August 3, 2023: Ford Motor Company stated that its deals grew compared to the previous year, as need for its pickup trucks and the Bronco SUV offset a slump in electric vehicle deliveries.

On Wednesday, the Detroit automaker reported new vehicle sales 173,639 in the U.S. for the month, up from a strong 163,942 a year ago as it was recovering from pandemic-era supply-chain challenges. 

Sales of Ford’s F-Series pickups, a powerful profit driver, rose 8.2% in the month to 68,536 trucks. But the electric F-150 Lightning sales dropped over 28% from a year ago, to just 1,552 trucks, after the company shut down the Lightning’s factory for six weeks to install production upgrades.

The Lightning’s factory reopened earlier this week. Ford said on Tuesday that orders for the Lightning had bounced sixfold after price cuts in mid-July.

The company said it anticipates. Lightning sales will be slow through mid-September as it rebuilds the model’s dealer inventories but anticipates making over 70,000 Lightning in 2023. Through July, Ford delivered just 10,309 Lightning to U.S. customers.

The factory upgrades will allow Ford to build 150,000 flashes of Lightning annually once it’s entirely up and running this fall.

The electric Mustang Mach-E sales also decreased by nearly 21% in July, following a separate factory shutdown and upgrade earlier this year. But Ford’s different EV sales, the E-Transit commercial van, rose over 50% to 791 units in July.

Ford said it expects its EV unit, called Ford Model E, to lose $4.5 billion in 2023 as it spends heavily ramping up to a production rate of 600,000 EVs annually sometime in 2024.

While Ford has been working through production issues with its electric models, its internal combustion and hybrid models have generated solid results and profits. Sales of the Bronco SUV climbed over 20% in July, to 12,755, and sales of the smaller Ranger and Maverick pickups rose 8.6% and 13.5%, respectively, from a year ago.

U.S. sales of all Ford vehicles, including EVs and Lincoln-brand models, totaled 1,181,207 through July, up 9.4% from the same period in 2022.