By José Blanc
DETROIT (Reuters) – Ford Inc said on Thursday it would start shipping 144,000 of its redesigned F-150 and Ranger pickups to North American dealers it built but has so far withheld in a bid to resolve quality issues.
Ford said it will also resume shipments of F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks that it halted in February this month. This week, Ford slashed as much as $5,500 for some variants of the Lightning.
The wave of F-150s, Ford’s best-selling model, and midsize Ranger pickup trucks will be key to Ford meeting its pretax profit target of $10 billion to $12 billion by 2024. The automaker reaffirmed that resolve last month.
The delay in shipping trucks to dealerships may just be the automaker’s first-quarter figures due on April 24.
Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler told investors last month that the company has 60,000 F-150s in inventory and plans to ship them in the current quarter.
The automaker first tried a slow strategy for vehicle launches last year at its Kentucky Truck complex, which makes giant Super Duty pickup trucks and Navigator SUVs. Ford paid about $4. 8 billion for cover warranty maintenance in 2023, according to its annual report.
In the case of the redesigned F-150s, Ford engineers who analyzed the trucks’ inventory knowledge found that some electronic parts wouldn’t shut down or consumed more power than expected, Ford said. “Engineers updated the problematic software before the vans left the plant. “” the company said in a statement.
Ford rose 8 cents per cent, or less than 1%, to $13. 14 per percent in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Joe White, editing by Nick Zieminski and Jane Merriman)