The F-150 is in one of the markets I think ev's will take over first (small commercial vehicles) but it just was not the right vehicle to start with. To expensive, even when the tax incentives were still a thing, and Ford suffers from having corrupt dealers taking a large cut on top of that. So you are selling to either the top 5% or bigger businesses.
If you are a top 5% buying this you want it to tow your expensive toy somewhere which ev's suck at currently or you want it to drive to "insert outdoorsy vacation destination", which means long distance in a remote area with few charging stations. So not a great sell.
If you are a bigger business I think this probably makes sense in some cases. You aren't dealing with the maintenance of an ICE, you can keep it "running" inside a building, it can provide on site power, probably has cost benefits in cities where the lack of emissions and noise is helpful. But the expensive really narrows down your customers. Many are also looking for range and towing, which doesn't help, and people that would show up for the ev part probably would be better off with a van.
If they had done a small e-transit, in the $30-35k range and sold it direct for actual msrp they would have had a much better chance at dealing with where we are now (high interest rate and low support for ev's).
My electrician drives an electric F-150, it's impressive how useful it is for him. The frunk carries a big box of tools, there's tons of outlets to charge his power tool batteries, he can even run a small welder
I justified the lightning purchase to my partner by pointing out having an equivalent whole house battery backup in Tesla power walls would be more expensive than the truck
I have the powerboost hybrid F-150. It does all this, can power a house with the generator, AND I can drive it through the mountain west with zero EV infrastructure at insanely high MPG for a truck. Plopped a Tune camper on the back and couldn’t ask for more.
That’s pretty cool, and I just checked the prices and it only starts at 11k dearer than the standard f150, which is less than I expected. Interesting.
What’s more insane to me as an Australian is its 50k USD starting price in America, but in Australia it starts at $149k USD as they’re only sold by third parties that do right hand drive conversions (at imo a way too high premium, 100k for that service + shipping???)
I don't think so, not like it was once upon a time. I had a manual 6-cylinder I bought in about 2002 for around $14000, no leather, 2wd extended cab. That's like $25k in today's dollars according to Google. If they made a basic truck for even $40k as EV it might sell a lot better, but I am pretty sure they are all about selling 60k+ trucks for profit.
There's a 100% tariff on top of all the regulatory and political hurdles that prevent BYD from selling in the US, but it shows that a very nice truck can be built for $40k.
The F-150 Lightning Pro trim is the closest thing to this, and aside from the first year generally has only sold to fleets.
Theres also the Chevy Silverado EV WT trim which is a similar base model trim, but with the huge heavy battery its paired with it's still an expensive truck.
I live in an area that has probably >100% pick-up ownership per adult male. I've noticed that these people will not go to the grocery store on days when the weather is inclement due to the chance of the groceries getting wet. Seems like a bad vehicle for grocery runs.
I don't get the whole American thing for Pick-up trucks. Unless you're hauling hay or manure, why would you want your cargo area exposed to the elements?
Wait do people put their groceries they intend to eat on the bed of their trucks, exposed to exhaust, asphalt, tire rubber and all other forms of road pollution?
Almost everything from a grocery store starts in, or ends up, in a water resistant package. There are a handful of exceptions like eggs in cardboard casing, but you can just wrap them in a baggy to solve that. For that matter, unless it's like an insanely torrential downpour, very little, if any, water is going to get through a closed bag.
If your observation is accurate, the more likely reason is that people just don't like going out when it's raining. Getting your shoes/pants wet sucks, getting your car (or truck) seats wet sucks, rain traffic sucks, there's more crashes - which suck, and by contrast you could just be sitting at home enjoying the relaxing sounds of rain, which doesn't suck.
When I was a kid, my dad owned a pickup truck in Mississippi, and there seem to be tons of ways of avoiding getting the groceries wet, a bed-width toolbox behind the cab was the simplest way (and this was way before extended cabs were a thing).
If you are living in such an area where they can't even figure that kind of thing out, it sounds like there might be something in the water.
When I was a kid, a normal-sized American adult could open up a bed-width toolbox, look down inside of it, and easily remove a few bags of groceries before re-closing the lid -- all while standing flat-footed on the ground beside their normal-sized American truck.
Things are not that way anymore; trucks got bigger.
The top of the bed rail of an F150 Lightning is around chin height for a lot of folks: https://imgur.com/ZBOBqJc
Oh, I was a smaller kid back then and I guess I wouldn’t find it very accessible either way. Also my dad was tall. Coolers fit in the back also if you want to use those instead.
My hunch is that the people who buy an F-150 for groceries are not the people interested in buying EVs. The advantage of an EV truck is solely on cost and maintenance, so the natural market is businesses looking for practical vehicles, not people who buy impractical vehicles that are costly to operate for status reasons.
Then again as I’m typing this I realize that I have a phone with a better processor than most computers on which I … browse hacker news and read email, so go figure.
I drive a 2017 F150 with the back commonly filled with either sports equipment or outdoors gear, or photography equipment. I would like to additionally have a city car but am not willing to spend the money (or consume another parking space in front of my house). Since I only have one vehicle, I do also use it for grocery shopping.
I drive a Honda van, usually with the seats out/folded down.
It's really big back there. It holds an enormous volume of stuff.
4x8 sheets of plywood fit inside with the doors closed, and so do 10-foot lengths of pipe.
It's easy to access stuff at the front or the back. It's all contained under a roof in a locking, conditioned space (3 zones of HVAC) and is easy to get to from either sliding door or the back tailgate.
Works great for hauling stuff like sports equipment, outdoors gear, or photography equipment. Mine is full of tools, ladders, and boxes of wire right now, but it's been awesome for taking a mountain of camping gear and a PA system across the country. (Or, you know: Groceries. It does groceries very well indeed.)
(It's not so great at hauling stuff like bulk stone or mulch, but that stuff is usually pretty cheap to get delivered.)
We have a f150 raptor and a rivian and a model 3. I drive the gas truck and the model 3. Depends on the weather. Truck is an amazing road tripper. We are not the typical customer, but we do exist.
This is anecdotal but I have a gas F-150 that is often a grocery getter (I work from home and take a motorcycle when I can so gas mileage for me isn’t as big a concern as for some) and I would gladly trade it for an electric or a hybrid version (one that does not have the gas motor do anything but charge the batteries). But the cost was absolutely asinine for the Lightning. These trucks were made from unobtainium.
But I would also trade this truck for an all electric or mostly electric Maverick as long as it had enough cabin space for my needs (children).
Meanwhile Chevy has a 400 mile range, unknown but more than the 100 mile range the lightning has for towing and is a work truck at about 70k or something street price last I saw. Its compelling, where the lightning is not.
The Silverado EV does have a big battery, but for actual real world use you’re keeping it within a band of about 60% (20-80) so 400 is really 240 with an emergency reserve. (This is common to all EVs).
You lose about half your range towing so you’re still going to drive two hours, stop for 30-45 minutes, repeat.
So it’s still far from compelling for anyone towing or doing truck stuff.
If you are planning a trip and know you are, your first left is easily 20-100% or 80% range, and then it depends on charging speed versus stop purpose.
it's my impression that electric vehicles are 90% grocery getters, unless the drivers are young in which case it's takeout. what else would you use an electric for, commuting? when you commute, on the way home, you shop.
They are suggesting that most F-150s are not purchased for real truck work like hauling stuff. Instead, they are purchased by people who use them exclusively to drive on paved roads, in towns/cities, mostly carrying passengers instead of large cargo. Therefore the concern about going off-road to remote locations isn't a real concern for this market.
It’s a real concern in the sense that a lot of them care about the capability.
Objectively a Ford F-150 is the wrong vehicle for what 90% of its buyers need. But it’s an aspirational purchase. It can go off-road. It can haul a boat. It can haul a bed full of gravel. It doesn’t matter for these purchasers that they rarely if ever actually do any of this.
Yeah but you buy a truck and all of a sudden you have a lot of friends.
I might not move furniture regularly, but it’s reeeeal nice to be able to do so when I need to. My dishwasher broke on Christmas Eve when I was hosting so I went to the store and got another and installed it within an hour. Not doing that with my Subaru.
I’ve literally transported dishwashers in a Renault Twingo. And the „small car + trailer“ combo will always carry more than a pickup. Pickups are pure lifestyle.
An minivan will transport almost anything a normal person would want to move, while being more practical the other 99% of the time, but of course they have the wrong image.
Also most people I know who use F-150s in the way you describe also typically have two children or more. It's not as if this was a segment that was particularly hard to pin down.
The vehicle has been in production for almost 5 years now. See the date on that video. Vehicles break and get damaged and need replacement so we always need to build them. Newer ones are also more efficient and provide greater safety and overall benefits to the owner. People's needs change and family sizes change.
You may perceive that there's "enough" but the market has clearly decided that you are wrong.
They should be cheaper than the F150 but Ford can’t figure out how to make batteries cheaply. Evs are a lot less complex, no gas engine, no transmission, no exhaust systems with hundreds of dollars of precious metal in them. It should be cheaper than a gas equivalent.
Cheaper? Not sure how. While an ICE engine does have cooling systems and fuelling systems, water pumps and fuel pumps are relatively cheap and simple devices.
An EV generally has a battery cooling system along with regenerative braking.
EVs have roughly the same mechanical things as an ICE vehicle too, HVAC, suspension, brakes, in car entertainment, heated seats. Lighting. An entire 12v subsystem to power all that stuff as well.
A good old ICE car will be cheaper to make than an EV because the powertrain is cheaper when you account for batteries. Even taking into account the gearbox you don’t need in an EV.
> A good old ICE car will be cheaper to make than an EV
How much of that is the result of the relatively maturity of the technology? We've been continuously improving ICE based transportation for well over a hundred years. It's been a lot shorter for electric vehicles.
I suspect that there are bigger strides to make with electrics that may eventually turn that around.
> I suspect that there are bigger strides to make with electrics that may eventually turn that around.
After many more billions are spent.
Is the American consumer going to eat that cost? The government clearly lost its appetite as it isn't subsidizing EVs anymore.
The US has cheap fuel and it isn't a strategic issue to develop EVs except to keep US auto internationally competitive.
US consumers are still really into big SUVs and trucks and almost all of the models are ICE instead of EVs. The EV manufacturers don't really fit the shape of the American consumer that they haven't already sold to.
China jumped on EVs because they wanted to start an automotive sector for (1) heavy industry, (2) adjacency to national defense, (3) strong new domestic and export market they could corner, (4) it's adjacent to their other manufacturing industries. Critically, they had a deep reservoir of Chinese citizens who were first time car buyers that they could nudge into buying domestic auto. No other nation on earth has the outsized advantage of having such a deep bench of new customers to subsidize a new industry. The stars aligned for China.
America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
> America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
Ok so dont, but take the tariffs off batteries, and allow foreign EVs to compete fairly. We'll get affordable EVs, and then we'll see what the american consumer actually wants. No? Oh, i guess its about something other than consumer choice after all.
>America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
But America always has the interest and capital to protect oil interests and supply chains worldwide by being the biggest spender on military, funded by taxpayers.
The rest of the world is continuing to move to EVs, and while the US has a different taste in vehicles than most of the world, the underlying tech is the same, so they'll benefit from the advances made in Europe and Asia.
> America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
Only if you see the market continue to be dominated by human drivers. We are potentially moving to self-driving cars like Waymo, Tesla etc then they will get the choice to force what car they like.
> The government clearly lost its appetite as it isn't subsidizing EVs anymore.
More like "the current" government. It can always change.
I don't understand this comparison. An EV's battery cooling system is a cooling system. Regen braking isn't more complicated than an alternator.
The rest, yeah. The chemical stacks in the batteries are expensive, and dealer markup was a problem (now they're 47-56k new). But the energy costs! $7-12 for a fill-up on home power overnight instead of $75-85 at the gas station.
And maintenance. So little maintenance. For local non-towing fleets these would save a lot.
> Regen braking isn't more complicated than an alternator.
Either disingenuous or ill-informed. one is ~1KW for a few seconds a day, the other is > 100KW of power for dozens of seconds, multiple dozens of times a day. completely engineering
They're not worse, China has (arguably) the best batteries in the world.
NMC and LFP (of the same cost) are about even, but pricier NMC packs can add maybe 10% more range for the same weight. Which is why most EV companies offer a "long-range version" that's just the same car with an NMC pack swapped in. It's mostly an irrelevant gimmick.
The truth is that range isn't limited by batteries, it's limited by weight and cost - a bigger battery weighs more, which means the car (frame) needs to support more weight, which means the car (frame) costs more. Most EVs have a range of ~300 miles (~500KM) and any battery gains don't go into extending the range, they go into reducing the weight (and therefore cost) of the car. Lighter frame, fewer battery cells. Because most people don't care past 300miles (500KM). Not enough to pay an extra $5k, at least.
Thank you. That's interesting. The infographic calls them cheaper which I assumed (incorrectly?) meant worse. 10% does seem gimmicky, though I am seeing claims on a number of sites that NMC is around 50% better per unit of weight (but way worse for longevity), so I don't know what to think.
GM partnered with Samsung for one[0]. Of course now they just announced layoffs at the EV plant[1], because most people still don’t want electrics cars. The investment needs to be tied to demand. If not, it’s just a lot of wasted money.
It seems they’d be better off waiting for better/cheaper battery tech, so they can build out those factories and make cheaper EVs that people might actually buy at scale. Right now the market still feels niche.
My experience supports nearly all of this. In 2022 I decided to keep my 2019 F-150 gasser instead of getting a Lightning because the Lightning was ridiculously expensive, even though Covid kept the value of my truck close to what I paid for it. I also didn't want all the Lightning's luxury features that tend to fail and highly depreciate over time. We do >12hr drives for work & family through remote BC and I was still willing to try the EV for such trips but didn't see the payback. In hindsight it was a good choice given the actual range experienced by Lightning owners.
For those that don't drive in town, noting beats gas or diesel.
Companies need to build a stepping stone truck. Dino-powered generator on an electric platform. Get most of the upside to electric performance, while getting the speed gas refilling.
Yeah I might have thought that too if I didn’t own commercial vehicles. I own a few and the idea of switching to an EV for them is laughable. Go tow stuff for 8 hours one day and ask yourself “if I had to stop for 30 minutes every 90 miles how would I like this day?”
Battery ranges decline by over 50% when towing. The long term health of a battery requires you to keep it within a range of about 60% of the max capacity (ie between 20 and 80). So that’s if anything a generous estimate. You’d increase your labor cost by 25% just charging, not to mention that public charging isn’t any cheaper than fuel. I’m not even factoring in lost job profits or overtime.
The margins the Ford dealer takes are not the issue. The cost of the vehicle itself amortized by the hour is much less than the labor cost of operating it. If I could get any EV truck at the same cost as my diesel, I still wouldn’t. If you’ve got two guys out, that’s $50 burnt every time they charge (at least) and that may be 2+ times a day. Your fuel cost is irrelevant. Five minutes at a gas station and a tank of diesel is still cheaper.
It has some use cases I’m sure (delivery vans since it is one worker, city driving, short range) but most commercial vehicle work is simply not going electric given current battery technology.
Citation: "Ford F-Series Is America’s Best-Selling Model For The 43rd Consecutive Year (2024)"
Either the US has a lot of electricians and plumbers, all those people aren't buying these trucks because they need them.
Just look anywhere outside the US — nobody buys trucks like these. And that's because they're incredibly niche. They're worse than all other options. A regular sedan is a better everyday car and can fulfill most of your "i need a truck" use cases anyway.
BTW, I was kidding with the electricians and plumbers, they have no need for a truck. Nobody does.
For anything you'd actually need a truck for, an appropriately sized van is better. You'd have to be hauling dirt and sand offroad in rural areas on a regular basis without somehow being able to use a trailer for a flatbed truck to make any sense as a purchase. Guess how many people in the US have a need for that. Certainly not enough to push the sales numbers to #1.
> road trips aren’t important when most everyone takes at least one a year
Exactly, optimizing your life around something you do once per year is completely irrational.
Buy all the trucks all you want, just don't claim it's a sensible, rational decision. It's not.
There is a lot of short range no/limited tow commercial work that could use a BEV truck (e.g. every gardener/lawncare small business) or a BEV panel van.
Gardening/lawncare wouldn't work as well as you'd think - ride-on lawnmowers need fuel to run for extended periods, so they face the same charging problem (even though the client usually has a power outlet in their house, mere metres away). Ditto for a ton of pressurewashing equipment and such.
The problem is that we built our world around cheap portable energy, so problems that are trivial technically are difficult socially - the client won't let you use the power outlet, if they do they'll make you pay for the power use, asking is weird and unusual and requires more negotiating with the client, it's just not worth it. Like, if oil never existed then residential housing would probably be built with a special "contractor power outlet" that could be billed separately on a pay-per-use basis - call up the number, dial in your Designated Contractor Code or whatever fictional paperwork, and you get charged for the power you pull until the socket is unplugged.
Or maybe some other solution that I can't think of, because people in that world had to think of one and spent decades refining it. Or maybe they invented lithium batteries 90 years ago (~1935) and now they're on par with oil.
Southwest Montana is full of California (and other) tech refugees with money. They've moved to a place they perceive they need a truck to happily live in, but aren't willing to buy a gas guzzler.
The Lightning is the 10th-best-selling EV in California and the Rivian R1T is not even in the top 25. Rivian is also one of the handful of brands selling fewer vehicles so far in 2025 compared to 2024.
I don't think the R1S and the F-150 should be compared because, on account of being registered as a commercial vehicle, the F-150 has noticeably higher operating costs.
The electric LDV and GWM utes are meant to be pretty great. I reckon they will take over everywhere else and then come for the US with a US specific model.
Not to speak to the rest of the topic, but focusing on direct sales:
I'm almost certain Ford would love to sell direct, but the various franchise laws in different states make it next to impossible. On top of this, dealership owners are typically quite powerful in terms of local politics, which makes such laws very difficult to overturn.
> "tow your expensive toy somewhere which ev's suck at currently"
Do EVs suck at towing because of battery life? I thought electric engines were often superior to comparable internal combustion engines regarding torque.
The instantaneous torque definitely helps, and EVs are often heavier which helps with stability. But if you're towing anything with significant air resistance (e.g. a boat, a caravan, a big trailer) it kills your range. The general rule of thumb is that it will cut your range in half, which depending on your original max range is ok for some use cases, but unacceptable for others.
This is exactly the situation. ICE also has a massive range hit as well, it's just easy to put a massive fuel tank in to get a stupid amount of range not towing compared to a battery electric that struggles to get a similar range. When you start with almost 600mi losing half isn't too bad, when it's maybe 300mi on a good day and you cut it in half is just not as usable for that usage.
That said, if it's not the towing but the bed you need, the range but isn't nearly so bad.
Additionally, all ICE cars can charge from 0-100% in under 5 minutes. Even if their towing range was somehow less than an EV, it would matter less because you don't have to spend an hour at a charging station.
With the difference that with an EV you always leave home with a full battery and you never have to step into a gas station unless you have a long trip ahead.
