A Sterling Heights auto parts maker plans to shut down and lay off all 156 workers after Ford discontinued the electric F-150 Lightning and moved supplier business toward lower-cost firms overseas.
JG Kern Enterprises, a Michigan powertrain supplier in business since 1967, has told the state it expects to close permanently after losing Ford work tied to the all-electric pickup. The company filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with Michigan covering every one of its 156 employees.
Ford Authority reported the shutdown plan, drawing on Detroit Free Press coverage of the hit to Kern after the Blue Oval pulled back from the electric truck and from the supplier that depended on it.
Ford announced in December 2025 that the F-150 Lightning was going away. The company said a new Lightning with an extended-range electric powertrain would eventually take its place. For Kern, the practical result arrived sooner: the loss of its biggest customer and a path to empty the plant.
Lines at the Sterling Heights shop are still running only long enough to finish the remaining Ford contract. After that, the doors are expected to close for good.
A source familiar with the situation said Ford canceled dealings with Kern and steered the business toward companies in India and in other U.S. states. The same source said the choice boils down to money, including lower labor costs in India.
Kern described the collapse in its WARN filing as the product of “unforeseeable business circumstances.” For the people on the payroll, the circumstances are concrete: a plant that made powertrain parts for nearly six decades is preparing to erase every job on the roster.
That is the human ledger behind another chapter in Detroit’s electric-vehicle experiment. When the product line ends and the contracts move, the first hard landing is not in a boardroom. It is on a factory floor in Macomb County.
Ford declined to discuss confidential supplier agreements. Spokesman Dave Tovar instead offered a general defense of how the company picks vendors and how it talks about U.S. manufacturing.
Dave Tovar said:
"Our sourcing decisions consider quality, delivery, financial stability and operational risk so we can keep our plants operating and delivering vehicles to customers."
He added a broader pledge:
"Ford is committed to American manufacturing and jobs. Reliable suppliers are essential to protecting production and the thousands of American jobs that depend on our plants operating."
Those lines sit beside the reported shift of work toward India. Ford frames the decision as risk management and plant continuity. Kern’s filing and the planned layoff of 156 people show who absorbs the cost when the electric truck program is wound down and the supplier base is reshuffled.
Kern’s story is narrow and local in one sense: one shop, one WARN notice, one customer relationship that defined the business. It is also familiar. Automakers raced into battery-electric trucks under political and market pressure to prove they could lead the green transition. When volume, cost, or strategy failed to match the sales pitch, the reverse gear hit suppliers first.
Ford’s December 2025 call on the Lightning closed one chapter of that push. The planned replacement is not a pure battery truck but an extended-range design. In the gap between the old product and whatever comes next, a longtime Michigan parts maker is writing its exit papers.
No public filing in the available reporting names the India-based firms or the out-of-state rivals that gained the work. No effective closure date is listed beyond the company’s expectation of a permanent shutdown once the last Ford pieces ship. The headcount is not in dispute. All 156 jobs are on the line.
Sterling Heights is not an abstract node on a supply chart. It is a Detroit-area city whose payrolls still rise and fall with the production schedules of the Big Three and their vendors. A supplier that opened in 1967 spent decades feeding powertrain components into that system. The electric F-150 was supposed to be the future of that system. Instead it became the reason the future ended early for one plant.
Officials in Lansing will process the WARN like any other mass layoff notice. Retraining language will follow. None of that restores a customer that chose a different map for its parts.
Corporate statements about American jobs ring hollow when the next contract lands in a lower-wage country and a Michigan shop goes dark. Workers kept the lights on for Ford’s last orders. They should not be the ones left holding the bill for a failed electric detour.