Electric F-150 unveiled

[IronWing]

We'll have to see how the independent rear suspension does. My FJ has it and while it's great for offroad, towing is a bit squirrelly and hammers the shocks.

 

[ponyo]

BTW, the F-150 Lighting has MSRP up to $90K, without tri-motor or 500+ mile range:
"The MSRP of the F-150 Lightning ranges from $39,974 up to around $90,474."

yup. I'm aware of the Lightning price range. Ford is not going to sell much $90,474 version after the initial first adapter buyers IMO.

For every $10k price increase, the pool of buyers decrease substantially. $50-60k to $90k is huge jump and will price out lot of buyers.

Shit I see so many lariat F-250 models out on the roads here in Texas, those are easily 85k optioned out. A basic optioned F-150 4x4 is around 45k these days.

There are not that many $85k trucks out there. Most of the trucks out there are low to mid range. Before covid, most of the expensive heavy option trucks had $10-$15k off MRSP discount. So the true price was never $85k and only very few trucks were sold in that price range.

 

[herm0016]

I get why they are doing it. It's just a shame that they have to do that because it would be a better vehicle in every way if they moved the cab forward.
Better visibility, better driving position, much more versatile layout behind the passenger area...

Should be like the corvair trucks the jeep forward control, the original Ford econoline. I totally agree.

 

[jlee]

We'll have to see how the independent rear suspension does. My FJ has it and while it's great for offroad, towing is a bit squirrelly and hammers the shocks.

Do you mean coil spring vs leaf spring? FJs have solid rear axles, not independent rear:

 

[Kaido]

The only thing I don't like about it is that it's an SUV. Pickups have 8' beds, that's where all the utility comes from.

So one of my clients has this exact vehicle - crew with 5.5' bed - in ICE format & let me check it out today. You're right, it is an SUV lol. It's sort of a cross between a big Terrain coupled with an oversized Subaru Baja shortbed. For like a family SUV-style car, it'd actually be perfect...fits within the parking lot lines really well, easy to get in of & out of, etc. tbh if it had a bigger battery it'd be a pretty compelling sell for me. Sort of like a supersized Honda Ridgeline Gen2...very practical for people-moving & minor bed usage!

Although I can only imagine the possibilities with the Frunk...

 

[ondma]

I am actually fairly impressed. Doesnt look crazy like the cybertruck, not prohibitively expensive. Tesla is far ahead on the fast charger network, I assume.
This could work for moving things around on the jobsite: short distances, recharge overnight.
However, still question the range for carrying heavy loads any kind of distance, and for towing a large camper or other heavy load.

 

[Brainonska511]

I am actually fairly impressed. Doesnt look crazy like the cybertruck, not prohibitively expensive. Tesla is far ahead on the fast charger network, I assume.
This could work for moving things around on the jobsite: short distances, recharge overnight.
However, still question the range for carrying heavy loads any kind of distance, and for towing a large camper or other heavy load.

And how many people that buy pickups actually do those things on a regular basis? They're useful questions for those that do those things, but I'd bet the vast majority of truck buyers never do any of those things, ever (or maybe only some local moving every blue moon).

 

[Meghan54]

Review time:



* Dunno about towing. Towing with Teslas kills the range.

And as far as I've seen/read, Ford has kinda "refused" to mention tow range....probably because it's horrid, like you imagine it would be. Conservative estimates are 40-60% decrease in range, depending upon tow weight.

Sad, really. Towing is exactly why I own a pickup. It is useful for a whole range of reasons, but towing was my primary reason for purchasing a pickup. (Currently two reasons....my 18' Fish-n-Ski outboard and my 12' enclosed trailer, with 6.5' interior stand-up height.)

I thought the pic Ford provided in its advertising of the Ford with the travel trailer, was overly ambitious in its suggestions. Cannot imagine someone trying to take that travel trailer out for a vacation/whatever, with the truck loaded with family/people and the bed loaded with crap, traveling 100 miles down the road every 12 hours. Makes going cross-country a tedious effort, at best.

 

[K1052]

And as far as I've seen/read, Ford has kinda "refused" to mention tow range....probably because it's horrid, like you imagine it would be. Conservative estimates are 40-60% decrease in range, depending upon tow weight.