But even when you, the amount of time is not 60minutes. If you have kids, the time to go to the restroom, grab a coffee and come back is usually already around 20min, which tends to be enough to charge from 20-60% or even to 80% in newer vehicles. If you have a meal and take around 40minutes, you are probably already hitting 90% or higher.
This is exaggeration. A half hour for a well-loaded truck, sure, but an hour is generally exaggeration.
And as for five minutes for a fill up, it's usually more than five for a regular fill-up on a regular passenger car for me compared to just continuing on.
I can't think what the issue would be aside from range. One thing that stood out to me about the cybertruck is that they made huge tradeoffs to make it more aerodynamic. The only reason to do that is to increase maximum driving distance. Put a big blocky trailer behind it and suddenly the battery's maximum distance is competing with a gas tank on a much more even playing field. Regenerative braking would make up for some of that in very hilly terrain, but on level ground it just can't get out to as many of the remote areas people take their trucks to.
I really think the first obvious use case (aside from bugout vehicles) would be something like the early road rangers - driving all over a farm and bringing back crates of produce from muddy fields without getting stuck or needing a lot of maintenance.
Present day EVs don't take that long to charge (basically the time to go to the bathroom and check email), but they don't have enough parallelism so at a busy location you can end up waiting for an open charger. There are orders of magnitude more gas pumps than public chargers.
Charging infrastructure is what sucks. Yes range goes half, but that isn't much of a problem if you tow once a month and there's tons of stations around. If not, ur screwed.
Charging infrastructure was always the key for EVs and it's still relatively behind.
The reason that towing affects EVs disproportionately more than ICE vehicles is because of the efficiency of EVs. It’s unintuitive but consider that with an ICE car, you have say 30% of the chemical energy of the fuel being converted to useful power. That means that per liter of gasoline burned driving, 700ml is effectively lost to waste heat. A large amount of that energy loss is a fixed cost, that is it doesn’t scale linearly with the power demand from the car.
EVs are 90% efficient at converting their chemical energy to useful work. This is a good thing in general, but it also means that drag and extra losses hurt its range much more. If 90% of the energy goes into useful power, than anything that requires 50% more power is going to almost halve the range. Whereas with an ICE engine, the high fixed losses mean that demanding 50% more power doesn’t increase fuel consumption by 50%. Pair that with the higher energy density of gasoline and you’ve got a bad comparison for EVs.
I expected the "T word" to come out in the article, however this fails to address any of the practical reasons it isn't a good replacement for the value-engineered F-150:
* The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
* They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable.
* Parts availability is scarce, contrasted with a regular F-150 (even junkyards are full of spare parts, that aren't software constrained)
* They're loaded with useless/barely-functional interior electronics that are poor copies of Tesla
* They're bloated with parts that don't need to exist (excessive exterior accent lighting, badges, over-complicated blinkers)
Oddly enough, single-charge range issues are pretty much non-existent (for non-towing applications).
> The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
They definitely aimed for the luxury market, like Rivian. Who knows how successful they would've been if they aimed for mid-range like Scout. That's the market they claimed to be entering when they started taking reservations. They also could've offered a fleet ready version without the luxury features, but must've decided not to.
> They're difficult to repair
How so? They are far simpler to maintain than a normal F-150. They're new so they do have parts issues for the electronic components, I'm sure, but I think that's a fair trade-off. In any case, I don't think offering a hybrid version makes the vehicles easier to maintain or repair. If anything it's the opposite.
> Parts availability is scarce, contrasted with a regular F-150 (even junkyards are full of spare parts, that aren't software constrained)
I thought one of the advantages of the F-150 was that most parts were shared with the standard F-150? The battery and motors, maybe not.
Significant portions of the body and interior were not shared with general F-150 models... At least those parts most likely to be damaged in minor accidents... imagine having your work truck in the shop for 2-3 months for want of a corner light fixture.
The interior of the pro model is identical to an ICE F150. The only part which breaks with any regularity is shared with ICE F150s, in fact. The only interior difference I can think of on any trim of Lightning is the big screen on higher models. But it's the same underlying SYNC system as every other F150, no magic there.
It has breakable expensive headlights and taillights, that is for sure. But so do ICE F150s...
Yeah, that's definitely a no-go. I think you'd see that with any new model, however. I once had a Ducati in the shop for 4-5 months just waiting on a wheel because it was a new model.
Ford announced the Maverick, it got so much excitement that it sold out and dealerships sold for over MSRP. So in their infinite wisdom they... didn't make more mid range trucks. Ill never understand these guys.
I was interested in this truck when it came out. My in laws purchased one and queued a second one up to have two reliable (new is reliable to them) in their retirement years. The price was good, its a smaller compact truck and very good on utility. The second generation of them - the price went up, and some of the value in what the truck was vanished. Its also years behind on production. Ford doesn't seem to want to sell these.
If Chevy came out with a competitive S10 Electric style truck, I'd consider it as well.
The Mavs have been caught up on orders for a while now. I got one in the spring and pretty much any trim/colour/option package was in stock locally at mildly below msrp.
The idea is that you make more profit selling 50,000 cheap trucks and 50,000 expensive trucks than just 100,000 cheap trucks. When you can fool a largely innumerate populace into 84-month loans with "cheap" monthly payments, overpriced vehicles are the way to go.
I think the bigger issue is parts availability over the repairability issue... from what I understand, these have been quite reliable but parts for Ford's EVs have been backordered as much as months, where having a "work truck" down for months is an intolerable position.
The cost is also kind of crazy between inflated factory and dealer pricing as much as $20k over sticker price. Yeah, there was some early demand, but over-charging really cooled that and the demand overall.
I'm with you on some of the interior features, they're cool, but the overall inflated price is just too much. On the flip side, the Chevy "Work Truck" is kinda too far the other direction imo.
Similar on the more complex exterior, though I actually like it, it's not practical for its' prescibed purpose. If Ford could create a stripped down EV equivalent to Chevy's "Work Truck" at even 50% higher cost, I think it would do very well. They're very good for in-city use in terms of range on a charge, it's definitely good enough for most general tradecraft use, but the bloat and pricing really drag it down. Much like most cars in general these days.
Pretty much the only interesting new car I've seen this year was the Hundai Palasade, which IMO was just a good value for what it is. Kind of disappointing to see Nissan drop the Titan line. While I'd prefer to buy American brands, the fact that is that I don't think they deliver on overall value or reliability as well as competing brands. And it gets muddied further with foreign brands with US assembly and American brands now owned or otherwise operated or significantly built outside the US.
I mean the biggest issue is that “trucks” like F-150 are actually used because of US tax system that exempts such massive vehicles from emmision taxes because they are work trucks. They are pretty ineffective work vehicles but some people just love them as a symbol.
That symbolism goes completely against electric/green vehicles. In other words - people who buy F-150 would never buy electric vehicle and people who are looking for electric truck for work wouldn't buy F-150.
This is an unfortunate trope that is oft repeated by those that live their life in constant upgrade cycles.
The regular F-150 is a pinnacle of value engineering for Ford. It's infinitely repairable for owners. Look around on the highway, you will see hundreds of 15+ year old F150s on the road, and a few times a day I will see 25+ year old trucks on the road too. There are thousands of aftermarket parts for repair or customization. Owners are happy with them, and they recognize the truck as something they buy once and keep for a long time.
If it is any kind of expression of self, its one of "I don't need to be consumeristic; I picked something simple that will last a lifetime."
'99 F-150 with >250k on original engine and transmission here. Going to pick up 900 lbs of rock tomorrow. Suspension is pretty poor, but it still pulls hard under load. I'd like to upgrade to a newer model, but the '99 refuses to die.
Also, a truck can be used like a car. But a car cannot be used like a truck. If you need to haul 4x8 sheets of plywood or drywall, dimensional lumber, piping, ladders, etc a truck (or work van) is pretty much it. If I could only afford one car it would be a truck.
And sure, for the exact target demographic of carpenters and such that's... false.
What you do is get a regular car that's great for everyday stuff and buy a trailer. You get a flatbed that's what, 4x the size of the one on your truck? And it's cheap, at knee-level, and detachable, so you only pay the cost of inconvenience and extra fuel when you use it, not all the time.
You won't use it much anyway, because a regular car fits more than you think.
I think that’s more down to choice than possibility. I’ve hauled all those things home from the diy store in my boring Volvo with its roof rack. Had 600-odd pounds of sand in the back just last week.
4x8 plywood isn’t particularly heavy, and little consumer “150 pounds max” roof racks can hold a lot more than they claim.
Yeah minivans can be quite useful. A bit of a PITA to fold or remove seats, depending on the model, and typically can't tow much or really carry much weight but for the occasional large item they can work.
I (and practically most people) are rarely to never carrying stacks of full sheets of drywall. Having that be the basis of your needs for a car is absurd for most people.
Even then, my minivan can pack some pretty long and pretty large things inside. Meanwhile it's got a better turning radius than most trucks, it has way better visibility, it's far less pedestrian unfriendly, it's got an easier loading height, sliding doors make it easier to fit the back five passengers in and out, the stuff I'm hauling doesn't have to risk getting wet or affected by the outside environment. Seems like the minivan is way superior than a bed for suburban life if one needs such a large vehicle.
I've needed to move homes requiring the need for a 24' box truck more than I've needed to haul a stack of drywall around. Should I daily drive a uhaul truck?
Those were some examples, not an exhaustive list. What about hauling a load of mulch or topsoil, you're not doing that in your nice minivan. Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush? I do that a few times a year. Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash. An open truck bed is the most flexible configuration in my experience. Of course it's not perfect for everything.
A utility trailer could do a lot of that too, if you have a suitable tow vehicle. Sometimes the extra space taken by a trailer is inconvenient.
A family sedan is a suitable tow vehicle for the large flat bed twin axle + four seven tonne truck spring configured trailer we built 35+ years ago for hauling across broken land in the Pilbara.
It's a good idea to use anti-sway bars on, say, a Hayman-Reese hitch when things get technical and loads want to skid sideways.
Rig your trailer right and you can have a removable gull wing hutch for sleeping in / tool security, etc.
IMHO there's more room on a dedicated heavy load trailer than an SUV "truck" bed and there's usually better tie down with a custom trailer as the rope rails run full length for hitching.
Those are good examples, I've hauled most of that on a trailer attached to a cheap family sedan. With the upside of the trailer receiving the brunt of the abuse, having probably 4x the capacity of your truck and the car being super convenient to use on a daily basis to say, commute.
> What about hauling a load of mulch or topsoil, you're not doing that in your nice minivan
I've mostly just had that delivered when doing a big job, but I have just laid a tarp before. It's not that big of a deal really. And I don't even bother with a tarp for the smaller jobs, it's already bagged. Just don't grab bags with holes in it, and use the vacuum later. It's fine.
> Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush?
I live in a suburb. The trash service picks up brush. If it's more than what I can fit in a few bags I just put in a bulky trash request and the send a truck with crane to pick up the pile. Welcome to living in a society, it's quite nice.
> Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash
Once again, large furniture moves have been easily handled with cheap rentals. One-off pieces have usually been easily partially disassembled to load even into a hatchback. I've had no issues putting my lawn mower even into my old Accord, they're not that big when you fold the bar down. Spend a couple of minutes unscrewing things and suddenly you no longer need a truck. Not that I need to move my lawn mower much, I'm not in the lawn service industry. I'm also not in the piano moving industry. But maybe most Americans do move pianos on a quarterly basis.
And once again, a small tarp and I've carried plenty of firewood for my fireplace. But once again like the majority of Americans I live in an "urban" area and don't rely on multiple chords of firewood to make it through a winter. But the family I had that did live in a rural area that did mostly heat by firewood just had it delivered. You might as well argue one needs a trailer rated to carry fuel oil or large quantities of liquid propane.
You know what's inconvenient? Navigating urban spaces every day with a giant oversized monstrosity that my kids can't even easily climb into on their own. A vehicle where I can barely open the doors on an average parking spot. A vehicle that gets less than 20mpg compared to 35+ (or even way more than that with my EV). A vehicle where each tire costs $200+ compared to $100. A vehicle where a brake job costs way more than it needs to.
Perhaps a truck isn’t the ideal vehicle for someone who lives in a city and has easy access to rental vehicles, but a lot of people don’t live in those conditions.
Most Americans do. The vast majority of Americans live like me in terms of housing and transit. And yet pickups are still the most popular vehicles. In the parking garages of the urban apartments around me, they're filled with pickups. In the offices filled with accountants and salespeople the lots and garages are filled with pickups.
Don't get me wrong, some people definitely have a legit need for a truck. I've eyed them as I've been contemplating the pros/cons of a camper trailer vs. an RV. Some people own businesses that actually need it. But most people don't have a camper trailer or horses or work a small construction company out of their home and yet trucks are most vehicles bought these days.
The F-150 is valued because it is utilitarian and the platform is engineered for a pretty abusive duty cycle. Ford understands this. If you use trucks in anger, you start to appreciate this.
The entry of Japanese automakers into the F-150 market is instructive. While the Japanese trucks looked similar, the early versions had a bad reputation for slowly coming apart under the typical workload and stresses people put on the F-150, which Ford had been refining for many decades. Those trucks often get used hard, and because people know an F-150 can take it they aren't afraid to use them hard. The median abuse significantly exceeded what the Japanese engineers anticipated. Japanese trucks are much better now but the attention to survivability is a big part of the F-150's enduring reputation.
I've taken the Ford platform through situations where I've seen many other vehicles get destroyed. That's where the loyalty comes from and why it is a default choice for many. Most people aren't using them as hard as I have but it does provide a safety blanket.
Not just emissions taxes, small businesses are incentivized to overbuy and get a bigger truck. GWVR>6,000lbs and a full bed gets a better first year tax benefit.
I don't mean this personally against you, please don't take it as such, but the number of people in this thread who seem to have absolutely no idea what a work truck is used for is absolutely wild.
Not surprising, since Asians & Europeans get lots of work done without using monster American trucks. They use vans, pickups with drop sides, trailers, et cetera.
The closest big city to me is 150 miles away. I don't know anything about how general contracting is done in mainland China, (I bet they use trucks!) but other than that I'm really not sure any other Asian or European countries are facing the same logistical hurdles as Americans.
I saw (and rode in) a lot of them in Alberta (Canada's Texas). Typical day for a work truck:
-owner starts you up from the hotel parking lot
-3-5 guys get in, you get your morning coffee via a drive through
-You pick up a 'slip tank' of diesel (think a metal box with its own fuel pump that sits in the bed and holds about a ton of liquid when full). You might fill up your own tank at the same time, typically on the employer's dime.
-you drive 1-3 hours over dirt roads and ice to get to the work site
-you fill up the heavy equipment from your slip tank, then stand for about 10 hours - you might be idling for part of that depending on temperature
- you drive another 1-3 hours back to the hotel parking lot. the owner plugs in your block heater so your fuel doesn't solidify overnight and you get ready to do it again the next day.
Trucks look impractical when they're getting groceries in the city, but everything about them - the height, the large cabs, all of it - is highly optimized for a particular kind of job. It might not be as common a job as it was when this design rose to prominence, I have no insight as to that, but there is a reason for everything about them being the way it is.
I wonder whether it's a nostalgia thing. People rode in these trucks and saw senior guys they admired owning them when they were young and on the make, and now they think that's the kind of truck successful people own even if it's not necessary for their own workday.
Other replies here have covered 'work truck' better than anything I'd come up with but I'll also add that some of the reasons people purchase trucks is:
- To be able to help your friends move.
- To be able to purchase supplies and move big things over long distances.
- If you raise horses, you have to have a truck to pull your trailer.
- If you own a tow behind or fifth wheel, you have to have a truck to pull it.
- If you like canoeing or camping it is a lot easier if you have a truck.
- If you live in a seriously rural area, or you enjoy hiking, you will need a truck or other vehicle in order to reach your home or many other destinations. I've gone up mountain roads in a Camry, and it's not a great experience.
The rest of the world does all of this without widespread truck ownership. The reason trucks are so widespread in the US is a combination of culture and regulation, not any special needs Americans have.
Ive helped my friends move many times. We just rented a uhaul and did it in way fewer trips (one, generally). If we did the same in a regular pickup it would have been a lot more work and a lot more time just to "save" $50 or so.
The vast majority of people don't have horses.
The vast majority of people don't have a fifth wheel.
I've tossed canoes on top of a focus hatchback. You don't need a truck to go canoeing. A canoe is like 50lbs, you don't need a few tons of towing capacity to carry a canoe. I've also gone camping in small cars. Get this, I've gone camping with just what I've carried in person for many miles! You don't need a few tons of towing to go camping.
I comfortably carry multiple kids and a spouse in vehicles other than a pickup truck. In fact, other vehicles have generally been comfier and easier. In the minivan the little kids can easily get in their seats and buckle up on their own. In the truck I had as a rental, there was practically no chance they had to climb in on their own, much less open the doors.
And yet trucks make up the majority of the most sold vehicles in the US.
When my neighbors hire a contractor to do some work, they show up in a work truck carrying supplies and tools. If their truck is broken, they are losing money every day.
When I was working at Boeing, my lead engineer explained it to me this way. When the airplane is flying with a payload (note the word "pay" in payload), the airline is making money. When the airplane is sitting on the ground, it is losing money at a prodigious rate.
The point of making an airliner is so the airline can make money, and that means minimizing time on the ground and maximizing time in the air carrying payload.
Perhaps this term is specific to americans, however to an Australian a 'work truck/ute' would be used for labour purposes and not for the family, for example hauling materials, transporting tools or as part of the business itself ?
Yes, American. There's other better descriptions here, but generally speaking most contractors I know have a truck, which they use for work. That's really all that I mean. I mean we just call them trucks. Nobody would say "Hey, nice work truck!"
People buy vehicles based on their needs. The F150 is sort of a hybrid between a work truck and a prestige family SUV like a Ford Explorer. If people are doing serious towing regularly, they will probably upgrade to a 250/350 class (3/4 ton or 1 ton). Plenty of people buy smaller trucks like the Ranger, which is basically like driving a crossover mini-SUV with a bed. People who are doing really serious transport may have a flatbed on an even bigger truck, but nobody uses those as family vehicles. I know people who have those little RHD mini trucks, which seems super useful to me.
I don't know Utes, which by googling, basically looks like a midsize (Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma) with a flatbed. We don't really use those.
Actually, it's kind of a market problem. Tons of people I know have expressed desire for a smaller truck like that little barebones Toyota Truck, but they don't make them here and we aren't allowed to import them.
When they were first released, there was a fleet/commercial only model that was stripped down and roughly $40k. _That_ was the model that I expected to succeed. Presumably the same type of truck my employer bought from dealerships 20 years ago, with the sterile interior.
But that doesn't address any of your other points, and I can't imagine a business owner that has very little incentive to change how they're buying vehicles to even care about the Lightning if they aren't seeing their friends or themselves in the modern minivan that's called a truck today, just electrified.
I wonder if that $40k price was a loss leading tactic. Seems unrealistic for an electric truck to cost basically the same as the ICE version work truck.
