there's obviously a demand for them at that price.

Sure, maybe Ford should be able to sell cars themselves if they want to. But they'd be selling them at the same price and pocketing that extra $10-$20k themselves, rather than letting the consumer keep it.

Manufacturers tend not to raise prices when there is a shortage due to supply constraints. This hurts their revenue but maintains brand loyalty. Many pickup truck buyers are intensely loyal to a particular brand and the manufacturers are smart enough not to burn that goodwill. They would ban dealer mark-ups if they could.

Disclosure: I work for GM. Anything here is solely my own opinion or understanding.

For the highest priced and shortest supply vehicles, yes, dealerships added huge "dealership fees"; automakers did quite well themselves. The bonuses (for salaried employees) and profit sharing (for hourly union workers) were good in the past few years.

I'd be really interested in a much smaller / cheaper version, like an all-electric maverick.

Yeah. The practical uses for an F150 (towing, hauling) seem ridiculous for an EV. The Ranger/Maverick would have been better candidates.

The morning after the Lightning announcement, I put money down on one. I've never bought a brand new vehicle, never owned a truck, never owned a Ford. That's how impressive the vehicle was - its features AND price.

Then the wait came, and with it, the price hike. I was expecting around $40k or so, all in. By the time I was able to place an order, I could only get a premium trim, and I would have had to pay beyond $75k, iirc. So I won't be buying a Ford anytime soon. Too bad.

> I wish it wasn't so expensive

And yet they're making a huge loss on each unit sold.

Loss? Are you thinking of Rivian?

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/ford-loses-nearly-60000...

Ford as well

I'd read that link, but the ads on that site are cancerous.

I didn't know Ford was also operating at a loss on their EV trucks as well.

It's incoherent anyway - in the annoying way these analyst reports often are. Just confusing startup and presales costs with steady-state operations to claim they're losing massive amounts of money when it's obviously just the launch expense + engineering + prototyping amortized over the first few thousand cars they'd sold. By that silly measure, they've already cut "losses" to only $30k/sale.

All of those reports strike me as deceptive. The reports are just for the current state which include startup and R&D costs that will be recouped over the lifetime of that model.

I wanted it when it was 45k, it’s too expensive now.

It's the F-150, but with an electric motor. What's "cool" about it?

There's nothing fresh. Same boring design. Throw in a cool marketing name "F-150 LiGhTnInG" and a battery pack and people think this is "innovation"?

What a joke.

> What's "cool" about it?

People like electronic trucks, and people like the Ford F-150.

> There's nothing fresh. Same boring design.

It’s literally the top selling vehicle in America. Clearly people are OK with the design. But now it’s an electric truck.

> Throw in a cool marketing name "F-150 LiGhTnInG" and a battery pack and people think this is "innovation"?

I don’t think many people think it’s anything beyond an electric F-150. That’s enough for a whole lot of people.

A big enough battery that its designed to plug into your home not just to charge but also as a powerwall for your house. Just like the Maverick used to. /S

Except that it is different because it has a frunk. So many other companies are putting out electric cars but can't figure out how to have a frunk, let alone one as big as the f150's.

What makes you think there’s a point to anything about it other than that it’s electric? The boring design is a good thing. It’s not trying to be “cool” or even innovative really. It’s simply trying to be electric.

the namesake Lightning was an F150 gussied up with some suspension work and a supercharger, it sort of fits.

The 90's version was just a sticker kit and some options made standard equipment. It came with was the 351 instead of a 302, but you could have ordered that yourself without the fancy stereo and ugly wheels and monochrome paint.

I think what you're failing to understand is that Ford had a great legacy with the SVT F150 Lightning back in the 90s. For any car buff the "Lightning" moniker is a kind of rekindling of pushing the envelope back in the SVT days of Ford.

Now I'm not saying the electric Lightning has anything SVT-like about it in its current form. In fact I had to take a vehicle of mine to a Ford service center (which I avoid at all cost) a few times over the last few weeks to work out a random transmission bug with them and I was surprised at the number of Mach-E and Lightning there for service. But the Lightning was a great pedigree from days gone by and it's unfortunate the vehicle of today isn't really what he originally stood for [0].

I'm not sold on Ford's current entrants into the EV space. I think there are much better options for the money. Ford also let dealerships full on rip people off when they were hard to get. That, in itself, is inexcusable and they should be held accountable.

[0] https://horsepowermemories.com/2014/08/09/1993-1995-and-1999...

There are far more buyers for a boring EV F-150 at a competitive price point with competitive range than something quirky, "cool", and impractical (for real work duty) like the Cybertruck.

For every one comment like yours - “same boring design” - there are a hundred comments from auto enthusiasts who really don’t want EVs to have different design language.

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