Aaron Brzozowski 
Ford’s bigger, higher-riding electric Mustang, the Mach-E, is pretty darn popular, as it turns out. Ford sold nearly 25,000 of the things in the US alone through the end of October, and it’s the most popular pure-electric vehicle in most of the 50 states, thanks to a strong following in a whole slew of states not typically known for their EV-friendliness – in other words, just about everywhere not California or New York.
But fame comes with a price, and now, Automotive News reports that Ford has had to make the decision to delay its electric Ford Explorer EV and the related Lincoln Aviator EV so as to free up additional production capacity to meet rabid Mach-E demand. Those vehicles had been marked for production at Ford’s Cuautitlan, Mexico assembly plant, alongside the Mach-E. Instead, Ford will devote the entire plant to the four-door ‘Stang.
Ford is hoping to churn out some 200,000 units of the Ford Mustang Mach-E for the North American and European markets by 2023 as it seeks to become America’s second-largest EV maker, behind Tesla.
As a consequence of all this, the electric Ford Explorer EV and Lincoln Aviator EV, originally planned to start production in mid-2023, will be pushed back a full year-and-a-half to December, 2024. There’s still no concrete plan as to where they’ll be built, although we’d be surprised if Ford hasn’t considered giving EV manufacturer Rivian a ring. Previously, Ford had planned to launch a different large, Rivian-built Lincoln SUV based on that company’s skateboard architecture, but pulled the plug in 2020 due to the market impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Another collaboration between the two automakers is said to have recently gone stillborn, as well. But Ford Motor Company still owns stake in the promising new electric automaker nevertheless.
Ford has some serious electric vehicle ambitions, with plans to double its global EV production output to 600,000 units per year over the next two years. A surprisingly large chunk of that could come from the pure-electric Ford F-150 Lightning, which Ford now hopes to produce in numbers of about 160,000 per year, up from the 80,000 per year announced in September, and the mere 40,000 per year that had been planned before that.