I guess we will find out if many of these things actually matter with the Slate truck. It is in many ways the antithesis of this electric F-150. If that vehicle fails then there are no more excuses, a significant chunk of Americans just don't like electric vehicles and are destined to be laggards.
I'm just a Dutch guy that emigrated to Thailand, but I'd never trade my Toyota Hilux diesel for an electric truck. I don't want to have to rely on electric to be able to drive my car. A hybrid could be ok though.
The nice thing about diesel, in case of emergency is you can have a couple of filled jerrycans around so you can always move if needed. I like the reliability, it feels more anti-fragile, if that makes sense.
I wonder if the Gibraltar company that produces Toyota trucks for UN [0] is going fully electric anytime soon, if ever.
While ICE vehicles need gas/diesel specifically to run, EVs can be charged from a variety of sources, including a diesel generator. Electricity is the great unifier. You could pedal a bike to make some electricity, but no amount of pedaling will create fossil fuels.
Luckily I haven't had any emergencies. But in Thailand recently there's been flooding in the south, many people stuck. And in eastern part many people have been evacuated due to border tensions with Cambodia.
I live in the north-west Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar. An area known as the Golden Triangle [0].
About once a month or so we don't have electricity for a about 10-12 hours or so.
I also experienced a quite big earthquake here about a year ago.
The Slate initially looked good to me, but there were three things about it that were not upgradeable that seemed problematic:
* Bed size is fairly small
* Towing capacity is low (Just 1000lbs)
* RWD -> AWD
I liked the idea of buying a barebones truck and customizing it myself, but if it can't tow much, can't carry much, and can't go off-road, it's only really a truck in terms of its shape.
I might be biased because I hang out in the slate subreddit and have been pretty attentive to The product as a whole since they announced it this spring but I think they're on to something assuming they can figure out how to build out the service and parts network.
The vehicle itself may be a runaway sales success but if there's only or two locations in each major state where you can get it serviced, that runaway success will be extremely short-lived.
In theory the simplicity means that it shouldn't be difficult to partner with any independent shop... No complicated or proprietary software theoretically means that any shop with tools and a lift can do the work.
Time will tell, though. I remain optimistic and eagerly await delivery of my truck.
Their wikipedia page says they announced “a partnership with RepairPal, a network of certified auto repair shops and dealerships across the US, to give owners access to 4000 service points from day one”. I don’t know if a “service point” is the same as a mechanic shop though.
RepairPal is just a rent seeking middleman like Angi's list. I don't see what that partnership will provide, certainly not shops that are trained to repair the truck.
Have they even given anyone a test drive or shown anything other than that single press car at all their events? Im starting to get worried that as we approach release expectations may fall flat. I am tired of all the youtuber just sitting in the truck and repeating the same press release.
I love electric vehicles, but I want something that lands somewhere between the DIY-esque Slate and the literally-costs-more-than-I-paid-for-my-house F-150 Lightning. I have a 23 Chevy Bolt EUV which is the sweet spot for me right now, I just wish it had AWD for the winters where I live.
I want a BYD that costs less than a 2000 Camry did brand new in 2000.
EVs are inherently pretty simple machines. All the complexity is in the battery, and China’s crushing everyone at battery tech. It’s not even close. It’s like a human trying to beat a polar bear in hand to hand combat.
They really need to deregulate the auto industry and let us buy the Yugos with a Jetsons battery. America is a poor country now. Nobody can afford used cars in this economy, never mind new ones.
Haha, I'm in rural Iowa – my house was $89k for 3 beds, 2 baths in 2016. When we were looking at electric vehicles at the end of 2022/early 2023, the F-150 Lightning was pushing 70k-100k for the trims and ranges we were looking at.
The interior is more or less the same as the ICE version of the F-150, and there is a lot of parts sharing between them. Probably part of the reason why it didn't have great range. EVs are also much simpler to repair, on average. Definitely not disposable. They sure were expensive, though.
True but they also break, a lot. Workmanship and materials are poor, things that should be made for the life of the car break well before they should. And not just trim, engine and transmission supports, supension and steering components and so on.
They were good cars. In the 70's or so, and it has been steadily down hill from there, even though the engines themselves have improved considerably the rest of the car has only become more and more fragile.
"The Truth about Electric Towing" - The video author says that weight doesn't make much difference, but aerodynamics does. Towing a big flat piece of plywood that weighs 50 pounds but catches the wind is much worse for your range (or MPG) than towing an entire second truck, if the towed truck is aerodynamic.
He's only comparing highway driving. As he notes, city driving (or really anything with a lot of accelerating) will see the impact of weight on fuel consumption. Seems like regen brakes can help mitigate that for electric vehicles.
Side note, if he set the parking brake when getting loaded then the second tailgate denting might not have happened. It'll also help save the transmission.
Yes, Ford has done plenty of tests as have regular folks, loading the bed to the weight limit of the truck doesn't have much impact at all on range. It's 99% about the aero.
I feel like many of these comparisons are more applicable to an F-150 of twenty years ago. Modern F-150s start at forty grand, are so hard to repair that the CEO of Ford whines about not having enough mechanics willing to get a PhD in Ford Repair, are absolutely software-constrained to the extent they're legally allowed, and have almost as many cockpit gizmos. The primary difference is the flashy bloat, but the majority of F-150s are sold at trim levels that include such things. Even the lowest-trim fleet F-150 these days is basically a luxury minivan with a bed compared to the models of yesteryear.
My guess is that grid operators are offering more money than carbuyers, with the wild popularity of solar and wind.
Yeah the F150 is a strange vehicle. It has a proven reputation as a blue collar workhorse. However, a fully loaded Raptor trim is a 6 figure price tag easy.
And somewhat more relevant, the Transit product line is doing a brisk business in the fleet market. Unless you specifically need to tow, a lot of trades are better served with a van these days.
> *They're loaded with useless/barely-functional interior electronics that are poor copies of Tesla
Having owned both an EV Ford and a Tesla I can say with absolute certainty that the ford runs circles around the Tesla. Outside of having steam games on the screen, Tesla’s infotainment does literally nothing better, and the interface itself feels like an early 2000s Linux gui. Oh, and Ford actually supports carplay and android auto.
Insane take. If you actually own a Tesla and have this opinion I’m gonna eat a dick. Ford’s software can’t even do navigating via chargers right. It’s universally panned.
So, I haven't driven a Ford EV for any significant amount of time so can't comment on the "navigating via chargers" part, but I'd take Ford's non-EV infotainment system over Tesla's system. Ford's is obnoxiously laggy, basically just above the bar of that I'd consider a shippable product, but Tesla's touchscreen for things that should be buttons is awful, and the lack of Android Auto/Carplay is crippling.
And tangential to the infotainment system, Tesla dropping sat radio receivers is pretty annoying if you're frequently outside of cell service.
Nah everything you need is available on the steering wheel contextually. You would know that if you had one. You would also know why Tesla owners don’t care for android auto or carplay much (though I recognize that it’s definitely a selling point because people have this stance from their experience with other cars, which suck)
New person to the conversation: I just want to say that even if the CEO's politics weren't awful I would never want a Tesla. I don't want a touchscreen to adjust the direction of the AC. Audio, climate and basic media functions should all have tactile control.
Tesla is to blame for my parents thinking EV = complicated iPad on wheels. An electric drivetrain doesn't have to come with a touchscreen UI for everything.
Yeah it's terrible, but it's way cheaper than engineering a bunch of buttons and switches, which is why Tesla did it. Somewhere along the line car makers decided non-mechanical door handles were a great idea too. Polestar is the only one that had some sense in that area.
Are we talking about the same truck? Aside from some trims with the light on the tailgate, I don't know what you're talking about. ICE F150s have the same sorts of lights and badges and as far as I know exactly the same blinkers.
> single-charge range issues are pretty much non-existent (for non-towing applications).
It's due to ignorance. The Lightning is an F150 with a battery pack and motors instead of an engine and gas tank. It shares a -lot- with the 'regular' F150. It's just about the least complicated EV you can buy, which makes it extra funny to hear someone compare it to an iPhone. Sit inside and you can't tell the difference except for how much quieter and silly fast it is.
I'm not sure quite sure how your comment relates to mine.
The way I see it is if there was sufficient enforcement of regulations around spare parts and serviceability then there's no way Ford could have stood up a factory that spat out a bunch of electric trucks without also producing a bunch of spare parts so the unreasonable delay to end users trying to repair their vehicles didn't occur.
I don't have to worry about getting a car battery or sparkplug because these things are standardized and mass produced. That's due to regulation.
The regulations just don't go far enough and the enforcement of them is obviously lax in 21st entury America
Isn't the only EV F-150 the Lightning? The Lightning has always been the sports model, so I can't imagine it ever made sense economically as a work truck.
They reused the name much like they used the Mustang name for their electric SUV. Past Lightnings were single trim level performance trucks. The current Lightning mirrors the regular F150 trim levels but with an electric drivetrain.
It's a little more complicated. The Lightning has always been about performance, and that includes the EV. It'll demolish every other F150 (and most other regular cars for that matter) that doesn't say "Raptor R" on the side.
> * The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
> * They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable.
Add in the crap tow range and it looks like Ford upmarket, as it's known to do, and failed. Just reading these points makes me think that it was designed to fail.
> The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
So are RAM trucks and I don't think they're hurting for customers.
I think there are two fundamental issues. One is that pickups are a weirdly-politicized lifestyle choice in the US - i.e., if you're progressive, you're supposed to hate them and see them as the symbol of the gun-totting macho redneck culture, and if you're conservative, you're supposed to love them because they're gas-guzzling freedom machines that "own the libs". An electric pickup straddles these political choices in a hard-to-market way.
The other problem is that electric pickups don't really solve any pressing problem for the buyer. They're more expensive up front, more expensive to keep running (unless you also invest a lot of $$$ into solar), and harder to repair, but they don't boast better specs... well, except for acceleration, which isn't a huge selling point for trucks.
> One is that pickups are a weirdly-politicized lifestyle choice in the US
Based on my personal experience traveling, there's a more practical reason for the political divide.
I spend a good portion of my life in rural parts of the US these days, where most of the residents are pretty conservative. But these are also parts of the country where I get nervous when I'm on 1/4 tank of gas. If you're routinely out in places where the nearest gas station might be > 50 miles away, you also see a dip in e-vehicles for very practical reasons.
When I'm at home in a city, it makes perfect sense to own an e-vehicle: typically I'm only driving a few miles a day, and the car spends most of it's time at my house or in a parking garage. When I'm out on business, and driving across hundreds of miles of barely inhabited land, I cannot imagine the stress of having an electric truck. It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that.
In rural parts of the country, especially when you're out working, you can easily be putting on mileage combined with being far enough away from a charger that it just doesn't make sense to have an e-vehicle.
I do know someone who bought a Tesla after debating it for a long time. And it was only after getting comfortable with the range for a mostly weekly drive into the country.
Try this map: https://supercharge.info/map , it has a feature called "range circles". If you set it to 50 miles, you'll see that most of the country is well within 50 miles of the nearest supercharger. Including almost all of Texas.
At 100 miles of range, you only have a couple of blank spots.
With third party chargers, there's really only one blank spot in Montana. At this point, the range is already a solved problem.
Earlier this year, I did experiments with placing stations manually on the map and using the US road networks to calculate the isolines. With just about 70 more stations, you can make any point on the public road network in the entire contiguous US lie within 50 miles of the nearest charger.
So the charging availability is likely going to be solved completely even during the current shitty admin.
> It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that.
At 325kW charge rate (common on recent chargers), you're looking for maybe 20 minutes to get enough charge to reach your destination.
The kinds of situations that drive range consideration for things like trucks is that your planned route suddenly becomes unavailable after you've already burned most of your range. Range anxiety isn't about the ideal case.
I've had several situations in the Mountain West when roads suddenly closed <25 miles away from my final destination (and fuel). Some of these required upwards of 100 mile detour on rural roads with almost no civilization. That detour was not part of the original range calculation. For an EV the detour may not even be an option, you have to go backwards to a major highway to find a charging station that may be in range.
Hell, I've nearly come up short in an ICE vehicle a couple times. I try to keep 150-200 miles of spare range on my vehicle when I am in that kind of country. That is hard to do on a typical EV.
So if I have a vehicle with let's say 250 miles of range, you want me to let it get to 100 miles at least left to drive 100 miles to the charger, then drive 100 miles back, leaving me with 50 miles of range until I have to do it again?
I'm not really against electric anything, but not following the logic of the examples in this comment.
“There’s at least one spot within 100 miles where you can wait 20 minutes to get enough charge to get to the next charger” is not an argument that will convince someone to give up the convenience of the gas station.
The convenience argument works for a small segment of the population that road trips a few hundred miles at a time regularly. For the rest of us, EVs are far more convenient. I don't ever go to a gas station, and every day I start out with 320 miles of range. I stop at the EV equivalent of a gas station two or three times a year. I've saved a lot of time not having to get gas every week.
It's mostly a wash, the efficiency on the descent balances the climb, and overall you get respectably close to the same range you'd have gotten on a flat route.
I rented a mach-e recently. Went up to Snoqualamie pass from seattle. I used over 60 miles range in 10 miles on the steep part at the end, 1/6th. Going the other way I got a maybe 20% boost in distance over flat. There were a few places I was able to regen-brake, but I never had the battery go up, only stay flat. And a few times I lost enough speed that I didn't handle an interim flat well. I was extremely disappointed.
It turns out friction and drag are still things. On a pure downhill you would be able to roll, but it's not as good as going down is bad.
I also found that the car did a lot worse rolling down hill than my mini-cooper manual when I just put the clutch in, which got up to hairy speeds. Heck vehicle seemed to have more inbuilt resistance to just rolling than the fire engine I've run down that hill.
Overall I got 90 total miles of range and hit the flat at 10% battery. I was able to get 290 miles driving in seattle with the same vehicle.
That's weird. Seattle-to-Yakima at 70 mph average speed and 85 mph peak speed is about 1.5x the normal energy use for me (260 Wh/m vs 350 Wh/m). Leaving me with 20% of charge when starting at 100% (260 miles): https://imgur.com/a/Dhs38kJ
And this was during the wintertime, so with a reasonable amount of heating.
F150 has a 130kWh battery, so heating is not an issue. Height changes are also not a problem. There are very few areas with large altitude changes, and even fewer ones that you'll likely need to pass through regularly.
This leaves mostly mountain passes around the Sierra mountains. And by some strange coincidence, they have plenty of superchargers in the vicinity.
The rest of the country can be, to the first order, considered flat. E.g. elevation change between Charlotte and Charleston is mere 300 meters.
The vast majority of truck owners do not live in these sparse / long distance situations. There just aren’t that many people as a % of the population that live that rural. Whilst a real factor for some, that is not the main reason behind the political divide over trucks.
The limited range and inability to refuel quickly and easily in the middle of nowhere remains a critical deficiency for EV trucks in many parts of the US. Range is something you have to be conscious of even with ICE trucks in some areas even though they have better and more reliable range. There are places where I'd start thinking about fuel once I hit half a tank.
Getting caught out in the middle of nowhere with a dead EV because conditions beyond your control changed the range requirements is a nightmare scenario. ICE trucks do much better in these situations.
That is almost literally the entirety of it. If we could do that, EV would be lit. EV is honestly better for remote environments in most other regards.
If you need a truck for work, you're probably going to be towing in it. Now, some of those guys who are hauling are gonna need a 250 or a 350, but a lot of them will do just fine with the 150.
Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly.
In addition, it's 2 hours to the nearest big city. So as a practical matter, you're adding an hour to your trip every time you go into town. I like Teslas a lot, but gave you ever been on a road trip in one? It's pretty brutal.
Plus, I feel like, aesthetically, there is a weird block. I would have no problem dumping a load of sheetrock trash in the bed of a new gas truck. For a brand new electric truck? It kind of feels wrong, don't you think? Maybe that is just me being a Luddite, but I really don't have a sense of an electric car as a tool, the way a good truck is.
I think EVs are great as a recreational car, or a useful commuter in the city. I've never seen a Rivian doing blue collar anything.
Interestingly, I live in rural Vermont, and there are a surprising number of Rivians around me - including those set up for contractors, complete with scaffolding in the bed with tools and ladders on them.
That said, we have an F250. I'd love to have an electric truck, but I use mine for towing almost exclusively. If I'm hauling a trailer hours away, I really don't need to deal with the hassle of stopping along the way to charge. I've yet to see a charging station set up for conveniently charging an electric vehicle with a trailer.
When we lived the Bay Area a decade ago, we had a Nissan Leaf, one of the early ones. It only got 95 miles to a charge if you were lucky, but for commuting in the South Bay we absolutely loved it.
Here in Vermont? F250 and a Subaru. I'd love to make the second an electric, but no one actually makes a good AWD electric Crosstrek equivalent that's actually designed for dirt roads and not the city.
Interesting! I lived in Illinois, where they are manufactured, and they were everywhere, but they were a luxury vehicle, I never once saw one as a work truck. I'm a little surprised but it isn't that strange.
My general impression is the product class of a Rivian / 150L is probably closer to a Ford Raptor than it is to a work truck. But interesting to hear that may be changing!
If you're buying a Raptor, that's a luxury purchase for sure. But I do know people who use Raptors to haul, so that kind of makes sense.
With the exception of the most ridiculous of chromosomemobiles, I think most people make a very rational calculation about what they will do with their vehicle, even if it's just being able to help somebody move a couch that one time. Usually it's more than that. And towing is a huge part of that equation.
> Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly.
Hey now, my 8 year-old Pixelbook still has 2 more years before it's out of support.
> Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook
But that's like rich people. Nouveau rich sport designer fashion to show off how much money they have, but true wealth doesn't need to show off like that. If the tech lead came in with a battle hardens Chromebook running a distro they created on crostini, I would respect them more, not less.
"More expensive to keep running" might depend on where you live. My wife and I both have EVs and we drive about 2000 miles/month. At just over $.06/kWh our EV charger tells us that we pay about $30/month for "fuel".
The first tire rotation on my car was free, and the next two were about $60 total. The first tire rotation on my wife's car was free. We're both going to need another rotation in a couple of months. Other that that, the original wipers on my car were squeaky and I replaced them for about $40. Oh! And I replaced the cabin air filters myself at the 7500-mile service intervals.
When we lived in a much bigger city, there were time-of-day rates and assistance with the cost of putting in a charger offered by the local for-profit utility. The kWh rate was just over 3X what we're paying now and even that is cheap compared to some regions.
Insurance doesn't seem cheap but we moved from Farmers to Amica and there are a bunch of discounts for having cars with lane departure warning, collision avoidance, etc.
I expect to replace the tires at 40,000 - 50,000 miles based on what other people report they get with their original tires. I do get sad little postcards from the dealer about having our cars serviced because there's no oil changes, the brakes should last forever because of regenerative braking, there's not a catalytic converter to steal, etc.
I'm guessing you're often either towing or you're doing a bunch of shortish drives for construction, etc. purposes--neither of which are a great match for electric.
