Despite Ford's decision to convert its Ford F-150 Lightning into a long-range hybrid, demand for the vehicle has surged in recent months and it has turned into one of the best buys on the used electric car market.
Ford announced it would pull the plug on the F-150 Lightning in December, citing weakening demand for electric vehicles after President Donald Trump ended a popular $7,500 tax credit for new EVs. Since Ford made that decision, the F-150 Lightning has become one of the most coveted used electric vehicles in the country as drivers search for affordable and fuel-efficient car models.
Ford sold 4,470 new F-150 Lightnings in the first nine months of 2026, down nearly 80% from the 23,034 new models of the truck it sold in the same period last
year, according to Cox Automotive, an automotive industry research firm. But the F-150 Lightning has become a fast seller on the used market, spending an average of just 16 days on dealership lots, according to Recurrent, a Seattle-based EV market research firm.
Recurrent said the Ford F-150 Lightning has an average used price of $47,590. The average price of a used electric car is $27,297, according to the site, but those numbers include many models that are much smaller than the F-150 Lightning.
The 2025 F-150 Lightning, the last model year Ford sold it new, started at just under $55,000. Higher-end extended range versions of the electric vehicle retailed for as much as $99,000.
The findings come as some of Ford's chief competitors in the electric pickup segment, such as Tesla, Rivian, and GMC, have discounted their electric pickups this year in a bid to convert some disaffected F-150 Lightning fans to their brands. Ford has also announced plans to develop a new $30,000 electric pickup, with company leaders saying they learned a lot from their experience with the F-150 Lightning.
With that in mind, the USA TODAY Cars Team took a look at why the F-150 Lightning might be a better deal for shoppers at used prices than it was for many buyers as a brand-new vehicle.
Why is the Ford F-150 Lightning more appealing as a used car?
Chris Wood, vice president of automotive client strategy for USA TODAY Co.'s LocaliQ Automotive, said Ford's F-150 Lightning is seeing an uptick in demand because overall demand for used EVs is much higher than it used to be.
"The used F-150 Lightning market isn't necessarily booming. It's maturing," Wood said. "More consumers are purchasing used Lightnings than a year ago, but the growth isn't uniform across the lineup. We're seeing stronger activity in specific configurations, while others have softened. That's what you would expect as a vehicle moves further into its used-market lifecycle."
The Ford F-150 Lightning is also one of the few fully electric pickups that were on the market, and it competed with more expensive models from new entrants into the U.S. auto industry like Tesla and Rivian. The Chevrolet Silverado is similarly priced, with a starting point of $55,895. But a brand-new Tesla Cybertruck starts at $74,990 and a new Rivian R1T starts at $79,990.
Wood said the less-than-$50,000 average price of a used F-150 Lightning may be making it more attractive to cost-conscious buyers.
"I think affordability is a bigger part of this story than scarcity," Wood said. "There's a fundamental difference between consumers wanting an electric pickup and being willing to pay what the manufacturer originally asked for it. A used Lightning presents an entirely different value proposition, potentially opening the door to buyers who may never have considered purchasing one new."
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in an interview with USA TODAY that the Ford F-150 Lightning appealed to more than just pickup fans, even at the higher prices for brand new versions of the vehicle.
"We learned a lot from Lightning," he said. "It was too big, the batteries were too expensive, but the functionality pickup people loved. It was kind of shocking to us that so many Lightning people were not pickup owners."
Farley said he hopes Ford's new cheap electric pickup will be attractive to people who are currently driving small crossover SUVs like the Toyota RAV4.
"We decided to make it a pickup, not to target pickup customers, but to target two-row crossover customers," he said.
Why did Ford decide to change the F-150 Lightning from an EV to a long-range hybrid?
Ford announced in December its plans to transition its F-150 Lightning pickup from a fully electric vehicle to a hybrid known as an Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV). The last fully electric F-150 Lightning rolled off the company's assembly line in December, meaning the vehicle can only be purchased as a used model now.
Ford said in a news release that it decided to shift the F-150 Lightning from a fully electric power train to an EREV format because it would "offer the best of both worlds: the seamless, instant power of an electric powertrain and the freedom of a generator-backed estimated range of more than 700 miles."
"Unlike a traditional hybrid, the F-150 Lightning EREV is propelled 100 percent by electric motors," the Dearborn, Michigan-based company said. "This ensures owners get the pure EV driving experience they love – including rapid acceleration and quiet operation – while eliminating the need to stop and charge during long-distance towing."
A long-range hybrid, or an EREV, is a type of plug-in hybrid car that has a gasoline engine, which is used solely as a power source for a larger-than-normal battery that is intended to provide extended range. It is different than most hybrids, where both the gasoline engine and battery are used to power the vehicle at various times during the car's operation.
EREVs were developed to help address consumer concerns about the battery range of fully electric cars and the fact that most hybrid cars still use gasoline engines that cause air pollution. The concern about EV battery life has bubbled up so often that it has been dubbed "range anxiety."
According to a poll released in January by EV-friendly advocacy group EVs for All America, 20% of 600 potential EV buyers in 2025 said their top concern about plug-in models is the unreliability of charger networks.
Keith Laing is an automotive reporter on the National Trending Desk at USA TODAY. Contact Keith at klaing@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The used Ford F-150 Lightning is suddenly one of the smartest EV buys
