CNBC has recently made public footage of the Ford F-150 Lightning, which caught fire in February, obtained via a FOIA request from the Dearborn police department. The video depicts the fire, caused by a battery defect, which destroyed multiple vehicles, resulting in an urgent recall of 18 trucks that had already been produced, and a temporary halt in production.
During a quality check, an incident occurred as reported by Ford, leading the company to initiate a stop-build and stop-ship for the Lightning for further investigation. Following the investigation, Ford announced on March 2nd that production would resume on March 13th, and subsequently recalled 18 F-150 trucks due to a manufacturing defect in the battery cells.
Related to the battery cell production at the SK On plant in Georgia, a spokesperson for Ford stated in March that it was the root cause of the defect, which fortunately did not result in any accidents or injuries. The spokesperson further mentioned that Ford has identified the root causes of the issue, implemented quality actions, and resumed production with clean battery packs.
Ford has been using SK On as its battery supplier since the start of production, and during the company’s investigation, the original battery packs of all 18 trucks were replaced to eliminate any chances of the defect emerging post-delivery.