Indeed, a bunch of short drives would be ideal. My next door neighbor owns a small construction company and he switched from a gas truck to electric, went from filling the truck twice a week to charging at home. More than paid for the truck.
The details matter but just doesn't buy you a lot, especially if you have a second vehicle to drive a handful of miles a week. Per sibling comment, a couple of fillups a week really is a fair bit of driving.
This is pretty much dead on. I live in a rural part of the US and there are tons of old, worked-on trucks. The idea that there might be an all-electric f150 hanging out in 40 years is, frankly, laughable.
I know a lot of city kids think trucks are some obnoxious luxury good, but they're basically a functional requirement in most of the (very large) country.
Those census definitions are not good. I’m sure the place I went to high school is considered “city” by that definition, but the average HN poster would not recognize it as one, and there were lots of farm working trucks around.
It turns out that anecdotes don't constitute data. If the place you went to high school is considered "city" by the census definition, then I guarantee the majority of pickup trucks in the area were obnoxious luxury goods that never hauled a single thing to or from a farm.
> The idea that there might be an all-electric f150 hanging out in 40 years
I should hope there is. The battery is good for 400-500K miles. The first real maintenance (which is still just flushing the coolant) happens at 200K miles. These trucks will be easier to keep on the road than you think, they're dead simple.
> I know a lot of city kids think trucks are some obnoxious luxury good, but they're basically a functional requirement in most of the (very large) country.
A van is almost always a better choice if you're actually looking at functionality. Shielding from the elements is way more useful than some mythical ground clearance benefit that you will never use.
Sure, a very small number of people go offroad and need that clearance--however, the number is small relative to the number of people who could get away with a van.
> some mythical ground clearance benefit that you will never use
Spoken like someone who hasn't lived past the suburbs.
I needed some plumbing work done last winter and had to hire someone new because my preferred plumber couldn't access my road with his van.
The lack of AWD/4x4, lack of ground clearance, inability to tow are all massive drawbacks for several lines of business. Tonneau or hard covers and enclosed trailers take care of shielding from the elements just fine.
That's not past the suburbs, that's a ridiculous outlier. Congratulations, you live somewhere without paved roads, which puts you at what, 0.00001% of all Americans? That's your argument?
Maybe not where you live but there are many parts of the US where you really do want significant ground clearance regardless of vehicle type. The ubiquity of Subarus in several regions of the US isn't because people are fond of Subarus as an automotive brand.
High ground clearance isn't about "going offroad".
I live in a place where people drive either trucks or subarus. There are plenty of alternatives to subaru with high clearance (basically any small suv). People buy them because they work well in snow and well...everyone has them. Easy to sell, easy to get them worked on.
Packed gravel is not "offroad", it's just a normal, flat road. Snow makes no difference either, obviously. You'd need to have quite a lot of snowfall to make travel in a regular car hard to impossible.
When your entire supply chain is optimized in ICE vehicles, it’s a tough sell to re-org everything for EVs. And when you try to half-ass it, it doesn’t pan out well, and you end up in this situation.
I'd love an off-road capable electric 4WD (because think about how amazing having computer controlled precision torque applied to wheels individually would be for getting out of a tricky situation).
Especially if you could buy some kind of field charging kit - maybe something you could power off a wood fire or flexible solar panels that you could stow. I imagine that's not realistic at the moment, but a boy can dream.
The Rivian has pretty limited range. The Scout looks promising though.
People out in the ranch country, oil patch, some mining areas, etc often want a reliable 600-ish miles unloaded. That’s why extended fuel tanks are a common option. Even without an extended fuel tank, you can often achieve that with an ICE and a jerry can.
EVs have great potential as 4WD off-road vehicles. In a lot of ways they are more naturally suited to it. Their main weakness is range and loiter time. In many contexts it will be days before you’ll be able to get to a charging point.
The killer feature of ICE in this context is the tremendous range and simplicity of extending range if you need more. Fuel is very compact, easy to bring with you, and available from other vehicles if you run short. An EV that can augment its range indefinitely with fuel is probably the sweet spot.
I guess you could strap a few kw generator in the bed with some jerry cans as backup. Would take longer, but if by loiter time you mean time out in the field where you’re not moving, then maybe that’d work. Would be cool if there was the equivalent of siphoning gas from one to another.
Is there electric infrastructure in the places you’re describing? If so, should be really easy to throw down some moderate-speed L2 chargers in various parts as a last resort. They’re incredibly cheap and don’t need much maintenance.
Holy hell, that's 640ish km, that's plenty - and yep, I'm not from a large continental country, 640 gets me to the other side of my island and 2.5 times, and to the northern or southern end once.
That’s fair. There are “recreational offroaders” in the sense of urban bros that do casual offroading on well-developed trails with associated infrastructure. That is the nerf version of offroading in the US. Some of those trails are cool on their own merits, I don’t want to take away from them.
The US has vast regions that casual tourists never venture into and have no infrastructure that are nonetheless economically important or excellent for exploring.
If you stay near the Interstates, you’ll be able to manage with electric vehicles. But the best parts of the Mountain West are pretty far from the Interstate Highways. The deep Utah, Nevada, or Arizona wilderness is phenomenal but you’d be an idiot to attempt that with an EV. Just getting caught in a mountain pass during a blizzard in May or September could be enough to cook you.
I’m not against EVs in any sense but the tech is still pretty risky for the realities of the Mountain West of the US. I have learned many lessons the hard way about how you can be stranded or die in the Mountain West that makes me cognizant of the limitations of EV currently.
I am bullish on EV, I’d love to have one if it met my technical specs, but they aren’t there yet.
I'm from NZ where 640km range is plenty, for even our gnarliest terrain, so I'm stoked. I have to say, this is a bit dismissive out of hand.
> urban bros that do casual offroading on well-developed trails with associated infrastructure.
Yeah, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Not everyone commenting here is from the US.
I'm talking about things like driving up braided riverbeds to places like this, Mathias Hut, just downstream of a glacier or two. [0]
Or like this, Avoca Hut, in an isolated valley two days walk in otherwise. [1]
Or some of the very rugged routes on the West Coast of the South Island / Te Waipounamu. [2]
Trips like this in the Southern Alps. [3]
Or Napoleon Hill. [4]
640km range would get me to that route, from the east side of my island via an alpine pass [5], through the route, and back home again, on one charge, which is awesome.
We don't have the same scale of distance as the USA, that's true, but we have the same scale of challenging terrain, so please don't be so quick to dismiss our use case as "urban bros doing casual offroading", just because the distances are lower, please.
As for well developed 4WD trails, lol.
I used to be a ranger in a national park here, and American tourists were routinely gobsmacked that our tramping (hiking) routes (trails) didn't have bridges, (and also, often didn't have an actual track or trail, you just picked your own way up the riverbed) and you'd have to walk through the rivers - and no, don't take your boots off, because you're going to cross that river another 5 - 10 times, you just have to accept you're going to have wet feet, welcome to NZ hiking.
So if we don't have that many well developed hiking trails, we certainly don't have well-developed off-roading trails.
That looks amazing! I haven’t been to NZ yet. I was not trying to dismiss your offroad bonafides.
It is the distance scale in the US that makes the difference. In the mountain west, you can blow through a range budget of 640km really easily. There are weather and other events that add 100-200km of unplanned travel that you can’t know ahead of time. There is also no Internet connectivity in much of it! The sparsity of charging stations in more remote regions just makes it worse. If you find you need to re-route, you may be a very long way from the closest accessible charging station and it may be in a direction you did not intend to go.
I wasn’t trying to be dismissive. The US has unique challenges for EV range due to its scale. There isn’t much margin for error on range, especially if the road closes due to avalanches, flooding, etc. You can find yourself hundreds of kilometers from the nearest thing resembling civilization at inopportune times.
> having computer controlled precision torque applied to wheels individually
Fwiw many vehicles already have this. Mechanical torque vectoring via differentials, electronic controlled differentials, and electronic brake-based torque vectoring. The latter is the most common, works pretty well in modern cars
For a long time I had a F150 supercab (made in the 90's) and while it was a great truck it was just excessive for 99% of what I used the vehicle for. That includes the vast majority of times I used it to haul and tow! I always envied my friend's smaller truck. Over a decade I think my truck was the better vehicle in only a handful of situations. (Far better to rent one for the day at that point)
I absolutely hate all the new trucks. That supercab was too large and trucks today feel bigger. Especially the front huge grill (which is also incredibly dangerous). That truck I had was already hard to drive. I loved having a truck but parking is an absolute nightmare, especially in cities where lanes and spaces are not only shorter but narrower. All these big trucks are even harder to drive but people love them because they feel safer (in a perverted and most American arms race imaginable)
But I do like things like power outlets in the bed. I don't give a shit about the infotainment system, but the sockets in the bed is actually helpful. I'd have used that a much larger portion of the time than I used the actual size of my truck. Just being able to plug in a drill (or charge one) is really helpful to more /general/ "truck activities". Not to mention all the things like camping or other things where you take a vehicle like that. But even in those situations you don't need a huge vehicle 99% of the time.
Side note:
I now drive a small compact sedan and am absolutely pissed by how many people drive with their high beams on and are putting in projector bulbs and not properly aiming them. I'm very close to installing a mirror to reflect peoples highbeams back into their own car. Blinding me may increase your visibility, but it also decreases both of our safety. Your brighter lights make you feel safer, but they make you less.
It's funny because when I saw the Slate, I thought it was cool, but the bed was a bit too short to camp in. And there was a large front trunk, a little too large I thought. If only they could take a bit off the front, and put it in the back.
And then I saw the Telo! Hah, they went too far in the opposite direction. Something between these two is what I'd like.
I don't actually think people are driving around with high beams on. Modern LED headlights are just brighter, and cars are higher up than they used to be, meaning older lower cars, especially sedans are just in the path of regular beams. I actually yelled at someone once to turn off their high beams because I was so convinced that's what it was. turns out, they just drive a tesla, which just have blinding lights. I guess there are also probably people with high beams, but most of the ones that are terrible aren't high beams, they are just modern.
What particularly was overly "electric F-150" versus "F-150 but electric" on the Lightning? When i tested it, and when other reviewers talked about it they generally praised how normal truck like it was compared to even the Rivian R1T.
Chevrolet makes these. The Blazer and the Blazer EV look roughly the same. The Equinox and Equinox EV look more different but not completely different. The Silverado and the Silverado EV look completely different, but given those other models, I don't think it's for lack of trying.
Similarly, Volvo's EX cars look almost exactly like their XC counterparts.
That's not a mistake and they know exactly what they are doing: they think they can sell the EX90 in addition to the XC90 and the dramatically different UI/UX/styling is an effort to keep the XC money flowing.
If the electric one was just the XC90 ... but electric ... they know they'd barely sell another ICE one again.
The EX90 platform is from the a ground up a purely electric vehicle while the 2025 XC90 runs on the same platform with upgrades and face-lifts since 2015.
The EX90 is a couple of years late to the market due to software integration problems.
Previously they’ve been sharing platforms across ICE and BEV like the XC40 and XC40 Recharge now rebranded EX40. But now Volvo is going electric.
These two interiors look dang near the same. One has a faux stick shifter versus a dial. Big deal. You could randomize which was the EV and which was the ICE and I'd have no clue.
While this sounds clever, it just isn't true. The electric F150 looks and feels virtually identical to the non-electric one.
It's not some evil big business conspiracy. It's just that the F150 buyer tends to travel longer distances for work/play over traditional car buyers (more on the edge of suburban/rural, less urban), hence the range anxiety problem with all-electric. Couple that with higher upfront costs, lower resale values, and cheap fuel in the US, it's pretty obvious why the market would prefer a hybrid or ICE F150.
I am actually surprised they cancelled the F150 Lightning, I see a lot of them the Metro Vancouver area where a lot of contractors, (gardeners, pool maintenance, labourers, etc...) are driving them as electricity is super cheap here and gasoline is quite expensive.
I am reading this article and thinking, darn there's going to be too many people like me trying to find these on the used market, and the prices will stay high.
Big fancy expensive powerstroke mega trucks with a person-high wall in the front look cool, and occasionally haul heavy things, but little white trucks that are busted up and 20 years old do all the duty. And those trucks drive way less than the range on the lightning each day. Once these lightnings price down to work truck level, I expect to see them on the road a long time.
I thought the same thing too, when it was announced. But I suspect, in addition to the price, that not being able to buy a medium or long bed version also harmed fleet sales. The short bed being the only option is probably a pretty big limitation for groups who are buying them as fleet vehicles.
Just speculation but maybe the fact the world is in an oil glut right now and with the prospect that Russian oil could re-enter global market causing even more glut caused Ford to believe that gasoline will remain fairly cheap compared to 2008 era for the next decade.
it seems gas in vancouver (canada) is $4.50usd/gal ($1.18usd/liter)
that said, I'll bet the new one will be interesting for them, as I'll bet the gas motor can be used as an on-site generator which they might buy anyway.
> electricity is super cheap here and gasoline is quite expensive
Yeah, not everyone has that arrangement though. I was shocked (shocked!) when I realized that for my plug-in hybrid van, running it on gas can be cheaper than charging it, depending on the time of day and time of year.
Where I live, peak hours electricity is $0.22/KWh in the summertime during peak hours, or $0.18/KWh off-peak. My van gets ~32 MPG on its tank, but also ~32 miles on a 16KWh charge. So it’s easy math, 1 gallon = 16KWh, so $0.22 * 16 = $3.52, so gas has to be more expensive than that to be worth it. Off-peak it’s $0.18 * 16 = $2.88, which makes it barely worth it to charge, with gas prices near me being close to $3/gallon.
(I have since bought solar panels and now it’s basically free to charge my car, but I can totally understand why electric vehicles just don’t work out cost-wise for a lot of people, even when accounting for ongoing fuel costs…)
This is a shame. Coworker got a Lightning and he loves it. He doesn't tow with it but he does field work for fiber optic stuff, usually back home every day. Runs his computers, tools, ventilation for going down manholes, he even powered a sump pump from it, without needing to haul a generator.
The hybrid truck can now do the same, but it's a really nice truck
1. Electric trucks don't make sense. In the "I drive my truck to pick up groceries" sense, it's fine. But as a work truck, it's not ideal. You lose both payload and towing capacity owing to that huge battery. Gets worse in winter and at elevation. The bigger the truck, the more it weighs, the worse the EV part does (which is why nobody's making an F350/F550 electric). ICE trucks get over twice the range, more payload, more towing. And if you're using it for work, you can't waste part of the day charging it, you need to gas up and go. It's taking most manufacturers a long time to develop more rugged/capable versions of EVs, so stalling to prepare for an eventual better launch kinda had to happen anyway.
2. In theory, plug-in hybrids could be converted to all-electric, but you get way more utility out of a hybrid. The ability to use either fuel source solves a lot of problems. I wonder if we'll eventually maneuver these away from gas towards LPG; they already sell LPG trucks, why not LPG plug-in hybrids?.
3. We simply aren't ready for mass adoption, practically speaking. Apartments are 40% of all homes and there's no way they can plug-in. There's not nearly enough public chargers and jockeying for position is a joke. The software for chargers and route management is still a huge mess. It will take more government investment, which is dead for the next three years. Selling more EVs with no simultaneous infrastructure investment would be a disaster waiting to happen.
If a shelf stable fuel like LP could be integrated into an EREV, I think that would be the perfect combo. All the dynamics of an EV with the extended range and easy fuel availability.
I’ve owned a M3P and MY, and I really want a truck, but it needs to be more capable than the electric offerings. An EREV truck would be fantastic.
Electric trucks make perfect sense and are ideal for what most F-150s are actually used for. The problem is that the F-150 is a fashion accessory for low IQ types that cosplay as rancher/cowboy/whatever. They're buying the appearance of being tough. They're insecure. The electric F-150 doesn't make them feel better about their pathetic lives.
You can say they're victims of marketing but your vitriol goes too far. I wonder if you would say the same about any other consumerist excess: a bigger house, a nicer watch, a faster car.
Pretty surprised here and I think it was really just bad marketing or I guess unsustainable unit economics.
Price out the cheapest F-150 (XL) with a supercrew cab and 4x4 and you are looking at $50k. Trucks are just expensive. The Lightning is expensive but not that much more than any other truck and the Ford incentives + EV credit brought it down quite a bit. The Lightning Flash (extended range) was routinely selling OTD < $60k with 0% financing.
I'd put off buying a pickup for a decade because I couldn't find the right one and the Lightning is awesome. I was skeptical at first due to range concerns but there are chargers in the middle of nowhere in 2025.
I think a lot of the other commenters might change their thoughts if they drove one for a bit.
Edit: I get somewhere around 50mpg (dollar equivalent when charging at home) in a full-size truck that fits my whole family and our gear + handles better in the snow than any ICE truck + can do plenty of hauling and light towing.
I've been in the market for an electric truck for a solid 5 years now to replace my aging Nissan Frontier. There has yet to be anything attractive at all that has made it into production at any price I've been able to find. Everything seems to be a gas truck with some electric stuff shoehorned in not taking advantage of the new design opportunities at all, and generally with a little 4' bed instead of 6.5 or 8 that I need. So far the best design I've seen was from the startup Canoo [0, 1], but as is unsurprisingly typically the case with a car startup (a really high capex challenging area) they have since gone bankrupt. The Cybertruck at announcement looked sorta promising, with a decent sized bed (6.5 at the time), decent top range (500 miles), and cab moved forward for better visibility with no engine in the way. And in principle there are some really good fully offline "cyber" sorts of features that an ambitious company could do, like making liberal use of modern screens to enable "look through your hood" and better all around awareness, built-in FLIR for enhanced animal detection at night, etc. A self-parking feature that was really solid would be good too, zero general public road self-driving needed for that to be handy. But of course the Cybertruck ended up downgrading in every respect, having mediocre build quality, being heavily delayed, full of Tesla spyware and stupid shit, and in general being made by a vehicle & power company that oddly doesn't actually seem interested in vehicles or power anymore.
It's frustrating seeing all the potential and then having to wait and wait for somebody to finally execute. Same as with PDAs/smartphones until Apple finally shook things up or countless other examples throughout tech history. Maybe it'll be China who actually does it this time around, and a small silver lining might be that could also go along with some actual anti-feudalism and pro-privacy laws in the US if we're very lucky :\.
Why do you need a truck? Serious question, in europe professionals have a van, like the Ford e-transit, and if you just need to haul some stuff from your summerhouse sometimes you hitch a trailer to your car. Why do you need a truck? Couldn’t you buy an electric van instead?
For personal use, like you mention, people use a small trailer. You own one or borrow it freely from many places, hitch it to your car, haul dirt, and then detach it. No need to drive a truck everywhere because you need to haul some stuff once a month.
> But this idea that no normal person needs a pickup truck a dozen times a year is just weird.
Yet the US is the only country where office workers own trucks. The only real use of a F150 style truck is offroad hauling, which is not something most people have to regularly do.
The split for the rest of the world is: Transit-like van for almost everything in places with real roads, Hilux-sized truck in places without roads and contractors who mostly carry dirt, gravel etc. Only the US and Canada use F150-sized trucks.