Sad, really. Towing is exactly why I own a pickup. It is useful for a whole range of reasons, but towing was my primary reason for purchasing a pickup. (Currently two reasons....my 18' Fish-n-Ski outboard and my 12' enclosed trailer, with 6.5' interior stand-up height.)

I thought the pic Ford provided in its advertising of the Ford with the travel trailer, was overly ambitious in its suggestions. Cannot imagine someone trying to take that travel trailer out for a vacation/whatever, with the truck loaded with family/people and the bed loaded with crap, traveling 100 miles down the road every 12 hours. Makes going cross-country a tedious effort, at best.

A lot of people like the idea of towing even if they never do it (hence the marketing). I have not once seen any of the trucks that live on my street tow something.

An EV obviously wouldn't be desirable for your purposes.

 

[Kaido]

And as far as I've seen/read, Ford has kinda "refused" to mention tow range....probably because it's horrid, like you imagine it would be. Conservative estimates are 40-60% decrease in range, depending upon tow weight.

Sad, really. Towing is exactly why I own a pickup. It is useful for a whole range of reasons, but towing was my primary reason for purchasing a pickup. (Currently two reasons....my 18' Fish-n-Ski outboard and my 12' enclosed trailer, with 6.5' interior stand-up height.)

I thought the pic Ford provided in its advertising of the Ford with the travel trailer, was overly ambitious in its suggestions. Cannot imagine someone trying to take that travel trailer out for a vacation/whatever, with the truck loaded with family/people and the bed loaded with crap, traveling 100 miles down the road every 12 hours. Makes going cross-country a tedious effort, at best.

Yeah, and imagine buying the 230-mile F-150 and then having a 115-mile usable round-trip distance because towing cuts it in half....and assuming you're going to say, a lake with a boat in tow, and there isn't any destination charging available, then you really have a 58-mile radius you can drive it in. If you're driving 60mph on the highway, then that means you can really only drive your truck while towing within an hour away. And that's assuming you want to make it back with zero percent battery & don't crank the A/C & speakers on the way & or use the 120V plugs at the campsite or whatever!

What they should do is sell an 8-foot version of the electric F-150 & slap a huge 700-mile battery in it lol. That way, even with the range cut in half (350 miles with towing, maybe), and even with that cut in half (175 miles to destination), you'd still have enough juice to plug stuff into the 120V outlets on the truck & make it back without range anxiety. So really towing is for stuff like a trailers & small U-haul containers for short distances. If you want to drive 6 hours out to the lake to camp for a couple days, there are no gas stations you can fill up in under 5 minutes at along the way, so then it turns into a planning session & a waiting project for the charging to get done at public stalls, assuming they're not maxed out with cars & assuming you can angle your boat/trailer/whatever into the park space without block everyone.

So there are definitely some logistics issues going on with the current design that will need to be addressed. Bigger batteries will help, faster charging will solve it, and ultra-fast-charging locations available everywhere will make it mainstream. But even with a big 700-mile battery, electric towing is going to be an issue for anything other than a nearby location because of the logistics of charging. With that said, I do think this will be a pretty good truck just as a personal or family commuter, because you can reasonably fit 5 adults in it, throw stuff in the frunk & the bed, and tool around town just fine in it. tbh if it had a 500-mile battery I'd probably get it over the Cybertruck (especially if it had a larger bed!).

 

[Kaido]

An EV obviously wouldn't be desirable for your purposes.

Exactly, this is the key phrase right here: EV's are not universal machines. Most cars can be adapted for universal use-case scenarios, i.e. being a daily driver to work, being a family hauler, going on a road-trip, etc. because of the enormous quick-fill gas station infrastructure. And even most professionals I know don't go after trucks these days, they go after vans because of the huge amount of room you get inside, particularly with inclement weather.

