2021 Ford F-150 pickups are about to get far more scarce
Ford announced it's building the trucks without essential components and holding them due to the ongoing chip shortage.
America's best-selling vehicle faces some turbulence as Ford announced Friday it won't be shipping new F-150 pickup trucks directly to dealers. Instead, due to the semiconductor chip shortage, Ford will build the trucks and hang onto them until it receives necessary components to complete production. These include computers and electronic modules necessary for the vehicle to function.
Once Ford gets the chips it needs, it will complete production, perform quality checks and then ship them out to dealers. If you have any idea of how vehicle production works, you know this change is a very clunky process -- albeit a necessary one -- that will cost the automaker a whole lot of time and cash. The company added it's also applying this process to the Ford Edge, though the F-150 is certainly going to hurt the most. Escape and Lincoln Corsair production is also offline until this coming Monday due to related chip shortages.
The semiconductor chip shortage has left no automaker unaffected. From Tesla , to General Motors and beyond, chips have become a hot commodity. GM, specifically, said it plans to build Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups without a fuel-saving system called Dynamic Fuel Management. Without chips to make the system function, trucks with the 5.3-liter V8 engine will see a minor drop in fuel economy, about 1 mile per gallon.