> Do people load their Transits with piles of dirt and mulch? I doubt it.
I am from the UK but live in Canada. I only see three types of businesses using those Transit style vans here in North America: food delivery, parcel delivery and landscaping businesses. I assume the landscapers are carrying dirt at least some of the time.
I see carpenters and electricians who trick them out with a little workshop, but that's really it. Landscapers it makes sense because you're hauling equipment and storing it in the van, so you can probably both store more and protect from the elements
Not sold (really) in the US. There's the VW electric van but that's more of a gimmick than anything else.
In the US, there's also just a pretty big infrastructure around tooling trucks for professional work. Not that that doesn't exist for vans in the US, it's just somewhat more common to see trucks having full toolsets on the side for quick access with a decent sized bed. The F350 is a major workhorse for that sort of thing.
>> "VW electric van but that's more of a gimmick than anything else."
Really? ... I'm seeing them adopted more widely in Europe now by businesses. Perhaps as second hand or lease prices are coming down. Maybe that doesn't translate to the US ...
Quite nostalgic seeing them run around Central London with business signs on their side... much like the originals. My point: not a gimmick in my experience.
I live in rural northern New England, and as well on-road I have plenty of either off road or unmaintained road usage year round, and a number of loads in those conditions that exceed the width of the vehicle (so wouldn't be public road legal). Also equipment and loads that exceed the height of the vehicle (which is road legal if properly secured). In principle a van with sufficient towing capacity and off road capability could use a trailer of some kind for those roles, I have nothing against vans per se, but since I don't need extra "interior space" the bonuses of vans don't help much vs the reduced flexibility and extra complications. I do keep my eye on them too because the line between "truck" and "van" can be fuzzy and if something sorta convertible or with some innovative ways to straddle the sufficient for my purposes came along I'd certainly consider it, but it hasn't been the case yet and the truck form factor is just really handy for making do with a surprise need on the spot far from anything with sufficient straps and bungie cords, without needing any other equipment.
It'd be nice if it could be a reasonable price too and not include a lot of the bling, though I'm perfectly aware a huge percentage of the truck buying audience cares about that a great deal vs having their truck all beat up and just wanting it to go forwards/backwards/left/right on demand reliably with a bunch of random stuff every day. But it'd be good to see anything at all that tried to work with the advantages of electric vs the limitations and both give a good truck experience and improve the experience for others that share the land, like with greatly enhanced visibility and better shapes that enhance safety for pedestrians. Don't need a ginormous engine to have very good torque with electric. I'm hopeful somebody will get there eventually but I guess the path has proven more winding then I'd once thought it'd be, I'd expected the iteration to be going pretty hard and fast by now (in America/EU I mean, it does seem to be moving real quick now in China).
Anyway, hope that gives some answer to your question. Just one solitary data point, I don't mean to do any extrapolation from this to the wider market, but I do actually use my truck pretty hard for truck things. We have compact efficient cars as well though for long distance travel and the like, my truck at least will spend 99% of its time within a 150 mile radius for work or any other use.
On the flip side, as a van owner (though not a professional "working van") ...
1. you don't need straps and bungees for the van - ours can take pipework, framing lumber and other "long" stuff up to 16', straight on the floor, fully interior.
2. you don't need the gate down - it handles 4x8' sheet goods with all the doors closed, either vertical or horizontal
3. security concerns are much better
4. weather concerns are much better
5. for some folks, you can have highly effective work space inside the van (granted, I've seen some loose equivalents on custom work trucks)
6. mileage is generally significantly better
From my POV, the two wins of the truck form factor are (a) easy of loading/unloading bulk material (e.g. the van is 100% useless for gravel) (b) tall loads. That said, I don't think I've ever need to move anything that was too tall for our Sprinter - worst comes to worst, it gets laid down.
That's not a "flip side" just different uses. I said wide as well as tall, not just long. Truck is also useful for loose loads, including that I can put stuff (sand/gravel/soil) directly into the bed from my tractor bucket as well. And the form factor does feel better sometimes too imo. Like, just 3 days ago I moved around 1100 lbs of concrete mix for a small job, and even though I could have fit them into a van in principle for loading/unloading and cleaning of all the nasty dust it's nice just to have a truck bed. Security is whatever here, and I don't think weather is actually much of an impact either since you can easily add a basic cover if you want (and then have it out of the way when unneeded). They're useful and at least in the past could be had pretty utilitarian and cheap. Small little things too, like just plain less volume for environmental control in a no-cab or half-cab vs a full or van, always seemed a little easier/faster to heat up or cool down. But this is all really personal, and as they've turned more and more into show vehicles the value has gotten worse for sure.
People buy them _because_ they are ginormous and hostile. It's part of the marketing. Ford could make a pedestrian safe work vehicle but they won't because selfish people love these. Especially when it becomes an arms race when half the population drive them. Oversized vehicles need to be taxed more and regulated properly.
The bed is only 4.5' long. The 5.5' short bed available on an F150 Lightning is too short for me, the ICE F150 with a 6.5' bed at least lets you have flat sheet goods with the tail gate down.
Yeah, there's really no reason why something like the Isuzu Elf couldn't be electrified for cheap.
Car manufacturers wanting to make EVs premium products is what I think hurts them the most. That along with tariffs keeping the price of Chinese batteries much higher then they should be.
>As part of this plan, Ford’s next-generation F-150 Lightning will shift to an extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) architecture and be assembled at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan. Production of the current generation F-150 Lightning has concluded as Ford redeploys employees to Dearborn Truck Plant to support a third crew for F-150 gas and hybrid truck production as a result of the Novelis fires.
>The F-150 Lightning is a groundbreaking product that demonstrated an electric pickup can still be a great F-Series,” said Doug Field, Ford’s chief EV, digital and design officer. “Our next-generation Lightning EREV is every bit as revolutionary. It keeps everything customers love — 100% electric power delivery, sub-5-second acceleration — and adds an estimated 700+ mile range and tows like a locomotive. It will be an incredibly versatile tool delivered in a capital-efficient way.
Kind of. EREVs are what locomotives have been doing for a century (and to a lesser extent barges), which is called diesel-electric in that field. I agree the terminology is lacking, but EREVs are quite compelling (and their high market share in China supports consumer demand).
Hybrid:
* ICE must run during regular operation (except for ~very short distances at ~very slow speeds) -- this increases operational costs (oil changes, economy, engine designed for torque and wide RPM range).
* Complex drivetrain with wheels moved by electric motors and ICE, axles, etc.
* Generally 10-40 miles of EV range
EREV:
* Basically an EV with a short range, and whenever you want to charge the battery on the go (or use the waste heat from the ICE) it can use an efficient (Atkinson cycle) engine to do so. (Though american EREVs have used poorly suited engines for parts availability and enormous towing numbers)
* Generally 50-200 miles of EV range
* Think "EV for daily commute; ICE for road trips (and heating)"
IMO EREVs would've been a better development path than hybrids or pure EVs.[0] Immediately lower TCO in various interest rate environments via highly-flexible battery sizes, no cold or range anxiety issues, technically simple drive train and BTMS.
[0] I mean the Prius made a lot of technical strides given the battery technology/costs and familiarity the industry had with ICE at time. Tesla went full EV which is a very optimistic approach, and works well enough if you stick around the charging network, but the batteries are still expensive and heavy compared to a small ICE + tank.
I agree EREVs make a lot of sense, electric first but not requiring a full commitment, especially for a truck that sometimes has to do things like towing.
I'm sure this wasn't lost on Ford, 80% of Scout reservations come with the EREV and only 20% BEV.
Maybe one day they will have enough volume in the segment to justify making the pure BEV version again but with parts sharing with the EREV. An advantage to EREV design is that if done smartly you can offer the same vehicle stripped down and BOOM you have a BEV too.
The problem with EREVs is they are more complex than a BEV. More parts to go wrong, to purchase, and ultimately a (potentially) higher price.
The reason to do EREVs for a manufacture is, IMO, primarily because they can't get a hold of batteries for a cheap enough price. And I think that's the weakness of the way Ford has attacked EVs. They haven't (AFAIK) really built out battery plants. As a result, they are at the whims of their supplier for their battery packs.
For a truck like the F150, that's a large pack requirement that probably ultimately likely killed their margins.
Edit OK, they've been working on a plant for the last 5 years, but it looks like they've done almost nothing. Like, literally just have some support structs up.
Even if batteries were very cheap, you run into scaling issues where your battery pack ends up very heavy, so then you're using increasingly more energy to lug your heavier battery back around for everything that isn't long-range towing.
Are they really much more complicated than a hybrid? Think RAV4 Hybrid. I’d much prefer a fully electric drivetrain with an electric generator to the joyless CVT.
I think the term of art in the automotive space so far has been "series hybrid". But like you said, the differentiation here may just be the size of the battery. Series hybrids are still predominantly driven by fossil fuels, even if the drive is an EV drivetrain, due to the battery mainly acting as an energy buffer.
The absolute sweet spot, as someone from a country with long long distances, is a plugin series hybrid that has ~150-300km EV range and a ~60 litre fuel tank. That's getting me to work entirely electric, and then once a month when I need to see family I can chew down the fossil fuels.
EREV is different from diesel-electric in that the EREV has a large battery whereas the diesel-electric locomotive does not. But the "ICE engine drives a generator which drives a motor" philosophy is similar in spirit.
I recall the bmw serial hybrid was called a range extender, because the gas motor couldn't actually put out enough energy to drive the vehicle on the freeway.
So basically it was an EV with a small +xx mile extra range from the gas engine.
so no "ice for road trips", more like "ice for an additional +xx miles" then you need to recharge.
In comparison the chevy volt had a better hybrid design (not a serial hybrid) and you could drive it on gasoline only.
is there any good comparison of Hybrid vs EREV efficiency (when main battery is depleted), even with Atkinson cycle ICE for EREV? my understanding was that the main reason for all this complexity in Hybrids was due direct-to-wheel power transfer efficiency, while in EREV there's efficiency loss when converting ICE output to electric current...
I guess you’d call my Chrysler Pacifica an “EREV” then.
It’s honestly perfect for us. 32 miles on a charge, we barely touch the gas except for the winter when it’s so cold out we need the engine to warm us up. Any other time and the battery is all we need, and it charges overnight on a simple 110V wall outlet. Long trips are still possible, you just drive. We go through maybe 8 tanks of gas per year with our occasional long trips (compared to having to stop at a charging station for an hour, I’ll take it.)
There have been no EREVs produced and sold yet AFAIK (though maybe BMW had a version of the i3 that did? I'm not sure). Dodge has one in the works. Ford has now announced one. The old Chevy Volt was philosophically wanting to be an EREV but was as a practical matter still a parallel hybrid.
That version of the i3 definitely is one. Though the way it limits the gas tank and won't let you control it manually in the US for tax purposes sucks.
I get that a hybrid is attractive because of the flexibility, but still the change is a strange decision. EVs are simpler to maintain than ICEs, but a hybrid is more complex, it adds the possible EV problems atop possible ICE problems.
Maybe keep the trucks as much they are now, just the essential changes to replace the engine? There's plenty of space on those huge trucks.
I think it's still simpler, actually. IME the most complicated part of an ICE vehicle is the power delivery system. Transmissions are nightmares to work on. Making that all-electric and just using an engine to generate power significantly simplifies the system. I'm not a mechanic though, so take my word with a grain of salt.
My understanding is that going to hybrid actually allowed Toyota to significantly simplify their transmissions relative to ICE vehicles, even without going full EV.
The planetary gear "eCVT" systems that Toyota and Ford use in many models are mechanically a lot simpler than a traditional automatic or sequential manual transmission. Few moving parts and no clutches at all. I don't know what the long term reliability of those drivetrains is is but I wouldn't be surprised if it's measurably measurably better than a traditional transmission + engine. There's a long educational video from Weber State University that gives a good walkthrough of what's going on in those things.
The difference is what is actually powering the wheel. Hybrid is still primarily ICE. EREV is electric motors (with the ICE just charging the batteries).
I literally couldn’t think of a better truck than an EREV. Give me an ICE engine that can haul my trailer into the boondocks knowing I just need a gas station nearby, but can power my trailer off the battery.
I wish if this U.S. administration and U.S. carmakers don't care to promote EVs, that they'd at least let in the Chinese manufacturers that are interested in them.
They view EVs as a moral threat. Can't get cognitive dissonance about your neighbor's dope new EV with perks your new ICE doesn't have, if your neighbor can't get EVs either. Loads of examples of "this is worse, so we're going to make it worse, so we're sure that it is worse".
IMO, the biggest perk is dependent on the ability to charge at home. If you can, then the price per mile is about half (if Google is right that California rates are about $0.30/kWh) or less than for an ICE. But even if the $/mile were equal, never needing to visit a gas station again is itself the biggest perk.
And sure there are people for whom an EV won't meet their range needs, but probably way fewer than think that's the case for them.
It’s closer to 0.40-0.70c/kwh. My lowest rate is $0.40c/kwh and that goes away insanely fast just doing almost nothing. PGE is criminally priced in CA. I get maybe 200kwh before it jumps to $0.50/kwh rate and will keep jumping.
I don’t have AC. I don’t have anything. That’s just a fridge, computer, and a little bit of cooking. Genuinely have no idea how I even hit 10kwh/day because I have nearly nothing on in this place.
Home electricity in California is about 45¢/kWh. If your F150 mileage is typical, you're getting about 2 miles per kWh. 600 miles would cost about $135 here in California. Meanwhile, a 20 mpg gas car would cost about $110/month at $3.65/gallon.
You must be paying about 4.7 cents per kWh, or about 90% less than you'd pay here.
They also view the Chinese as a moral threat. They'd rather set the country on fire than cede the territory that small Chinese EVs could take (which, given current American consumer preferences, would likely be rather small.
>> they'd at least let in the Chinese manufacturers that are interested in them.
China's anti-market tactics in EV/battery supply-chain past 15 years haven't exactly helped promote EVs outside China -- they are now countervailed not only in the US, but also the EU, Canada, Turkiye; even in China-friendly nations, such as Brazil and Russia now are imposing restrictions on Chinese EV imports. Not very realistic.
What anti-market tactics? My understanding is they poured money over the whole market in a way that helped it grow faster, but didn't pick winners and doesn't subsidize the current pricing.
Yeah this is an outdated talking point, because people can’t accept how far ahead Chinese auto are. They now just have a more advanced, innovative & competitive auto industry, with little subsidies.
Don't like posting a long comment, but re-posting a high-level chronological view of the problems past 15 years:
1) forced technology transfer/IP theft -- all foreign automakers/EV battery producers forced to give up IP to access China's market (and subsidies). This was litigated before the WTO by the EU in 2018 (see WT/DS549):
Hybrid in a Trade Squeeze, Keith Bradsher, Sept 5, 2011, NYT
... The Chinese government is refusing to let the Volt qualify for subsidies totaling up to $19,300 a car unless G.M. agrees to transfer the engineering secrets for one of the Volt’s three main technologies to a joint venture in China with a Chinese automaker, G.M. officials said.
2) Once foreign battery producers made IPR/IP concessions to access China's growing EV market and significant investment in battery production in China, they were effectively banned. All domestic, foreign automakers were likewise forced to switch to local champions, namely CATL/BYD, promoted under MIIT's 2015 "Regulation on the Standards of the Automotive Power Battery Industry”:
Power Play, Trefor Moss, May 17, 2018, WSJ
... China requires auto makers to use batteries from one of its approved suppliers if they want to be cleared to mass-produce electric cars and plug-in hybrids and to qualify for subsidies. These suppliers are all Chinese, so such global leaders as South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd and Japan’s Panasonic Corp. are excluded.
... Foreign batteries aren’t officially banned in China, but auto executives say that since 2016 they have been warned by government officials that they must use Chinese batteries in their China-built cars, or face repercussions. That has forced them to spend millions of dollars to redesign cars to work with inferior Chinese batteries, they say.
... “We want to comply, and we have to comply,” said one executive with a foreign car maker. “There’s no other option.”
3) Picking winners and losers: made sure no Chinese consumers had access to EVs with batteries from foreign EV battery producers effectively creating a captive market of buyers for CATL/BYD.
Why a Chinese Company Dominates Electric Car Batteries. Keith Bradsher and Michael Forsythe, Dec 22, 2021, NYT
The government soon said electric car buyers could get subsidies only if the battery was made by a Chinese company. G.M., which had not been notified of the rule, started shipping Buick Velite electric cars in 2016 with batteries made in China by LG, a South Korean company.
Angry consumers and dealers complained that local officials were denying them subsidies, people familiar with the episode said. G.M. switched heavily to CATL for the huge Chinese market.
4) another fairly recent example of China's arbitrary regulatory barriers to keep out foreign competition, which was later dropped after the gov't found out their local "champion," CATL, couldn't pass the EV battery safety test:
Why a Chinese Company Dominates Electric Car Batteries. Keith Bradsher and Michael Forsythe, Dec 22, 2021, NYT
... A rival had released a video suggesting that a technology used by the company, CATL, and other manufacturers could cause car fires. Imitating a Chinese government safety test, the rival had driven a nail through a battery cell, one of many in a typical electric car battery. The cell exploded in a fireball.
Chinese officials took swift action — by dropping the nail test, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. The new regulation, released two months later, listed who had drafted it: First on the list, ahead of the government’s own vehicle testing agency, was CATL.
Then, you also have China weaponizing their EV raw-material supply-chain, such as EV-grade graphite used as battery's anode material. China torpedo'ed Swedish battery company, Northvolt, with an export ban in 2020 because Sweden protected Chinese dissidents and called out human rights violation. Northvolt went bankrupt last year.
re: subsidies. China's consumer direct purchase subsidy ended in Dec 2022, but was extended again as tax credit for another 4 years in Jun 2023. Just to be sure though, there are many other subsidies besides the consumer subsidies at every layer of China's EV/battery supply-chain. The EU's anti-subsidy probe last year (see Regulation 2024/1866) for instance evolved around "export subsidies."
1) I'm unsure if that's more anti or pro market to be honest.
2,3) Okay, yes, half-separating China from the rest of the world is anti-market. But then they did a lot inside the country that was pro-market. With a population of over a billion, I don't consider that picking winners.
4) That's obnoxious of them but doesn't really affect what I was saying.
subsidies) I was unaware of extensions, and I thought the supply chain subsidies were already gone? But okay, let's assume this is accurate, 17% duty on BYD. Man. As I've said before when Trump was talking about 25% on everything, I wish the US was putting 25% tariffs on Chinese EVs instead of whatever dumb number it is.
1) anti-market. China was likewise taken to the WTO in 2018 and agreed to end their restriction on market access/forced tech transfer, implemented in 2020/2021. Tesla is however still the only foreign automaker operating without a forced JV to this date.
2) restricting market access (and subsidies) to foreign automakers isn't exactly pro-market -- especially to those who were already in China and manufacturing products that local "champions" weren't able to mass-produce. All domestic, foreign Automakers forced to source inferior, yet also costlier, batteries. ie, anti-market.
