It's been cancelled before it got produced because Ram knows it won't sell. Best to cut bait when there aren't any fish. Best not to fish in the toilet, to put a finer point on it.

Just ask Ford.

It is said Ford loses about $30,000 on the "sale" of each F-150 Lightning (some estimates are much higher) and the only good news – for Ford – is that not many Lightnings have been sold this year. Or ever. So far this year, Ford has offloaded – a better term than sold –  8,927 Lightnings. Since 2022 – when the electric F-150 was first put on sale – about 80,000 of them have been offloaded. Meanwhile Ford sells around half-a-million engined F-trucks annually; as in makes money on the deal. These sales offset the losses incurred by the Lightning, which amount to many millions. Ford can afford to absorb the losses only because it is still making money selling the F-150.

Ram, on the other hand, is dealing with a double whammy. When upper management (Stellantis, then headed by Carlos Tavares) decided backin 2023 to replace the Hemi V8 that had been the Ram 1500's optional engine with a turbo-inline six, it lost a lot of sales. In 2023 – the last year the Ram was available with a V8 – 223,049 trucks were sold. In 2024 – which was the first year for the new turbo-inline six – sales were down to 179,526. That's a loss just shy of 20 percent in one year and the only difference between a 2023 Ram 1500 and a 2024 Ram 1500 is that the '24 no longer offered a V8.

Losing 20 percent of your sales is not a small thing. Among other things, it leaves less cushion for absorbing losses associated with trying to offload electric vehicles for which there is not much market.

Trucks are an especially tough market for "electrification," as it is styled because people who buy trucks generally expect them to work. Sitting at a Sheetz waiting for a charge is time spent not working. Ford touted the immense towing capability of the electric F-150. But what good is being able to pull a heavy trailer if you can't pull it very far? (I personally tested a Lightning's towing performance; it had no trouble pulling a trailer I'd loaded up with another car. The problem was that pulling the trailer cut the Ford's towing range in half, to less than 150 miles.)