Once America’s most popular electric pickup, Ford’s F-150 Lightning is finding a second life on the used market.
Ford F-150 Lightning finds buyers in the used market
The F-150 Lightning is hard to pass up at 50% to 60% off sticker price, even used. With new models no longer available, Ford’s electric pickup is suddenly selling like hotcakes on the used market.
After the last model rolled off the assembly line last December, CEO Jim Farley said the decision to end production came as the “very high-end EVs, the $50K, 70K, $80,000 vehicles, they just weren’t selling.”
At 50% to 60% off, it now looks like a bargain in the used market. “When Ford was selling it brand new, the math was complicated,” Jimmy Douglas, CEO of Plug, a wholesale EV dealer, told Bloomberg.
On the used market, however, “the Lightning is 50% to 60% of the sticker price and that is really a sweet spot,” he added.
Used Ford F-150 Lightnings are selling in about 20 days, less than half the 44-day average for used vehicles in the US. According to Edmunds.com, prices are now up 4% to about $50,000 since the start of the year.
Douglass said that close to one-third of used models are sold by rival dealerships that would normally flip them back to Ford. However, many are opting to sell them directly because of demand.
Chase Norris from Colorado called the electric pickup a bargain. He purchased a used Lightning for around $40,000 and considers it a major upgrade from his previous gas F-150.
EV Group CEO and cofounder Alex Lawrence, which sells pre-owned electric vehicles, said he can’t get his hands on any reasonably priced used F-150 Lightnings currently.
He said many Lightning buyers use it as a second truck to save money during their weekly commute.
It looks essentially the same as the gas-powered F-150, offers instant torque, and produces zero tailpipe emissions, but the electric pickup failed to meet Ford’s expectations because of its higher price.
The base F-150 Lightning Pro debuted in 2021 with a starting MSRP of $39,974, but that was quickly raised to around $60,000 a year or so later.
According to Edmunds.com, the average transaction price for the F-150 Lightning in its first year of sales was $79,000 because Ford focused on higher-priced trims. The gas version’s ATP was about $19,000 less.
Even with the higher sticker price, Ford was losing a considerable amount on each Lightning it produced. In Q1 2024, Ford lost more than $100,000 on every EV it built.
Next year, Ford will take another crack at the electric pickup market with the Fathom, the first vehicle based on its “groundbreaking” new Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) platform.
Ford said the Fathom will start at $28,350 for the standard-range version. Even with the $1,595 delivery fee included, the electric pickup will start at under $30,000.
As the first vehicle built on its UEV platform, Ford promises the Fathom will be a step-change from its first-generation EVs in efficiency and, for its sake, profitability.
According to Ford, the electric pickup will offer more interior space than a Toyota RAV4 and will be the first vehicle with Apple Maps directly integrated into the navigation system.
We also know the electric pickup will have a NACS port after a few prototypes were spotted charging at a Tesla Supercharger this summer.
Ford reportedly aims to sell around 100,000 Fathoms in its first year. CEO Jim Farley admitted at the 2026 Automotive News Congress that “It’s going to be a heck of an effort to launch this at scale, at cost, on time.”
Meanwhile, a company spokesperson confirmed with Electrek that “We’ve said previously, ‘Fathom will launch in 2027 ‘- and there is no change to that.
Electrek’s Take
F-150 Lightning sales surging on the used market proves that buyers are looking for electric pickups at the right price.
At $60,000 to $70,000, the Lightning wasn’t so attractive, but at $40,000 used, it suddenly is. Perhaps Ford is on to something with its next-gen EV pickup, the Fathom, set to go on sale starting at under $30,000.
Will it deliver on its promise? Ford has yet to reveal battery specs, towing capacity, range, or any other specs. We should learn more soon.
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