As the major automakers ramp up competition for the growing EV market both in the U.S. and globally, cross-town rival Ford is seemingly using GM’s “No Way Norway” ad campaign as a springboard for its own launch of the F-150 Lightning EV pickup truck in Scandinavia.
The Blue Oval recently announced its latest Norwegian EV plans, along with release of a new video ad, “Ford’s F-150 Lightning Comes to Norway.”
F-150 Lightning from Ford’s new ad
GM began its “No Way Norway” campaign with an ad spot during the 2021 Super Bowl. The video features comedian Will Ferrell and his friends, portrayed by Kenan Thompson and Awkwafina, who set out for Norway on an absurd mission to give the Scandinavian nation a thorough scolding for being ahead of the U.S. in EV adoption. The ad featured the GMC Hummer EV Pickup and the Cadillac Lyriq.
GM chose Norway as the focus of its ad campaign because electric vehicles are very popular there, with EVs comprising two-thirds of Norwegian new car sales in 2021. The humorous “No Way Norway” ad was The General’s first ad since 2009 advertising GM as a whole rather than one of its brands. A longer ad followed, though distribution of GM Cadillac EVs in Europe would likely be hampered by a very small dealership network.
Another shot from Ford’s new ad
Ford soon responded to “No Way Norway” with a tweet poking fun at GM and a brief video ad showing Ford Mustang Mach-E crossovers delivering pizzas in Oslo, including to the Norwegian parliament.
Now, Ford is piggybacking on the spotlight GM put on Norway’s EV adoption to bring the F-150 Lightning to Europe, starting with the Scandinavian country. Ford Norway managing director Per Gunnar Berg says he has “had customers literally banging on my door and pleading for us to bring the electric pickup to Norway.”
Gunnar added “F-150 Lightning is the perfect match for many customers in Norway” with its mix of eco-friendliness and adventurousness. Ford points out EVs now account for 80 percent of Norwegian new vehicle sales, up from two-thirds when “No Way Norway” first aired.
Front view of the F-150 Lightning in the Ford ad
Ford is already accepting orders from Norway for a limited release of F-150 Lightning Lariat Launch Edition trucks. With deliveries planned for 2024, the special Ford F-150 Lightning pickups will wear Antimatter Blue exterior paint and will be sold through Ford’s network of 70 Norwegian dealerships.
The Blue Oval’s “Ford’s F-150 Lightning Comes to Norway” video shows the truck speeding through snowy Norwegian mountains intercut with scenes of the driver skiing, including on a ski slope illuminated by lights using the F-150 Lightning’s Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) adapter as a power source. You can watch the video here:
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Comments
Nice marketing plan. GM lost the electric truck war and Tesla is a no-show. But Ford has to produce an electric sedan to compete against the Model S which is a big seller in Europe.
Considering ford lost 60,000$ per EV they sold last year and this first quarter, I’d say that’s a war GM should be glad they lost.
GM hasn’t lost the EV truck war just yet and they currently own the full size and overall ICE truck market. Yes, Ford beat them to market with a cobbled ICE F-150 with batteries stuffed in it. This is significantly inferior to what GM has coming with the Silverado EV in terms of design, efficiency and range. Of course Ford is working on a second gen purpose built EV, but that is a few years away. IF GM can actually scale the Silverado EV, it will quickly surpass Ford’s sales and will be more competitive abroad as well. I’m not an Ultium battery pack fan, but who knows. I do like Ford’s rapid embrace of LFP batteries already available in their new base Mach-e and those will be available in the 2nd gen truck – they are 1/2 the cost, but with ~80% of the energy density and way safer. The CT will be on the road by Q3, but not ramped up until 2024.
Even at 1/2 the battery costs, you still have to consider the 30,000$ in eletric motors. Batteries are the most expensive part of the car but that doesn’t mean the rest is cheap.
Considering a 100 kWh NMC battery retail cost is about $16k, the actual cost for an OEM is closer to $12-13k, therefore LFP will be well under $10k and electric motors definitely cost less to produce/acquire than engines or transmissions, so it is well under $20k for the drive train. Keep in mind the majority of Ford’s losses are a result of investment (engineering, tooling, training and factory costs) rather than selling a vehicle with components exceeding the value of the car. This investment has to be accounted for and as scale increases the so-called ‘loss per car’ will go down. Keep in mind it takes years to recoup the initial investment along with the cost of continued use of resources and labor. It took Toyota several generations and 8 years to finally ‘make money’ on their hybrid system. Unlike GM, Ford is simply separating out its Blue (ICE) and its ‘startup’ e divisions on paper to show this. Every newly designed vehicle ‘loses’ money for a period of time until the investment money is recouped (not guaranteed). Investing in a newer technology has even greater costs as you can’t simply raid the supply bin. It took Tesla years of losing millions to finally become profitable with industry leading margins (For a Model Y it is well documented its costs Tesla $36k max total to build). No legacy auto can even come close to this yet. So, it is true that all legacy auto loses money on every BEV they sell for now (when considering ROI), but that will change as they begin to scale with shared platforms.
16K for 100KW on a nickel battery? Ouch. How double/triple that for a SUV/Truck/sedan. FYI, 16,000 is what you could get a ICE that’s the same size as the bolt. Thanks for proving our point also, batteries is just a fraction of the equation. Imagine paying 16,000 for a fuel tank 😆
How about this, how powerful is your eletric motor? Go to to EBay, Baldor, marathon and look up a similarly sized eletric motor and report back to me how much it costs. How many of those do you have ? 2? 3? Electric motors cost way more than gas motors. But don’t take my word for it, go look it up…. No used BTW. Don’t cheat.
gm is completely gone in europe.
The competition kicked them out years ago.
Nobody misses the failed general.
alex, it is true that GM has essentially left Europe as it wasn’t profitable. And I think it was a great move, especially the timing as GM was able to sell the old plants. All OEMs are struggling mightily in Europe with diminishing market share, excess labor and factories they can’t dump as Tesla and the coming wave of cheap Chinese EVs are making serious inroads. The top selling vehicle of any class, so far in 2023, in Europe is the Tesla Model Y. With the ICE ban on the horizon, GM has an opportunity to return to this market with BEVs likely made in China without the headache/cost of unionized European plants. Ford is reducing its European ICE presence significantly, but is introducing several dedicated BEV models (beyond the Lightning) as that IS the future in the EU.
Well it’s a way for them to get rid of excess inventory/production capacity. Just looking at Ford’s own recent reported sales data here in the U.S. for the Lightning “truck”, which is laughable.
Ford is in serious trouble, the company that my son works for has always bought Ford service vehicles but they switched to Chevys this year. He said they have had huge problems getting their existing Fords repaired and the price on new F series trucks was not competitive with GM. Also, their internal maintenance manager said no more Ford turbo sixes, apparently they didn’t hold up in the long run and became maintenance nightmares. Hopefully they have better luck with the Chevys. My son sent me a photo of his new company truck. It’s a crew cab Z71 Trail Boss. He visits some remote work sites and is looking forward to using this truck. Go GM!!
Ford has typically spent $400-$600 more per vehicle on warranty claims than GM. That is one reason why their stock price is low. I have stock in both companies.
I believe it, I drove only Ford trucks (5) until my first new Silverado in 2012, will never go back to Ford. No auto stocks here, just utilities.
All Ford does is copy GM.