Ford is offering car dealers extra cash to sell more electric trucks

It looks like Ford really wants to boost F-150 Lightning sales by the end of the year

By Collin Woodard2 min readUpdated October 21, 2024

Unlike the Tesla $TSLA Cybertruck, the Ford $F F-150 Lightning is about as traditional as electric pickup trucks get. Unless you knew what you were looking for, you’d probably just think the Lightning was a regular F-150. It looks like an F-150. It does truck stuff like an F-150. It just doesn’t sell nearly as well as the gas-powered F-150. So in an attempt to clear out excess inventory, CarsDirect reports Ford will now pay dealers up to $22,500 to help clean out its Retail Replenishment Centers.

In a bulletin Ford sent to dealers last week, the Dearborn-based automaker said that between October 15 and November 15, it will give dealers $1,000 every time it adds an F-150 Lightning to its inventory from an RRC. If a dealer adds more than nine Lightnings to its inventory in that time, the payout jumps from $1,000 per truck to $1,500. Dealers don’t have to order them all at once to get the higher bonus, either, so they don’t need to drop 10 or more trucks on their lot all at once to get paid the higher amount. If they add that 10th truck before November 15, they get $1,500 for all 10 of them even if they initially only added one or two to their inventory.

If your dealership happens to be really good at selling F-150 Lightnings, though, it isn’t all good news. Ford said it would cap the program at 15 trucks per dealership, meaning there’s only a maximum of $22,500 on the table. You certainly won’t get in trouble if you somehow sell 20 Lightnings in 30 days, but there’s a limit to receiving this particular benefit. Whether this move will motivate dealers to cut prices and sell more Lightnings or temporarily encourage dealers to keep fewer trucks in its inventory still remains to be seen.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ford’s Retail Replenishment Centers, think of them like little EV warehouses where dealers can grab vehicles when they need them. This allows dealers to more quickly get their hands on EVs without risking a massive pileup of unsold cars sitting in their inventory.

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