If you’re looking for an electric truck that still feels like a regular pickup, you’re going to have a hard time beating the Ford F-150 Lightning. The Tesla Cybertruck may get all the attention, but if you’re actually going to be hauling anything, for example, you’ll have a far easier time reaching into the Lightning’s bed. Unfortunately for Ford, the number of people who can justify dropping nearly $80,000 on an F-150 Lightning Lariat just isn’t what it was during the pandemic. According to CarsDirect, though, Ford has the solution — just slash prices.
In at least 10 regions of the country, if you lease a new F-150 Lightning, you can now get up to $15,250 in rebates. The downside is, that only applies to the Platinum trim, which starts at about $85,000. Still, that’s more than double the $7,500 that Ford was previously offering on the Platinum. Lease a Lariat, and you get $9,750 off the Standard Range version and $9,250 off the Extended range, both of which were previously discounted by $5,000. If you want an XLT, it’s a little more complicated. It says there’s a $1,500 rebate, but if you get one with Equipment Group 311A, it jumps to $4,250. And if you get the Extended Range, that discount increases further to $7,000.
Currently, these deals appear to only be available in Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. In California, Ford has sweetened the deal even further, cutting the money factor on the F-150 Lightning, too. So while you previously would have gotten a 5.68-percent lease rate on a Lariat, that’s now 0.9 percent. It’s still not technically free money, but it may as well be.
Will these discounts be enough to move a bunch of F-150 Lightnings? We can’t say for sure, but making the Mustang Mach-E cheaper seems to have worked out pretty well for Ford, so there’s no reason to think the same won’t happen here, as well.