3) demonstrates Chinese consumers wanted GM Velites with LG, but their choice was denied. Limiting 1.5B consumers' choice in the name of promoting national "champions"? anti-consumer and anti-market. Definitely picking winners and loser, or foreign over domestic.
4) just another example of arbitrary safety regulation restricting market access to foreign companies. ie, anti-market.
re: subsidies. China's EV subsidies have been around since 2009; renewed/extended every 2-4 years. That's also in addition to provisional subsidies thrown around time to time, eg, ICE-to-EV conversion subsidies between May-Dec 2024 to prop up slowing EV sales.
EU is quite silly with countervailing measures against China's dumping/anti-subsidies. Despite 100+ ACTIVE counter measures, the EU Commission still think the targeted approach against China's anti-market/mercantile practices can work. The EU should also consider imposing country-specific tariff rate of 100%, akin to Biden's tariff.
China's export ban against Sweden has shown that their NEV initiatives aren't really aimed at addressing environmental problem or benefiting their population.
1) it was anti-market and that's why they were taken to the WTO, not the other around.
This violation is also explicitly spelt out in Section 7 Non-Tariff Measures of China's 2001 WTO Accession Protocol. Not sure what point you are making with "stolen data," but subsidies must be given to all or none -- no picking winners or losers. The key idea here is a level playing field.
2) Restricting subsidies to some, but not others based on "local" vs "foreign"?-- ie, anti-market. All NEV subsidies were further conditioned on using Chinese batteries by local Chinese battery "champions" only to funnel them back to local battery industry is an industrial policy, definitely anti-market and anti-consumer.
3) what "two" markets? We are talking strictly about China's internal EV market and the Chinese gov't's anti-market policies; not the rest of the the World.
4) Sure, and the Chinese govt makes the "market regulation" in China. China's NEV market is likewise anti-market, anti-consumer, and corrupt.
1) Let me make a hypothetical. If you take tech from 2 companies and give it to 50 companies, that is both pro-market and something you will get sued for and lose.
2) You seem to be refusing to acknowledge that some actions have mixed consequences. Having many of those subsidies helped the market. Restricting them hurt the market compared to not restricting them. You can't look at just the restrictions to make the judgement, you have to look at the whole picture. Without the restrictions, they wouldn't have enacted the same subsidies.
3) If we're looking at just the internal market, then those policies made many more companies prosper and compete. I don't see how you can possibly say that they hurt the internal Chinese market! The EV market internal to China is far stronger than it would have been if the Chinese government sat there and did nothing.
There have been many demonstrations that F150, cybertruck, and others have short ranges when loaded and even shorter ranges when towing (I saw sub 40 miles on a full charge claimed by some people).
If you use your truck as a truck, that’s simply not feasible. If you just use it as expensive transportation, you probably still try to convince yourself by thinking about how you might use it as a truck sometimes and won’t buy an electric truck either.
There’s not much of a market, so leaving makes sense.
> sub 40 miles on a full charge claimed by some people
See, that's what you get for believing whatever you read on the internet that confirms what you already wanted to believe.
Back in reality, towing does demolish the range, you end up around 1.0 to 1.2 miles per kWh if you put a travel trailer behind a Lightning. Normal 70-75 mph driving is about 2.0 miles/kWh. Around town, depending on your habits, it's 3.5-4 mi/kWh. The battery is 131 kWh. So range can very quite a lot based on your current activity, but someone who told you sub-40 miles was jerking your chain (or had their own motivation for lying).
I think the issue is that the administration is in an adversarial relationship with China. Risky to allow a foreign power have a kill switch on critical infrastructure.
Just to clarify: We accept the security risk of kill switches in networking equipment, smartphones, laptops, servers, clouds, processors, bluetooth firmware and nvidia driver blobs, but we draw the line at civillian cars?
And in contrast to the listed items above, for civillian cars you can choose from dozens of countries who produce them. And if you cannot accept security risk of owning a "kill switch" car then you can still go back to gasoline or diesel.
I feel it's crazy to collectively accept security risks in vital electric equipment but suddenly cars are the one product that becomes a political issue. An unlike cars there are very limited alternatives with electrical equipment.
This doesn’t seem that crazy to me - a broadly applicable coordinated OTA zero day applied across cars during US rush hours has the potential to result in likely hundreds of thousands of deaths in a few hours if safety critical systems like airbags can be tampered/inhibited by OTA-capable systems.
The scale of car travel plus the inherent kinetic energy involved make a correlated risk particularly likely to lead to a mass casualty event. There are very few information system vulnerabilities with that magnitude of short-term worst case outcome.
Sure but you could just nuke us too, given that the response to a mass civilian death event would be the same. Same reason the US would be foolish to destroy the Three Gorges Dam.
It doesn't need to be a mass civilian death event. They can wait, collect data and kill 90% of our most important soldiers, heads of state, spies and everyone needed to maintain critical sectors of our economy. They could kill everyone who is anti-china. They could kill all the members of one political party (any one) as a false flag and cause a civil war.
Surveillance technology is nessisarially selective, so these "all or nothing" hypotheticals do not apply.
There was already a million vehicle recall for a vulnerability that allowed remote control of safety features (steering/breaking/acceleration control) that could be abused by anyone with a sprint mobile sim.
.... and the second US civil war starts up and one side has hacked into the automobile kill switches ...
"security" and "war" come in all sizes and shapes. Even inter-national warfare can be of the "cold" variety, in which nobody is nuking anybody else, but making automobiles randomly unreliable could be extremely effective (for a while, anyway).
Not really convinced by your argument. If you want to achieve your scenario you just take a sysadmin from the Tesla shanghai plant and next time they go to the US HQ they gain access to a coworkers laptop and deploy an OTA update to the tesla fleet. And this is assuming that the Tesla OTA update deployment mechanism is actually separated between countries, and not simply accessible from the Tesla intranet.
No need to design & ship another low-cost car model for this.
The security risk of backdoors in your IT may drive you crazy, but backdoors in your car may drive you off a bridge.
I agree with your point. But cars are the last line of defense, and they are technology most people understand. With computers, you can just unplug them at the end of the day. A backdoor in a car or a drone or something just kills you.
Cars are not critical infrastructure, also, the idea that China would turn off their EVs or starting to use them as weapons from the other side of the world is borderline absurd.
Occam's razor suggests that the simplest solution is the most probable: they are scared of the competition, because they know that if those cars enter the market they will dominate it.
If that's a normal thing to do, why aren't we hijacking russian teslas right now? Why haven't we made Microsoft push an OTA update to windows to bluescreen all military PCs in Russia? Why haven't we made Google and Apple push Android/iOS updates that cause all phones in Russia to crash?
I'm confident that even if at war with China, the US would not hijack random civilian cars, yes. That's absolutely absurd.
The issue is that the administration is in an adversarial relationship with “woke”. That EVs and renewable energy somehow fall into this category is one of the dumbest parts of this timeline.
No one in top comments is mentioning a key point. It was cheap looking.
How the truck looks is important. Outside the bottom end of market, it's a status symbol. I got a tundra TRD earlier this year and I've gotten multiple compliments on it because it's a good looking truck.
The F150 lightning looked cheap. The grill is this crappy plastic. And there was no upgrade feature to make it cooler.
If they had the option to make it look like the Raptor or one of their higher end F150s, it may have sold better.
Meh, it just looks like any other truck to me. It even has a sprinkle of the silly "wow very technology!" aesthetic pandering that's typical of EVs. But plenty of strong-selling EVs do that (see: Hyundai).
But you're right! An electric pickup truck is a status symbol, but an F-150 isn't a status symbol. The F-150 brand, and the blue oval itself, is associated with being an appliance. The branding is at odds with the starry-eyed futurism that drives EV sales.
Don't get me wrong, plenty of folks buy F-150s and Rams and Silverados who don't need them. But, those people are cosplaying their imaginary blue-collar grandfathers. An electric car goes against that retrospective way of thinking.
As for folks who actually need a pickup for practical reasons, they don't want a Lightning. Ford doesn't sell it with an 8 foot bed. Every time you get plywood or drywall or whatever, it's gonna hang out the back. Can't wait to see the look on your face when a ladder falls over onto the hood of your $75,000 truck.
I think that trucks are in worst position for moving to EV.
Customer base is quite conservative in how the truck should look like. For example,F150 lightning had to look like F150.
While a look of truck (and even ordinary car) is defined by the function - need to have beefy, but somewhat serviceable/accessible engine in the front. There is no need for this in the ev truck like at all. It's all dead space now.
I suspect that proper EV trucks eventually will look like current box-over-engine trucks (similar to kei trucks). Like Super crew truck with standard bed will probably have the same dimensions as current short bed truck, with better turn radius. But it won't look cool, and probably have the same stigma as minivans.
So, one of the main reasons it needs to look like a truck is because it needs to have a structure like a truck to be compatible with basically all of the aftermarket parts.
I want a truck with flat bed rails so I can put a cap on it. It needs to have a proper frame under the bed so it’s not bending with point loads.
I need a bed that’s a separate piece from the cab so they have flex for uneven grades.
Yeah, it's one of my favorite spaces in the whole truck. A great big trunk protected from the elements and not part of my passenger compartment. I hope we always have that feature.
FWIW, plenty of work trucks in lots of Companies are boring Vans or Pickups...
Even so, the issue comes to fit for use, cost (initial, ongoing), repairability and value. The F-150 Lightning only checked the fit for use box, since parts backlogs made it unrepairable for potentially months. The initial cost was okay at initial list price, but the actual price for purchase after dealer gouging and the factory raising prices through the roof was kind of insane... on top of a minor fender bender keeping your truck off the road an excessive amount of time killed a lot of momentum.
I was considering getting a Rivian and decided that in fact I would probably not allow the 24 year old dude at my local construction supply co to use a skid steer to drop a load of gravel into the bed of my $75k+ electric vehicle.
So instead I got a used Ford F150 (gas) and when the skid steer guy drops gravel into the bed I feel fine.
The bed of more traditional pickups like the F-150 can be swapped out in a couple of hours by one or two dudes with a lift and an impact wrench. Heck, you can buy blank F-250s without a bed at all.
> The proposed Active-AWD Trade Platform utilizes a Through-the-Road (TTR) Hybrid architecture to decouple the mechanical drivetrain while maintaining synchronized propulsion via a Vehicle Control Unit (VCU). By integrating high-topology Axial Flux or Radial-Axial (RAX) in-wheel motors, the system achieves exceptional torque density within the limited packaging of a trailer wheel well. The control strategy relies on Zero-Force Emulation, utilizing a bi-directional load cell at the hitch to modulate torque output via a PID loop, ensuring the module remains neutrally buoyant to the tow vehicle during steady-state cruising. In low-traction environments, the system transitions to Virtual AWD, employing Torque Vectoring to mitigate sway and Regenerative Braking to prevent jackknifing, effectively acting as an intelligent e-Axle retrofit. This configuration leverages 400V/800V DC architecture for rapid energy discharge and V2L (Vehicle-to-Load) site power, solving the unsprung weight damping challenges through advanced suspension geometry while eliminating the parasitic drag of traditional passive towing.
A modular truck bed could have
Through-the-road TTR AWD (given a better VCU) and e.g. hub motors or an axle motor.
There's always a chance the new Scout will fit that model. I'm not getting my hopes up though. It seems every company that releases an EV truck says they'll sell it for $30-40k and then suddenly it's $80k+.
They turned a gross profit, but they've only been selling vehicles for three years. It'll be several more before they are a profitable company. No company can build out two manufacturing hubs (hundreds of millions each) and turn a profit so quickly.
The comments in this thread are far more interesting than the article. It really shows why selling EV's in America is difficult, especially in the pickup segment I think. The amount of arguments that are clearly just justifying an opinion held without ever actually considering an alternative is unusual for this forum.
It appears America is not ready for electrical pickups. Maybe other markets will be more eager for them?
Article says the next F-150 Lightning will be an EREV-style plugin hybrid. Which, if so, makes a lot of sense. EVs are great, but not so much for trucks.
I was always bothered about how cars were either supposed to be all electric or all ICE. Working together is the smart way forward.
I wonder if it's hybrid electric is super old tech and manufacturers can't have a monopoly on it or something?
Hybrids have been powering heavy industry and locomotives for the past 100 years or so, it seems like a perfect first step towards mass electrification of vehicles. Plus I imagine it'd be possible to swap the engine for more batteries as that tech improves.
Remains to be seen if it’s smart - personally I think erev is going to be obsoleted very quickly by batteries getting better and cheaper. You can already buy 1000v 5min charging EVs in china, as well as semi-solid state batteries. And the batteries get cheaper year on year, relentlessly.
EREVs are a way better idea than the lie of PHEVs, but their time in the market is still limited. I wouldn’t be making that bet as an auto manufacturer , unless I had protectionism to hide behind.
BMW i3 is a true EREV and I absolutely love it. Always drives like an electric, but can pound highway miles on gas. Best of both worlds. I hope to never go back to pure one or the other, until battery and/or charging tech leaps forward a ton.
Lots of speculation in this thread. Not a lot of talk about the international market where Ford has been mostly a no-show with the F-150 lightning. Internationally, Toyota and BYD are starting to dominate the electric truck market. The electric Hilux is launching next year and the BYD Shark is doing well in e.g. Australia and Mexico. That's a range extended vehicle similar to the new F-150 sold at an aggressive price point. There are a few other Chinese vendors getting ready to market their vehicles as well. It's a popular car type across South America, Africa, Australia, etc. And Toyota used to dominate that market. The market clearly exists and it's rapidly electrifying.
Internationally the trend is actually towards battery electric vehicles that are more affordable than their ICE or hybrid equivalents. If such non electric models are available at all. That's becoming true for a growing number of cars in especially the EU, Australian, or Asian markets. The cheapest cars in the EU are electric at this point. There's a growing number of cars priced well below 20K Euro. And not just from China. 2025 saw a few models for which that was true. 2026 will feature a lot more.
How is this possible? Batteries are now cheap. Electric motors were never that expensive. And the rest of the car is what it always was a bunch of wheels, window wipers, and other components. The cheapest car is the simplest car. That's going to be an electric one from 2026 onward.
Why did the F-150 electric flop? It was more expensive than the petrol variant. You have to pay a very steep premium for them. Ford never really figured out how to source cheap batteries. And even at that steep premium they never figured out profitability. It seems they are getting out of battery joint ventures even and reducing investment. They are giving up and ceding the market to others. Just as others are figuring this market out and are proving it is real.
Technically, if they ever wanted to make a cheaper version of this new range extended truck, all they'd have to do is junk the range extender and cram the vehicle full of cheap LFP batteries. As much as they can get away with. But that would require that they figure out how to source/make cheap batteries. Clearly that's not a problem that is solved in the US yet. They might get back to this topic in a few years.
Great news! We just started seeing theese dangerous huge ass US trucks on the streets in Norway the last year or so. The non-electric versions were priced out of market due to the emissions they put out.
How much of the aluminum supplier issue played into this?
>As Ford Authority recently reported, an aluminum plant in New York, owned and operated by Ford supplier Novelis, recently suffered its third fire since September, making many wonder if the facility was still on track to reach full-scale production by December. Turns out, that is indeed the case, but in the meantime, there's no denying that Ford F-150 production has been impacted - which is also true of several other Blue Oval models.
I still think that if they'd released an electric Ford Maverick sized pickup instead of the monstrosity that is the Lightning, they would have done much better, but everyone had to run after the story Elon was spinning with the Cybertruck, and unsurprisingly, they are similarly unsuccessful.
Wow, I was under the impression that these were selling incredibly well.
I started to appreciate Ford's strategy recently after they lost my faith after they killed off sedans in the US. I'm now confused again by the company's strategy
They were not losing money on each sale, that's silly. Your article is counting the entire EV R&D budget and extrapolating. For every Lightning they sold, the margins improved. They just did not sell enough of them to make the overall venture profitable.
The only two car companies to make any meaningful profit on EVs were founded as EV companies first?
That’s not that surprising. It’s very hard to make elephants dance.
If that remains true it means all these auto companies will be dead in 25 years, or eternally strung along on government support.
If there were no tariffs or other market barriers I get the impression that BYD would bulldoze the entire world and there would be one car maker with >80% of the market.
This video here describes why BYD is so competitive: They have done a splendid job vertically integrating as much as they can to get the price down. This $11,500 EV is an excellent example of how other companies should start to shift their thinking.
Yeah, the problem is that the tariffs are letting our carmakers just become unproductive, uncompetitive leeches on the American consumer. They're getting lapped by China/BYD.
Once BYD bulldozes the rest of the world, our domestic manufacturers are guaranteed to fail.
100% on BYD ... no one can match their current technology and pricing power. And it's possible they still will do that bulldozing, but much more slowly. Even now I'm seeing strong swapping out of Tesla's for BYD's in London.
It's a shame they didn't ship an EV that fit the uses the F-150 serves. The Lightening is a luxury item. The F-150 is a tool, regardless of whether it's ICE or EV.
I hope this puts more people in the market for the Slate truck. It won't serve everyone with an ICE F-150 but I suspect a bunch of farm and ranch vehicles that don't do many highway miles could be Slates.
So they’re not killing the lightning, they’re adding a range extender? I guess that’s not gonna get as many clicks, but it hardly seems controversial given market reception of the current lighting (basically everyone who wanted one bought one and then sales tanked).
Yes, they're killing the Lightning. They are replacing it with a new Lightning EREV, there will not be a BEV version. It's not just a new option they are bringing to the existing truck.
How much are they actually changing though? We could imagine they take literally the same design and stick a generator in the corner. Making that mandatory would not be "killing" the Lightning. At the other end is a total redesign that cuts most of the battery, which would be killing it.
The Maverick used to be the truck but they've jacked it by like almost twice the price since debut. With so much "upmarket momentum" the e-F150's days were numbered.
Now I'm sitting here wondering when we'll get another small Ford truck again. This same exact story played out with the Ranger and the decades without a smaller option sucked then too.
> Now I'm sitting here wondering when we'll get another small Ford truck again. This same exact story played out with the Ranger...
It's so bizarre to me because the Ranger used to be small. But then they became the size that an F-150 used to be (i.e. sane truck size), while the F-150 became enormous. Supposedly it's due to perverse incentives from regulation, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a smaller truck if that is indeed the case.
I'm not sure which dimensions you're talking about, but in terms of bed size the F-150 has been very consistent over the years (although I think Crew Cabs — although they always existed — have become more popular). The Ranger still cannot fit a full sized sheet of plywood flat in the bed.
Quick research: the new Ranger's bed size has only increased 0.9" (width) relative to the 1990 version. Bed length seems to be the same.
Everything except the bed size has grown enormously on modern consumer trucks. Nowadays truck beds look proportionally tiny compared to trucks from 20-30 years ago when the bed made up a much larger percent of the vehicle.
Ford knows their market. Most F-150 buyers aren't looking for a functional truck, they want a comfortable commuter car that looks like a cool truck.