I think the automatic human response is to conflate "new EV vehicle" with "this should do everything & be equal to an ICE vehicle can do", which is fine in like 90% of the cases because most people don't drive that much. With say a standard 300-mile battery at 65mph on the highway, that's over 4.5 hours of driving a day, so most people in most situations would be pretty okay with an electric vehicle if they kept it charged up every night. A new study says that 1 in 5 Californians return their EV to go back to ice:

Study Finds 1 In 5 EV Owners In California Returned To Gas Power

Another way to look at it is that 4 in 5 EV owner don’t want to go back to ICE, and the main reason why some went back had to do with slow home charging.

insideevs.com

The primary reason is that they lack access to Level 2 charging. So charging was a major barrier for 20% of people long-term, which means exactly what you said - owning an EV has to be desirable for your purposes, which also means having the infrastructure to support what you want to do with it. As the article mentioned, you get like 36 miles from a 120V plug overnight, which isn't feasible for a lot of people, so there's some additional investment required at home, at work, around town, etc. to really support the idea of an EV right now.

Which is a big reason I haven't gotten one myself yet! And why I'm so interested in a 500-mile range Cybertruck...that's a 250-mile radius without charging (well, less range, in practice), which would cover me for the areas of my state that I service for work that doesn't have any Tesla Superchargers available, without having to have range anxiety or kill my commute with having to wait for long charging times to get home. I really want to love EV's, but the technology needs to progress a bit more before it makes sense for me personally. So hopefully the Cybertruck will be the ticket for me! haha

 

[Paratus]

Good News Everyone! Texas is proactively addressing the issue of road maintenance and the fact EVs don’t pay gas taxes.

SB1728 which they should be voting on shortly will apply a yearly registration tax to all EV and hybrid vehicles.

Should work out to be twice as expensive to register a F150E vs driving a regular F150 10,000miles a year.

 

[herm0016]

Good News Everyone! Texas is proactively addressing the issue of road maintenance and the fact EVs don’t pay gas taxes.

SB1728 which they should be voting on shortly will apply a yearly registration tax to all EV and hybrid vehicles.

Should work out to be twice as expensive to register a F150E vs driving a regular F150 10,000miles a year.

heck, they are late to the party. it costs us about the same amount to register a Volt in Colorado worth about 8 grand, vs my $30k truck.

 

[Paratus]

heck, they are late to the party. it costs us about the same amount to register a Volt in Colorado worth about 8 grand, vs my $30k truck.

Colorado looks like a $50 registration charge? California implemented a $100 fee this year supposedly.

The proposed registration fees in TX either run a flat $190 for an EV under 6000lbs or $240 if over.
There's another option to pay vs mileage which is a little better @ $150 for 10K miles (9001-12000miles - dropping or increasing by $40 per 3K miles) for under 6000lbs or $190 for over 6000lbs (dropping or increasing by $50 per 3K miles)

Since Texas has a $.20 per gallon tax the best case exchange (12000miles @ $150) an EV under 6000lbs would pay the same as an ICE which gets 16mpg


To bring it back to this thread, the F150 lightning weighs 6500lbs so it would pay a minimum of $190 for 12K miles or equivalent to an F150 getting 12.6mpg.


This legislation is strictly to punish EVs

 

[K1052]

This legislation is strictly to punish EVs

TX state government only really excels at solving problems that don't exist in ways they think will hurt/annoy liberals. It's basically useless for anything else that isn't a tax incentive for business.

 

[ponyo]

Good News Everyone! Texas is proactively addressing the issue of road maintenance and the fact EVs don’t pay gas taxes.

SB1728 which they should be voting on shortly will apply a yearly registration tax to all EV and hybrid vehicles.

Should work out to be twice as expensive to register a F150E vs driving a regular F150 10,000miles a year.

Many states now have that yearly BS EV registration tax. It's $200 a year in GA for EV tag vs $20 for ICE tag.

 

[BoomerD]

There’s defiantly not a $10k premium on most of the models.

A 4x4 XL Supercrew 5.5k’ base stripper is $42k with destination.

Though I expect the base commercial lighting is more of a stripper than the base XL.

The lighting is definitely competitively priced.

