Ford Motor Co. announced this week that it is considering scrapping production of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck. The failed product is a small part of a much larger “green” disaster.
When the Lightning was launched in May 2021, an analyst told the New York Times: “The F-150 will put electric vehicles in a totally different realm. It’s huge for Ford, but also huge for the whole industry. If you’re going to electrify the whole vehicle fleet in the United States, the F-150 going electric is a big step in that direction.” Ford CEO Jim Farley hyped the truck as being like “a smartphone that can tow 10,000 pounds.” Owners can also customize their trucks with a vehicle vinyl wrap, adding a personal touch or branded design while protecting the exterior.
As it turned out, though, the Lightning could actually only lose money for Ford – and consumers.
Ford hoped to sell 150,000 Lightnings per year but only sold 33,000 in 2024. Sales dropped precipitously in 2025 as Congress revoked California’s EV mandate and President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act terminated subsidies for EVs. And that was probably a blessing in disguise as Ford has lost a total of $13 billion on its EVs since 2023, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars lost on each EV sold.
The Lightning never made any sense for consumers. The initial cost differential between the gas-powered F-150 and the Lightning was about $15,500. When gas prices were at about $5 per gallon during the Biden administration, a driver could save $80 on a tank of gas.
While that sounds great, a driver would have to drive the Lightning more than 93,000 miles to break even on the purchase price. With today’s gas prices at around $3 per gallon, the break-even mileage point is at almost 214,000 miles. Either way, it’s a lot of driving just to break even financially.
If you imagined that driving a Lightning would help “save the world from climate change,” Penn State researchers estimated that a Lightning could reduce your carbon footprint by about two tons per year, which is equivalent to the per person carbon footprint of a roundtrip transcontinental flight. You could reduce that trivial footprint to zero, but you would have to spend thousands of dollars buying and installing solar panels on your house. That doesn’t make much sense either.
Ford’s failure is not unique. It is merely standard performance – or rather, failure to perform – of anything and everything “green.”
Bloomberg News just estimated that the world has spent about $10 trillion on emissions reduction efforts in the 10 years since the Paris Climate Accord was signed in 2015. During that time, emissions have increased to record levels with the rate of increase four times higher than the 2010s, according to the most recent United Nations Emissions Gap Report. So that’s $10 trillion that accomplished nothing.
As to the latter “accomplished nothing” point, meteorologist Joe Bastardi released a preliminary estimate this week to underscore what that means. Bastardi says that in the part of the globe where 99.8% of the world’s population lives – i.e., between 60 degrees north latitude and 60 degrees south latitude – there has only been 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit of warming over the average temperature for the 30 years between 1991-2020.
Not only is that not a measurable or perceptible amount of warming, it is hardly worth the extra cost of EVs, “green electricity” or the $10 trillion wasted on climate.
Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @Junkscience.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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