I bought one of the first 2022 Maverick Hybrids and took delivery in January 2022. At the time my build came in at MSRP of $25k (+ tax). I just built the closest equivalent on the Ford website (several standard features then are options now) and it came out to >$34k. Not double, but that feels like whole different price category for the same truck in 4 years.
Plug-in Hybrid with a small engine for charging purposes probably makes the most sense at the moment, although full electric is sexy, the range anxiety is real.
I bought some LiFePo power packs this summer. They are just 1kWh things, the size and mass of a crate of beer but having a power pack with mains voltage output is mind bending. Suddenly you can do all sorts of things you never could do before. It feels as bizarre as it might feel going camping with a magic tap that has permanent running water, or to have a bag of rice that never empties. I set up a tent with a household table lamps. It felt both weird and exciting.
The electric F-150 promised to be 100x and it was very appealing. It would have been a vehicle that was also a mobile untethered power station, and much more capable one than my power pack or even a mains outlet. Presumably with the right connections you could drain the battery at the same rate as the wheel motors. What could you do with a mobile 100+kW electricity supply? Brushless (corded) chainsaw, mobile log splitter, and charge my phone!
It’s a world I’m looking forward to. More utility EVs please.
These kind of vehicles, electric or not, should be killed or taxed heavily simply because they are the epitome of hostile individualism. They're designed to be a fist on wheels and it's known that they run people over.
I would imagine for 80% of truck owners, having an electric truck is fine. However, if you are towing or carrying heavy loads, they are a bad choice. I suspect most F-150 drivers barely ever do these sorts of things. I have an F-150 but do use it to tow my travel trailer on vacation.
Trouble is, while most truck drivers pretty much never tow or drive off road, most of them imagine that they will, so the truck still needs to be capable of it in order to sell. Or at least needs to appear capable.
>However, if you are towing or carrying heavy loads, they are a bad choice
The thing has 800 lb-ft of torque, it has absolutely no problem towing or pulling heavy stuff.
The issue is if you need to tow stuff long distances. That's where is becomes a headache. But bringing your huge boat 30 miles to the lake will be no issue.
The vast majority of pickup truck owners in America don't use the capabilities enough to make them worth the purchase; the phenomenon is mostly cultural.
Right. "You aiyunt no real mayun if you ain't got a brodozer like ur neighbor, Todd - who has a crappy truck from our competitor, anyways". It seems to work, the sportsball people with desk jobs love them (they get exposed to a lot of ads).
(I'm not against pickup trucks when actually needed, but most of the time an enclosed van is better for the trades - and when heavy lifting is needed, it's better to bring in actual big trucks. For all other times, Home Depot rents them by the hour).
I bought an F-150 last year and compared the lightening to their new Hybrid-Powerboost models. The hybrid was better in every single way. I have the same 30amp generator hookup in the bed of the truck, but instead of finding a charger to refuel the truck I can simply put another 25gallons in the tank and head to another job/project.
If they hadn't made the hybrid truck so effective the lightning would have had a chance. I get around 20+mpg on average with a ~600lb load always in the bed.
The powerboost is one of the least reliable cars on the market, way below typical F150s. It doesn't have quite the same level of pro power capacity as the Lightning, but it's close.
But the Lightning outperforms it dramatically. There isn't anything short of a tuned powerstroke that pulls like a Lightning.
Maybe it is just me, but the “universal” platform architecture seems a bit inefficient. I think, with a software-first mindset and modularity in Hardware products, it is insane to think efficiency first, especially when the goal is to make it cheaper to produce and operate.
Its speed of execution. Tesla made designs and parts common across Model3/Y and BYD are excellent at this. However Tesla/BYD seem to move at the speed of a silicon valley company while legacies keep thinking in Model years. You can't do that in an era where the tech is rapidly evolving.
I remembering thinking it was a curious choice. The demo for consumer F150s often doesn’t even like electric vehicles. On the commercial side the electric version is obviously limited.
I've said this before: if you go to Beijing or any developed city in China, you'll be amazed by their progress on EV's. It's on a scale beyond America, that America is no longer capable of achieving.
That is a disappointment. I was hoping that they would be introducing a new smaller EV truck in either the Maverick or Ranger line. I have no need for a large truck when something half the size handles all the hauling/towing I need.
I know they're marketing on price, but they really whiffed not offering AWD on that thing. Living in the Northwest, that's a total dealbreaker both from a skiing perspective and a getting-to-work-when-it-snows perspective.
> Ford still plans to produce a midsize electric pickup truck with a target starting price of about $30,000, to be available in 2027. That will be the first of the “affordable” electric vehicle models it’s currently designing at a skunkworks studio in California, which are slated to use a “universal” platform architecture that will make the vehicles cheaper to produce.
I wonder how many people will be scared off by them killing off the lightning pretty quickly.
I'm in the market for an EV truck but none of the current offerings have made me want to pull the trigger, and my 10 year old ICE truck keeps chugging along just fine so far.
That’s too bad, I love my lightning. I spend about $20/month on home charging, love the acceleration and it’s good enough to haul all the things I need for my small farm.
Also, it’s great for long distance recreational drives (from a very specific perspective)- I like driving 250-300 miles in a day and then parking at an RV spot for the night instead of a hotel room. I can run the heat and AC all night as well as have a “full tank” ready to go.
I would've loved to get a lightning when we replaced the farm truck this year. If would've been great to be able to charge it while our solar array was pumping out power. But the price on those things is eye wateringly high. We got a gas f150 for about half the price of the lightning. I'm not sure who they were trying to sell those to, to be honest.
We simply need an engineering generation of 50 mile range PHEV vehicles. It will get a huge percentage of low-efficiency driving electrified, won't be too big of a burden on the grid, educate more people on EV-style driving, adds regen braking, should still be able to provide high-torque towing and driving.
Yeah, Ford makes the F-150 Powerboost which is a hybrid version, but no plugin capability. I'd love to see a 50 mile plug in hybrid version of their truck line (Maverick, Ranger, F150)
Not surprising. For what it cost you could get a Model Y and a gently used gas truck. Running your house off it in a power outage was a super cool idea, but man that price.
Not a good thing. I think Ford has quality issues, but EVs with 500 miles of range are viable. Most pickup owners do not tow. This was an American foot in a market that the Japanese own
Ford's quality is about average. Not great, not terrible. They should have put a bigger battery in the Lightning, like GM does with the Silverado (and gets north of 400 miles of range). Instead, they are giving over the market to GM.
I think an electric full sized truck was always a mistake. To me the market is in the Tacoma/Ranger size for an EV truck. It's pretty simple. Those don't need to haul anything, they are smaller, more aerodynamic, can look sportier because they are more compact, etc. The Tacoma even today gets like 20mpg, which is absolutely abysmal for a 4-cylinder, it's so ripe for an electric motor. The obvious obstacle to overcome is longevity, given Tacomas especially are known to last practically forever.
The EV pickup obsession is so bizarre. Even moreso than the gas pickup obsession. The obvious next step was to take their brilliant EV Transit and scale up production. You don’t have to convince truck bros. There’s no cultural hang-ups. No issues with towing. Just make a nice cargo van with 120v hookups for $50k that’s easy to drive in the city and easy to convert into a camper. Could’ve built three vans with the lithium it took to build these obscenities.
And you know, I’m already compromising here, because it really ought to be a wagon instead of a van, if Detroit had any brains left.
Can’t wait until someone figures out how to smuggle those $15k BYDs in from Mexico. The North American car market needs to be disrupted badly. By China, not by some meme stock.
They botched it entirely. If they made it for $40k even if it only got 50 miles of range, they could have sold these. Instead they priced themselves out of the market. It's a clear example of the Innovator's dilemma, but now instead of cannibalizing their own market they'll just let it slip away to Tesla.
Electricity seems as expensive as gasoline in California, especially considering the cost of installing a charger. Also relying on fascist elon's network is a no go.
Detroit will continue creating crappy EVs rather than good one to defend their "whale oil" business by gaslighting people into believing "EVs suck" when they're strategically sabotaging products in this category. Been happening since the EV-1 and the horrific styling of the original Prius. They don't like change and don't care about the long term survival of the species if there's no profit in it.
The F-150 is in one of the markets I think ev's will take over first (small commercial vehicles) but it just was not the right vehicle to start with. To expensive, even when the tax incentives were still a thing, and Ford suffers from having corrupt dealers taking a large cut on top of that. So you are selling to either the top 5% or bigger businesses.
If you are a top 5% buying this you want it to tow your expensive toy somewhere which ev's suck at currently or you want it to drive to "insert outdoorsy vacation destination", which means long distance in a remote area with few charging stations. So not a great sell.
If you are a bigger business I think this probably makes sense in some cases. You aren't dealing with the maintenance of an ICE, you can keep it "running" inside a building, it can provide on site power, probably has cost benefits in cities where the lack of emissions and noise is helpful. But the expensive really narrows down your customers. Many are also looking for range and towing, which doesn't help, and people that would show up for the ev part probably would be better off with a van.
If they had done a small e-transit, in the $30-35k range and sold it direct for actual msrp they would have had a much better chance at dealing with where we are now (high interest rate and low support for ev's).
My electrician drives an electric F-150, it's impressive how useful it is for him. The frunk carries a big box of tools, there's tons of outlets to charge his power tool batteries, he can even run a small welder
The F-150 is a great power bank that comes with a very useful set of 4 tires and a steering wheel for a truly portable charging experience.
I justified the lightning purchase to my partner by pointing out having an equivalent whole house battery backup in Tesla power walls would be more expensive than the truck
Have you tried supplying power to your home yet?
Shhh, his wife might read this.
I have the powerboost hybrid F-150. It does all this, can power a house with the generator, AND I can drive it through the mountain west with zero EV infrastructure at insanely high MPG for a truck. Plopped a Tune camper on the back and couldn’t ask for more.
That’s pretty cool, and I just checked the prices and it only starts at 11k dearer than the standard f150, which is less than I expected. Interesting.
What’s more insane to me as an Australian is its 50k USD starting price in America, but in Australia it starts at $149k USD as they’re only sold by third parties that do right hand drive conversions (at imo a way too high premium, 100k for that service + shipping???)
That's insane. Why would an Aussie buy this over a BYD Shark for US$40k?
https://bydautomotive.com.au/shark-6
Do they sell them in "work truck" trim? (Bench seat, vinyl upholstery, rubber floor, minimal options)?
I don't think so, not like it was once upon a time. I had a manual 6-cylinder I bought in about 2002 for around $14000, no leather, 2wd extended cab. That's like $25k in today's dollars according to Google. If they made a basic truck for even $40k as EV it might sell a lot better, but I am pretty sure they are all about selling 60k+ trucks for profit.
The BYD Shark 6 sells for US$40k in Australia:
https://bydautomotive.com.au/shark-6
There's a 100% tariff on top of all the regulatory and political hurdles that prevent BYD from selling in the US, but it shows that a very nice truck can be built for $40k.
The F-150 Lightning Pro trim is the closest thing to this, and aside from the first year generally has only sold to fleets.
Theres also the Chevy Silverado EV WT trim which is a similar base model trim, but with the huge heavy battery its paired with it's still an expensive truck.
Yeah the frunk is what makes that thing shine. The cybertruck's frunk is pathetic in comparison.
90% of F-150s are daily driver grocery-getters. That was the target for the Lightning, not truck stuff.
I live in an area that has probably >100% pick-up ownership per adult male. I've noticed that these people will not go to the grocery store on days when the weather is inclement due to the chance of the groceries getting wet. Seems like a bad vehicle for grocery runs.
I don't get the whole American thing for Pick-up trucks. Unless you're hauling hay or manure, why would you want your cargo area exposed to the elements?
A normal van is better in every single way. I can't figure out why someone would put their expensive tools in a pick-up's bed when this is an option: https://modulinecabinets.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/van-...
I suspect it's the intersection of people cosplaying as farmers, and vans being stereotyped as vehicles for pedophiles and serial killers
Wait do people put their groceries they intend to eat on the bed of their trucks, exposed to exhaust, asphalt, tire rubber and all other forms of road pollution?
Almost everything from a grocery store starts in, or ends up, in a water resistant package. There are a handful of exceptions like eggs in cardboard casing, but you can just wrap them in a baggy to solve that. For that matter, unless it's like an insanely torrential downpour, very little, if any, water is going to get through a closed bag.
If your observation is accurate, the more likely reason is that people just don't like going out when it's raining. Getting your shoes/pants wet sucks, getting your car (or truck) seats wet sucks, rain traffic sucks, there's more crashes - which suck, and by contrast you could just be sitting at home enjoying the relaxing sounds of rain, which doesn't suck.
When I was a kid, my dad owned a pickup truck in Mississippi, and there seem to be tons of ways of avoiding getting the groceries wet, a bed-width toolbox behind the cab was the simplest way (and this was way before extended cabs were a thing).
If you are living in such an area where they can't even figure that kind of thing out, it sounds like there might be something in the water.
When I was a kid, a normal-sized American adult could open up a bed-width toolbox, look down inside of it, and easily remove a few bags of groceries before re-closing the lid -- all while standing flat-footed on the ground beside their normal-sized American truck.
Things are not that way anymore; trucks got bigger.
The top of the bed rail of an F150 Lightning is around chin height for a lot of folks: https://imgur.com/ZBOBqJc
I don’t think a F150 lightning is wider than a 1985 Silverado.
It's not the width that's a problem, but the height.
Here's a brochure for the first-year F-150 (1984): https://xr793.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/1984-Ford-F-Ser...
Have a look at some of the pictures that have people standing next to the truck.
They'd be giants if they were able to have that kind of posture next to a modern F150.
Oh, I was a smaller kid back then and I guess I wouldn’t find it very accessible either way. Also my dad was tall. Coolers fit in the back also if you want to use those instead.
Funny to see so many workarounds to avoid the obvious solution of buying a vehicle with a roof instead of playing at being a farmer or builder.
Crew cabs, truck boxes, tonneau covers etc exist.
My hunch is that the people who buy an F-150 for groceries are not the people interested in buying EVs. The advantage of an EV truck is solely on cost and maintenance, so the natural market is businesses looking for practical vehicles, not people who buy impractical vehicles that are costly to operate for status reasons.
Then again as I’m typing this I realize that I have a phone with a better processor than most computers on which I … browse hacker news and read email, so go figure.
I drive a 2017 F150 with the back commonly filled with either sports equipment or outdoors gear, or photography equipment. I would like to additionally have a city car but am not willing to spend the money (or consume another parking space in front of my house). Since I only have one vehicle, I do also use it for grocery shopping.
I drive a Honda van, usually with the seats out/folded down.
It's really big back there. It holds an enormous volume of stuff.
4x8 sheets of plywood fit inside with the doors closed, and so do 10-foot lengths of pipe.
It's easy to access stuff at the front or the back. It's all contained under a roof in a locking, conditioned space (3 zones of HVAC) and is easy to get to from either sliding door or the back tailgate.
Works great for hauling stuff like sports equipment, outdoors gear, or photography equipment. Mine is full of tools, ladders, and boxes of wire right now, but it's been awesome for taking a mountain of camping gear and a PA system across the country. (Or, you know: Groceries. It does groceries very well indeed.)
(It's not so great at hauling stuff like bulk stone or mulch, but that stuff is usually pretty cheap to get delivered.)
We have a f150 raptor and a rivian and a model 3. I drive the gas truck and the model 3. Depends on the weather. Truck is an amazing road tripper. We are not the typical customer, but we do exist.
thats like $250k of cars at new prices, yes you're not typical :)
well yeah, but you don't buy them new and all at once
This is anecdotal but I have a gas F-150 that is often a grocery getter (I work from home and take a motorcycle when I can so gas mileage for me isn’t as big a concern as for some) and I would gladly trade it for an electric or a hybrid version (one that does not have the gas motor do anything but charge the batteries). But the cost was absolutely asinine for the Lightning. These trucks were made from unobtainium.
But I would also trade this truck for an all electric or mostly electric Maverick as long as it had enough cabin space for my needs (children).
Meanwhile Chevy has a 400 mile range, unknown but more than the 100 mile range the lightning has for towing and is a work truck at about 70k or something street price last I saw. Its compelling, where the lightning is not.
The Silverado EV does have a big battery, but for actual real world use you’re keeping it within a band of about 60% (20-80) so 400 is really 240 with an emergency reserve. (This is common to all EVs).
You lose about half your range towing so you’re still going to drive two hours, stop for 30-45 minutes, repeat.
So it’s still far from compelling for anyone towing or doing truck stuff.
If you are planning a trip and know you are, your first left is easily 20-100% or 80% range, and then it depends on charging speed versus stop purpose.
>90% of F-150s are daily driver grocery-getters
it's my impression that electric vehicles are 90% grocery getters, unless the drivers are young in which case it's takeout. what else would you use an electric for, commuting? when you commute, on the way home, you shop.
They are suggesting that most F-150s are not purchased for real truck work like hauling stuff. Instead, they are purchased by people who use them exclusively to drive on paved roads, in towns/cities, mostly carrying passengers instead of large cargo. Therefore the concern about going off-road to remote locations isn't a real concern for this market.
It’s a real concern in the sense that a lot of them care about the capability.
Objectively a Ford F-150 is the wrong vehicle for what 90% of its buyers need. But it’s an aspirational purchase. It can go off-road. It can haul a boat. It can haul a bed full of gravel. It doesn’t matter for these purchasers that they rarely if ever actually do any of this.
Yeah but you buy a truck and all of a sudden you have a lot of friends.
I might not move furniture regularly, but it’s reeeeal nice to be able to do so when I need to. My dishwasher broke on Christmas Eve when I was hosting so I went to the store and got another and installed it within an hour. Not doing that with my Subaru.
I’ve literally transported dishwashers in a Renault Twingo. And the „small car + trailer“ combo will always carry more than a pickup. Pickups are pure lifestyle.
To be fair, the Twingo mk3 even has the front passenger seat fold down. In van mode the interior is huge for a small car.
Something tells me that dishwashers are smaller in areas where the Twingo is sold.
There's no way my piece of shit Samsung dishwasher would fit in your car. It's huge.
An minivan will transport almost anything a normal person would want to move, while being more practical the other 99% of the time, but of course they have the wrong image.
For many it’s also a visible badge showing membership in a culture.
Which is odd because this is how they mostly marketed it on release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42BmZ6Rgqkc
Also most people I know who use F-150s in the way you describe also typically have two children or more. It's not as if this was a segment that was particularly hard to pin down.
They just completely wiffed.
It’s a really bad consumer market right now, and also, we have enough cars.
The vehicle has been in production for almost 5 years now. See the date on that video. Vehicles break and get damaged and need replacement so we always need to build them. Newer ones are also more efficient and provide greater safety and overall benefits to the owner. People's needs change and family sizes change.
You may perceive that there's "enough" but the market has clearly decided that you are wrong.
They should be cheaper than the F150 but Ford can’t figure out how to make batteries cheaply. Evs are a lot less complex, no gas engine, no transmission, no exhaust systems with hundreds of dollars of precious metal in them. It should be cheaper than a gas equivalent.