We bought a 2018 F150 XLT 5.5' bed brand new in 2018. Sticker price was $53k, we paid around $35k.
We upgraded last year to a 2019 Lariat 6.5' bed with all the technology packages 0% interest). Sticker was $72k plus the dealer add-ons. (Tonneau cover, hood protector, window protectors) We paid $65k.
We don't NEED a truck most of the time...as Greenman points out, it's basically an SUV with an open bed...but a few times every year, I'll haul a load of dirt or stack of lumber or...stuff that would be difficult to stick in the trunk of a Honda...or even a real SUV.

I'll wait and see how the Lightning pans out...but the more info comes out, the more appealing it becomes.
Right now, the 300 mile range is challenging for me. A few times every year, we jump in the truck for a road trip. Generally, I put on 400-500 miles per day when I'm trying to get somewhere...often driving in places where electric charging stations are unheard of.
Time will tell whether this will work for us.

 

[Kaido]

We bought a 2018 F150 XLT 5.5' bed brand new in 2018. Sticker price was $53k, we paid around $35k.
We upgraded last year to a 2019 Lariat 6.5' bed with all the technology packages 0% interest). Sticker was $72k plus the dealer add-ons. (Tonneau cover, hood protector, window protectors) We paid $65k.
We don't NEED a truck most of the time...as Greenman points out, it's basically an SUV with an open bed...but a few times every year, I'll haul a load of dirt or stack of lumber or...stuff that would be difficult to stick in the trunk of a Honda...or even a real SUV.

I'll wait and see how the Lightning pans out...but the more info comes out, the more appealing it becomes.
Right now, the 300 mile range is challenging for me. A few times every year, we jump in the truck for a road trip. Generally, I put on 400-500 miles per day when I'm trying to get somewhere...often driving in places where electric charging stations are unheard of.
Time will tell whether this will work for us.

tbh 300 miles is the biggest roadblock for me. That & the short bed. The more I read about the Lightning, the more intrigued I am. They did a phenomenally good job on it! I'm sure the battery & longer bed lengths will become available in coming years. I'm still a Cybertruck fanboy for sure, but the fact that the F-150 (1) looks normal, (2) has a ton of outlet plugs, (3) can power your house if needed, and (4) has a monster frunk is pretty dang appealing!

 

[Heartbreaker]

(3) can power your house if needed, and (4) has a monster frunk is pretty dang appealing!

In the future I expect the capability to reverse the flow out of the Big EV batteries to be increasingly important.

Bidirectional power capability and smart grids allow some usage of EVs as grid stabilizing batteries.

The power can do home back up.

Or give share charge with a stranded buddy.

 

[BoomerD]

tbh 300 miles is the biggest roadblock for me. That & the short bed. The more I read about the Lightning, the more intrigued I am. They did a phenomenally good job on it! I'm sure the battery & longer bed lengths will become available in coming years. I'm still a Cybertruck fanboy for sure, but the fact that the F-150 (1) looks normal, (2) has a ton of outlet plugs, (3) can power your house if needed, and (4) has a monster frunk is pretty dang appealing!

I just can't wrap my head around the looks of the Cybertruck. It's horribly butt-ugly...

 

[thedarkwolf]

Talks about range at around 8:20. The important part is the EPA 300 miles is with 1000lbs in the truck so like the Mach-e Ford is being conservative. He then mentions 460 miles but Ford bases its range on recent usage and for all we know the truck hasn't been driven over 35mph since it was last reset.

 

[Kaido]

I just can't wrap my head around the looks of the Cybertruck. It's horribly butt-ugly...

That's partly the appeal to me. I've had a Beetle, a Kia Soul, and some other weird-looking cars. Sometimes weird is very appealing to me lol.

 

[Heartbreaker]

I just can't wrap my head around the looks of the Cybertruck. It's horribly butt-ugly...

I don't like the looks, but I would put up with them for a thick, durable stainless steel body.

 

[WelshBloke]

I don't like the looks, but I would put up with them for a thick, durable stainless steel body.

I'm not sure on the regs in the US but they wont be selling it anywhere in Europe unless it has a good crumple zone.
Thick and durable sounds great until you realise that it killls everyone outside that you crash into and everyone inside if you crash into something sturdy.

 

[ponyo]

I just can't wrap my head around the looks of the Cybertruck. It's horribly butt-ugly...

I think it's beautiful. I think people are going to be shocked how great it looks when they see it in person.