Used F-150 Lightnings now sell for 50% to 60% of sticker, one EV dealer says

A used Ford F-150 Lightning now sells for roughly 50% to 60% of its original sticker price, according to Jimmy Douglas, the chief executive of Plug, a wholesale EV dealer. Douglas told Bloomberg on Oct. 11, 2026 that the range is a “sweet spot,” and it is one dealer’s estimate, not a market-wide average. Ford built its last Lightning in December 2025, and the used trucks have been moving quickly ever since.

In Douglas’s words, “the Lightning is 50% to 60% of the sticker price and that is really a sweet spot.” He was blunter about the truck’s history, saying that “When Ford was selling it brand new, the math was complicated.”

What a 50% to 60% sticker discount means in dollars

Electrek’s Oct. 12 report on the used Lightning market supplies the new-truck prices that frame the discount. The base Lightning Pro debuted in 2021 at an MSRP of $39,974 and climbed to roughly $60,000 about a year later. Edmunds put the average transaction price in the first year at about $79,000, because Ford concentrated on higher trims, or about $19,000 more than the gas-powered F-150’s average. Against a $79,000 average, 50% to 60% of sticker works out to roughly $40,000 to $47,000, which is the territory where used trucks are trading.

The anecdotes line up with that. Chase Norris of Colorado told the outlet he paid about $40,000 for a used Lightning, calling it a bargain and a major upgrade over the gas F-150 he drove before. Edmunds, which tracks the broader market, shows used Lightning prices up 4% since the start of 2026, to about $50,000. The two figures differ because stickers ranged widely by trim, and the share of sticker that a buyer pays says little about the dollar amount without knowing which truck it is.

Fast sales and the dealers who send trucks back

Speed of sale is the other half of the story. Per the Electrek summary, used Lightnings sell in about 20 days, against a 44-day average for used vehicles in the United States. Bloomberg’s piece, titled “Ford’s F-150 electric truck is dead and more popular than ever,” adds that close to one-third of used Lightnings are sold by rival dealers who would normally send them back to Ford.

Supply is the pinch point. Alex Lawrence, the chief executive and cofounder of EV Group, a pre-owned EV dealership, told Electrek that his business cannot currently find reasonably priced used Lightnings. He said many buyers use the truck as a second vehicle to save on weekly commutes, which fits the pattern of a discontinued model whose value has settled at a level where it makes sense as an add-on and not as a primary work truck.

The production history matters to the used price. Because Ford stopped building the truck in December 2025, every Lightning on the market is now a finite supply that will only age, and the 4% rise in Edmunds’s used average since January suggests that scarcity is already visible in asking prices. Buyers who want a new one cannot get one, and the used trucks priced at 50% to 60% of sticker are therefore one of the cheaper ways into a full-size electric pickup for as long as they last, at least until the smaller Fathom arrives in 2027.

Why Ford ended the Lightning, and what replaces it

Ford chief executive Jim Farley explained the decision in a December 2025 CNBC interview, saying that the “very high-end EVs, the $50K, 70K, $80,000 vehicles, they just weren’t selling.” The CNBC interview came the same month the last Lightning rolled off the line, a send-off Electrek covered in a September report on Ford’s farewell to the Lightning. Electrek’s earlier reporting also put Ford’s loss at more than $100,000 on each Lightning it built, as of the first quarter of 2024, a figure that explains why the company did not try to rescue the model at lower trims.

Ford’s answer is a smaller, cheaper pickup called the Fathom. A company spokesperson confirmed to Electrek that “Fathom will launch in 2027” and that nothing has changed, while Farley told the 2026 Automotive News Congress that launching it “at scale, at cost, on time” will be “a heck of an effort.” According to Electrek, the standard-range version starts at $28,350, just under $30,000 with a $1,595 delivery fee, and the Wall Street Journal reported that Ford aims to sell about 100,000 of them in the first year.

A used market that values a discontinued $79,000-average truck at half price while a new $28,350 pickup is on the way is awkward for Ford, since it sets a floor under what buyers expect to pay for a capable electric pickup. The Fathom will have a NACS port and Apple Maps integration, according to Electrek, but Ford has not disclosed the Fathom’s battery specs, towing capacity or range, and those numbers will decide whether it competes with the Lightning or sits in a different class from it.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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