Ford’s announcement comes a day ahead of rival General Motors’ public introduction of the Chevrolet Silverado electric pickup, which is slated to go on sale in early 2023.

The Silverado E will be unveiled by GM CEO Mary Barra on Wednesday in a remote session connected with the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Shares of both U.S. automakers jumped on Tuesday. In afternoon trading, Ford was up nearly 12 per cent to $24.29, boosting its market cap to $97 billion (all figures US$). GM was up 7.6 per cent to $65.83, with its market cap climbing above $95 billion.

Ford CEO Jim Farley in early December told CNBC host Jim Cramer that Ford had to stop taking reservations for the 2022 Lightning “because we had so many.”

Ford originally had production capacity for 70,000-80,000 Lightnings. Farley said in the December interview that Ford aimed to double that over the next two years at the company’s Rouge factory near its Dearborn, Mich. headquarters.

Ford also is planning to triple annual production of its popular Mustang Mach-E electric crossover to more than 200,000 by 2023, to meet better-than-anticipated demand.

The automaker said it will have the annual capacity to build 600,000 electric vehicles globally within 24 months, when it aims to become “the clear No. 2 electric vehicle maker in North America” behind Tesla, which last year sold more than 900,000 EVs.

The 2022 F-150 Lightning will have a starting price of $39,974, and is being aimed at both retail and commercial customers.

— Paul Lienert is a Reuters correspondent covering transport automation and electrification from the Detroit area.

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Reuss told an investor conference GM is working with seven chip suppliers on three new families of microcontrollers that will reduce the number of unique chips by 95 per cent on future vehicles.

The supplier partners include Qualcomm, STM, TSMC, Renesas, NXP, Infineon and ON Semi, he said.

Most of GM’s future investment in the new microcontroller families “will flow to the U.S. and Canada,” Reuss said.

Vehicle manufacturers around the world have been coping much of the year with shortages of semiconductor chips that control everything from heated seats to infotainment systems.

Those shortages in some cases have caused GM and other automakers to build, then park unfinished vehicles until missing chips finally arrive and can be installed. In other cases, vehicles are being delivered to customers without some of the usual features.

“We see our semiconductor requirements more than doubling over the new few years,” with the arrival of new electric vehicles and complex driver assistance systems such as UltraCruise, Reuss said.

The new microcontrollers will consolidate many of the functions now handled by individual chips, which not only will reduce cost and complexity, but “will drive quality and predictability,” he said.

The new microcontrollers will be built in high volume — as much as 10 million units a year, Reuss said.

A GM spokesperson told Reuters that the company is “trying to develop an ecosystem that is much more resilient, more scalable and always there to meet our needs.”

Earlier Thursday, Ford Motor Co. and chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries Inc. said they plan to work together to boost supplies for the automaker’s vehicles and the broader U.S. auto industry.

— Reporting for Reuters by Paul Lienert in Detroit.

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Strong U.S. sales this year of the highly profitable big trucks have helped offset lagging passenger car sales.

But it is not clear how much of the truck demand is linked directly to ample factory incentives and dealer discounts, or how far sales might decline without those subsidies.

A Reuters survey of Ford, General Motors’ Chevrolet and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ Ram truck dealers across the U.S. indicates stores are offering deep discounts on some of the country’s best-selling full-size pickup trucks.

“The walls are not crashing down on full-size trucks,” said Sam Fiorani, vice-president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. Detroit-based automakers want to keep cranking out their high-margin trucks, he added, and “giving up a little of the profit is the cheapest way to do it.”

Stores are offering discounts of up to $12,000 on the 2018 Ford F-150, which remains the best-selling vehicle in the country, recording more than 80,000 sales in May (all figures US$).

Discounts run up to $13,000 on the 2018 Chevrolet Silverado and as high as $16,000 on the Ram 1500.

Average transaction prices for full-size pick-ups range from around $42,000 to $45,000, industry analysts and automakers say.

All three companies are spending furiously — GM and Fiat Chrysler to help sell off carryover 2018 trucks to prepare for redesigned 2019 models, and Ford to sustain its long-held sales crown.

A supplier fire that temporarily shut down production of the F-150 last month “changed the game,” said Jeff Schuster, senior vice-president of forecasting at LMC Automotive in Troy, Michigan.

The supply halt nudged Ford’s crosstown rivals “to ratchet up incentives on the current models to go after weakness at Ford,” he said.

Deals advertised on the companies’ official websites range from rebates and low-interest loans to ultra-cheap lease rates, but they are not telling the whole story.

Ford, for instance, advertises a $2,000 rebate and a $500 financing credit on sales of certain F-150 models.

But James Collins Ford in Louisville, Kentucky, is offering discounts of up to $12,215 on the 2018 F-150 XLT SuperCrew 4×4.

The price cuts are even steeper at a number of GM and Fiat Chrysler dealers.

Quirk Chevrolet is selling the 2018 Silverado 1500 Double Cab at $13,000 off sticker. Gurnee Chrysler Dodge Ram Jeep outside Chicago is marking down the 2018 Ram 1500 Harvest Crew Cab 4×4 by up to $16,000.

— Paul Lienert is a Reuters correspondent covering the U.S. auto sector from Detroit.

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The supplier, Chinese-owned Meridian Magnesium Products, said it is “working with the customers” — automakers affected by the fire — to move some of its tooling to a plant at Strathroy, Ont., in a letter on an internal employee website and signed by George Asher, manager of Meridian’s Eaton Rapids plant in Michigan.

The fire, whose cause is under investigation by local authorities, triggered smaller production disruptions to other vehicle manufacturers, including General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, Daimler and BMW, the companies confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday.

But the most significant impact was felt by Ford, whose F-150 full-size pickup is the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. The vehicle generated US$41 billion in revenue last year, about 28 per cent of total sales and the lion’s share of its profits.

Meridian supplies a lightweight radiator support for the F-150 and its heavy-duty sibling, the Super Duty. After the fire, Ford was forced to close F-series truck plants in Kansas City, Missouri, and Louisville, Kentucky, and was considering whether to close a third plant in Dearborn, Michigan.

It was not clear how long the production disruptions will last or how Ford may be assisting Meridian in relocating parts production. A Ford spokeswoman said on Wednesday the automaker is working closely with the supplier to get production restarted, but declined to provide details.

Production of the Super Duty at Ford’s Kentucky truck plant was halted on Wednesday.

The Super Duty is one of the automaker’s most profitable vehicles. A two-week production halt for the F-series could slice as much as US$310 million from Ford’s second-quarter profits, Buck Research analyst Joseph Amaturo wrote in a note Wednesday.

Ford could make up some of the lost production later in the year by running overtime.

Fiat Chrysler said on Wednesday the fire affected production of the Chrysler Pacifica minivan in Windsor, Ont., adding it is “adjusting production schedules as needed to minimize plant downtime (and) will make up any lost production.”

GM said on Wednesday it has temporarily halted production of Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana full-size vans at its Wentzville, Missouri, plant because of parts shortages caused by the fire on May 2. The plant continued to produce Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon mid-size pickups. GM said it is working to resume van production “as quickly as possible.”

Daimler and BMW acknowledged that they also had parts shortages from Meridian, resulting in minor production disruptions at their U.S. plants in Alabama and South Carolina.

Meridian, owned by Chinese supplier Wanfeng Auto Holding Group, also provides parts to Toyota and Tesla, among others, according to the websites of Meridian and Wanfeng.

Meridian could not be reached for comment.

— Reporting for Reuters by Joseph White and Paul Lienert in Detroit.

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