Cheaper? Not sure how. While an ICE engine does have cooling systems and fuelling systems, water pumps and fuel pumps are relatively cheap and simple devices.
An EV generally has a battery cooling system along with regenerative braking.
EVs have roughly the same mechanical things as an ICE vehicle too, HVAC, suspension, brakes, in car entertainment, heated seats. Lighting. An entire 12v subsystem to power all that stuff as well.
A good old ICE car will be cheaper to make than an EV because the powertrain is cheaper when you account for batteries. Even taking into account the gearbox you don’t need in an EV.
> A good old ICE car will be cheaper to make than an EV
How much of that is the result of the relatively maturity of the technology? We've been continuously improving ICE based transportation for well over a hundred years. It's been a lot shorter for electric vehicles.
I suspect that there are bigger strides to make with electrics that may eventually turn that around.
>How much of that is the result of the relatively maturity of the technology?
that's a real effect though, it's not something something you throw overboard, it's the bouyancy that keeps you from sinking.
> I suspect that there are bigger strides to make with electrics that may eventually turn that around.
After many more billions are spent.
Is the American consumer going to eat that cost? The government clearly lost its appetite as it isn't subsidizing EVs anymore.
The US has cheap fuel and it isn't a strategic issue to develop EVs except to keep US auto internationally competitive.
US consumers are still really into big SUVs and trucks and almost all of the models are ICE instead of EVs. The EV manufacturers don't really fit the shape of the American consumer that they haven't already sold to.
China jumped on EVs because they wanted to start an automotive sector for (1) heavy industry, (2) adjacency to national defense, (3) strong new domestic and export market they could corner, (4) it's adjacent to their other manufacturing industries. Critically, they had a deep reservoir of Chinese citizens who were first time car buyers that they could nudge into buying domestic auto. No other nation on earth has the outsized advantage of having such a deep bench of new customers to subsidize a new industry. The stars aligned for China.
America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
> America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
Ok so dont, but take the tariffs off batteries, and allow foreign EVs to compete fairly. We'll get affordable EVs, and then we'll see what the american consumer actually wants. No? Oh, i guess its about something other than consumer choice after all.
>America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
But America always has the interest and capital to protect oil interests and supply chains worldwide by being the biggest spender on military, funded by taxpayers.
The rest of the world is continuing to move to EVs, and while the US has a different taste in vehicles than most of the world, the underlying tech is the same, so they'll benefit from the advances made in Europe and Asia.
> America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
Only if you see the market continue to be dominated by human drivers. We are potentially moving to self-driving cars like Waymo, Tesla etc then they will get the choice to force what car they like.
> The government clearly lost its appetite as it isn't subsidizing EVs anymore.
More like "the current" government. It can always change.
That potentially is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting for fifty to one hundred years.
> for fifty to one hundred years
Ballmer in 2007 also said the iPhone was not going to get any significant market share. It didn't even take close to fifty years, did it?
I don't understand this comparison. An EV's battery cooling system is a cooling system. Regen braking isn't more complicated than an alternator.
The rest, yeah. The chemical stacks in the batteries are expensive, and dealer markup was a problem (now they're 47-56k new). But the energy costs! $7-12 for a fill-up on home power overnight instead of $75-85 at the gas station.
And maintenance. So little maintenance. For local non-towing fleets these would save a lot.
> Regen braking isn't more complicated than an alternator.
Either disingenuous or ill-informed. one is ~1KW for a few seconds a day, the other is > 100KW of power for dozens of seconds, multiple dozens of times a day. completely engineering
China EVs are cheaper than ICE cars.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/why-evs-are-now-cheaper-tha...
Sounds like the batteries are worse in China. How does that affect the range?
They're not worse, China has (arguably) the best batteries in the world.
NMC and LFP (of the same cost) are about even, but pricier NMC packs can add maybe 10% more range for the same weight. Which is why most EV companies offer a "long-range version" that's just the same car with an NMC pack swapped in. It's mostly an irrelevant gimmick.
The truth is that range isn't limited by batteries, it's limited by weight and cost - a bigger battery weighs more, which means the car (frame) needs to support more weight, which means the car (frame) costs more. Most EVs have a range of ~300 miles (~500KM) and any battery gains don't go into extending the range, they go into reducing the weight (and therefore cost) of the car. Lighter frame, fewer battery cells. Because most people don't care past 300miles (500KM). Not enough to pay an extra $5k, at least.
Thank you. That's interesting. The infographic calls them cheaper which I assumed (incorrectly?) meant worse. 10% does seem gimmicky, though I am seeing claims on a number of sites that NMC is around 50% better per unit of weight (but way worse for longevity), so I don't know what to think.
This isn’t a Ford problem, it’s a problem for the whole industry. EVs won’t get cheaper until battery tech evolves.
the reason we know American car makers other than Tesla aren't serious about electric cars is that they haven't been making battery factories.
GM partnered with Samsung for one[0]. Of course now they just announced layoffs at the EV plant[1], because most people still don’t want electrics cars. The investment needs to be tied to demand. If not, it’s just a lot of wasted money.
It seems they’d be better off waiting for better/cheaper battery tech, so they can build out those factories and make cheaper EVs that people might actually buy at scale. Right now the market still feels niche.
[0] https://insideevs.com/news/731721/gm-samsung-sdi-indiana-ev-...
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/general-motors-permanen...
They're also adding self driving and all kinds of fancy options
They have one for 34,640 EUR; happy?
https://www.ford.ie/content/dam/guxeu/ie/Documents/Pricelist...
Granted, they don't seem to sell the cheap ones in the US.
(For whatever reason you don't see these around very much, though; Citroen and Mercedes seem to dominate the niche, at least here.)
My experience supports nearly all of this. In 2022 I decided to keep my 2019 F-150 gasser instead of getting a Lightning because the Lightning was ridiculously expensive, even though Covid kept the value of my truck close to what I paid for it. I also didn't want all the Lightning's luxury features that tend to fail and highly depreciate over time. We do >12hr drives for work & family through remote BC and I was still willing to try the EV for such trips but didn't see the payback. In hindsight it was a good choice given the actual range experienced by Lightning owners.
Maybe for city truck drivers.
For those that don't drive in town, noting beats gas or diesel.
Companies need to build a stepping stone truck. Dino-powered generator on an electric platform. Get most of the upside to electric performance, while getting the speed gas refilling.
You just described the new Ramcharger.
Yeah I might have thought that too if I didn’t own commercial vehicles. I own a few and the idea of switching to an EV for them is laughable. Go tow stuff for 8 hours one day and ask yourself “if I had to stop for 30 minutes every 90 miles how would I like this day?”
Battery ranges decline by over 50% when towing. The long term health of a battery requires you to keep it within a range of about 60% of the max capacity (ie between 20 and 80). So that’s if anything a generous estimate. You’d increase your labor cost by 25% just charging, not to mention that public charging isn’t any cheaper than fuel. I’m not even factoring in lost job profits or overtime.
The margins the Ford dealer takes are not the issue. The cost of the vehicle itself amortized by the hour is much less than the labor cost of operating it. If I could get any EV truck at the same cost as my diesel, I still wouldn’t. If you’ve got two guys out, that’s $50 burnt every time they charge (at least) and that may be 2+ times a day. Your fuel cost is irrelevant. Five minutes at a gas station and a tank of diesel is still cheaper.
It has some use cases I’m sure (delivery vans since it is one worker, city driving, short range) but most commercial vehicle work is simply not going electric given current battery technology.
Most heavy trucks are sold to people who don’t really need them, but buy them to signal cultural allegiance and get a tax break.
Citation needed
This sound like every EVangalist who says road trips aren’t important when most everyone takes at least one a year.
Citation: "Ford F-Series Is America’s Best-Selling Model For The 43rd Consecutive Year (2024)"
Either the US has a lot of electricians and plumbers, all those people aren't buying these trucks because they need them.
Just look anywhere outside the US — nobody buys trucks like these. And that's because they're incredibly niche. They're worse than all other options. A regular sedan is a better everyday car and can fulfill most of your "i need a truck" use cases anyway.
BTW, I was kidding with the electricians and plumbers, they have no need for a truck. Nobody does.
For anything you'd actually need a truck for, an appropriately sized van is better. You'd have to be hauling dirt and sand offroad in rural areas on a regular basis without somehow being able to use a trailer for a flatbed truck to make any sense as a purchase. Guess how many people in the US have a need for that. Certainly not enough to push the sales numbers to #1.
> road trips aren’t important when most everyone takes at least one a year
Exactly, optimizing your life around something you do once per year is completely irrational.
Buy all the trucks all you want, just don't claim it's a sensible, rational decision. It's not.
There is a lot of short range no/limited tow commercial work that could use a BEV truck (e.g. every gardener/lawncare small business) or a BEV panel van.
Gardening/lawncare wouldn't work as well as you'd think - ride-on lawnmowers need fuel to run for extended periods, so they face the same charging problem (even though the client usually has a power outlet in their house, mere metres away). Ditto for a ton of pressurewashing equipment and such.
The problem is that we built our world around cheap portable energy, so problems that are trivial technically are difficult socially - the client won't let you use the power outlet, if they do they'll make you pay for the power use, asking is weird and unusual and requires more negotiating with the client, it's just not worth it. Like, if oil never existed then residential housing would probably be built with a special "contractor power outlet" that could be billed separately on a pay-per-use basis - call up the number, dial in your Designated Contractor Code or whatever fictional paperwork, and you get charged for the power you pull until the socket is unplugged.
Or maybe some other solution that I can't think of, because people in that world had to think of one and spent decades refining it. Or maybe they invented lithium batteries 90 years ago (~1935) and now they're on par with oil.
Rivians are all over socal. I think there is a lot of demand in certain markets.
In NYC al the Amazon delivery trucks I see are purpose-built Rivians. And this is the hyper-frugal, penny-pinching Amazon.
They’re also a major investor in Rivian so there’s some circularity in that phenomenon.
Most of the Amazon delivery trucks I see are big trucks with Ryder on the side or electric cargo bikes with Prime on the side.
This is in Manhattan mostly below 60th St. though, that might be the difference?
Maybe these should property be called vans, not trucks. This is the only kind of four-wheel Amazon delivery vehicle I've seen through 2025: https://www.wglt.org/business-and-economy/2021-02-03/amazon-...
My observations are from lower Manhattan and various parts of Brooklyn.
they save amazon a ton of money. urban circular delivery circuits and stop-start braking make it brutal for gas and perfect for EVs.
See them all the time around the greater Seattle area. The "certain market" is probably lots of extremely well paying jobs.
There are loads of Rivian in southwest Montana. No idea why. Way way more than Teslas.
Southwest Montana is full of California (and other) tech refugees with money. They've moved to a place they perceive they need a truck to happily live in, but aren't willing to buy a gas guzzler.
The Lightning is the 10th-best-selling EV in California and the Rivian R1T is not even in the top 25. Rivian is also one of the handful of brands selling fewer vehicles so far in 2025 compared to 2024.
Yeah but the R1S is a better pavement princess anyway, and that does sell well.
I guess Mach-E beats even the R1S but they're not really the same kind of car. Ioniq 5 beats Mach E in CA, as does the MY.
I don't think the R1S and the F-150 should be compared because, on account of being registered as a commercial vehicle, the F-150 has noticeably higher operating costs.
Wait until the R2 comes out for ~50% of the cost of an R1. They are the best EV out in terms of features and comfort and usability.
The electric LDV and GWM utes are meant to be pretty great. I reckon they will take over everywhere else and then come for the US with a US specific model.
Not to speak to the rest of the topic, but focusing on direct sales:
I'm almost certain Ford would love to sell direct, but the various franchise laws in different states make it next to impossible. On top of this, dealership owners are typically quite powerful in terms of local politics, which makes such laws very difficult to overturn.
For example:
Texas: https://www.txdmv.gov/dealers/licensing/franchise
Florida: https://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Disp...
California: https://www.nmvb.ca.gov/protest/protest_establish_new_fran.h...
Somehow Tesla has managed okay, Ford could if they weren’t worried about their existing dealer base.
> "tow your expensive toy somewhere which ev's suck at currently"
Do EVs suck at towing because of battery life? I thought electric engines were often superior to comparable internal combustion engines regarding torque.
The instantaneous torque definitely helps, and EVs are often heavier which helps with stability. But if you're towing anything with significant air resistance (e.g. a boat, a caravan, a big trailer) it kills your range. The general rule of thumb is that it will cut your range in half, which depending on your original max range is ok for some use cases, but unacceptable for others.
My f350 has 600 miles of range empty so it can go 300 towing.
This is exactly the situation. ICE also has a massive range hit as well, it's just easy to put a massive fuel tank in to get a stupid amount of range not towing compared to a battery electric that struggles to get a similar range. When you start with almost 600mi losing half isn't too bad, when it's maybe 300mi on a good day and you cut it in half is just not as usable for that usage.
That said, if it's not the towing but the bed you need, the range but isn't nearly so bad.
Additionally, all ICE cars can charge from 0-100% in under 5 minutes. Even if their towing range was somehow less than an EV, it would matter less because you don't have to spend an hour at a charging station.
With the difference that with an EV you always leave home with a full battery and you never have to step into a gas station unless you have a long trip ahead.
But even when you, the amount of time is not 60minutes. If you have kids, the time to go to the restroom, grab a coffee and come back is usually already around 20min, which tends to be enough to charge from 20-60% or even to 80% in newer vehicles. If you have a meal and take around 40minutes, you are probably already hitting 90% or higher.
> spend an hour at a charging station
This is exaggeration. A half hour for a well-loaded truck, sure, but an hour is generally exaggeration.
And as for five minutes for a fill up, it's usually more than five for a regular fill-up on a regular passenger car for me compared to just continuing on.
At what MPG?
18 unloaded - diesel.
I can't think what the issue would be aside from range. One thing that stood out to me about the cybertruck is that they made huge tradeoffs to make it more aerodynamic. The only reason to do that is to increase maximum driving distance. Put a big blocky trailer behind it and suddenly the battery's maximum distance is competing with a gas tank on a much more even playing field. Regenerative braking would make up for some of that in very hilly terrain, but on level ground it just can't get out to as many of the remote areas people take their trucks to.
I really think the first obvious use case (aside from bugout vehicles) would be something like the early road rangers - driving all over a farm and bringing back crates of produce from muddy fields without getting stuck or needing a lot of maintenance.
Charge time matters. I can fill a gas tank in the time my partner uses the bathroom. Evs need a lot longer.
Lack of pull-through charging stations is a very big hurdle too.
Present day EVs don't take that long to charge (basically the time to go to the bathroom and check email), but they don't have enough parallelism so at a busy location you can end up waiting for an open charger. There are orders of magnitude more gas pumps than public chargers.
That’s an unfair comparison because you can’t count gas pumps used to charge in your locality - those are replaced by charging at bome.
Aging Wheels did some tests on YouTube and it’s heavily affected by aerodynamics.
Charging infrastructure is what sucks. Yes range goes half, but that isn't much of a problem if you tow once a month and there's tons of stations around. If not, ur screwed.
Charging infrastructure was always the key for EVs and it's still relatively behind.
The reason that towing affects EVs disproportionately more than ICE vehicles is because of the efficiency of EVs. It’s unintuitive but consider that with an ICE car, you have say 30% of the chemical energy of the fuel being converted to useful power. That means that per liter of gasoline burned driving, 700ml is effectively lost to waste heat. A large amount of that energy loss is a fixed cost, that is it doesn’t scale linearly with the power demand from the car.
EVs are 90% efficient at converting their chemical energy to useful work. This is a good thing in general, but it also means that drag and extra losses hurt its range much more. If 90% of the energy goes into useful power, than anything that requires 50% more power is going to almost halve the range. Whereas with an ICE engine, the high fixed losses mean that demanding 50% more power doesn’t increase fuel consumption by 50%. Pair that with the higher energy density of gasoline and you’ve got a bad comparison for EVs.
I expected the "T word" to come out in the article, however this fails to address any of the practical reasons it isn't a good replacement for the value-engineered F-150:
* The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
* They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable.
* Parts availability is scarce, contrasted with a regular F-150 (even junkyards are full of spare parts, that aren't software constrained)
* They're loaded with useless/barely-functional interior electronics that are poor copies of Tesla
* They're bloated with parts that don't need to exist (excessive exterior accent lighting, badges, over-complicated blinkers)
Oddly enough, single-charge range issues are pretty much non-existent (for non-towing applications).
> The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
They definitely aimed for the luxury market, like Rivian. Who knows how successful they would've been if they aimed for mid-range like Scout. That's the market they claimed to be entering when they started taking reservations. They also could've offered a fleet ready version without the luxury features, but must've decided not to.
> They're difficult to repair
How so? They are far simpler to maintain than a normal F-150. They're new so they do have parts issues for the electronic components, I'm sure, but I think that's a fair trade-off. In any case, I don't think offering a hybrid version makes the vehicles easier to maintain or repair. If anything it's the opposite.
> Parts availability is scarce, contrasted with a regular F-150 (even junkyards are full of spare parts, that aren't software constrained)
I thought one of the advantages of the F-150 was that most parts were shared with the standard F-150? The battery and motors, maybe not.
Significant portions of the body and interior were not shared with general F-150 models... At least those parts most likely to be damaged in minor accidents... imagine having your work truck in the shop for 2-3 months for want of a corner light fixture.
The interior of the pro model is identical to an ICE F150. The only part which breaks with any regularity is shared with ICE F150s, in fact. The only interior difference I can think of on any trim of Lightning is the big screen on higher models. But it's the same underlying SYNC system as every other F150, no magic there.
It has breakable expensive headlights and taillights, that is for sure. But so do ICE F150s...
Yeah, that's definitely a no-go. I think you'd see that with any new model, however. I once had a Ducati in the shop for 4-5 months just waiting on a wheel because it was a new model.
Parts availability is not a problem for established manufacturers, especially mass market vehicles.
They also could've offered a fleet ready version without the luxury features, but must've decided not to.
They did offer a fleet version.. the "Pro".
I mean, what do we expect from this brainless company that promised a $20k Maverick and let the stealerships mark it up to over $40k?
Ford announced the Maverick, it got so much excitement that it sold out and dealerships sold for over MSRP. So in their infinite wisdom they... didn't make more mid range trucks. Ill never understand these guys.
I was interested in this truck when it came out. My in laws purchased one and queued a second one up to have two reliable (new is reliable to them) in their retirement years. The price was good, its a smaller compact truck and very good on utility. The second generation of them - the price went up, and some of the value in what the truck was vanished. Its also years behind on production. Ford doesn't seem to want to sell these.
If Chevy came out with a competitive S10 Electric style truck, I'd consider it as well.
The Mavs have been caught up on orders for a while now. I got one in the spring and pretty much any trim/colour/option package was in stock locally at mildly below msrp.
The idea is that you make more profit selling 50,000 cheap trucks and 50,000 expensive trucks than just 100,000 cheap trucks. When you can fool a largely innumerate populace into 84-month loans with "cheap" monthly payments, overpriced vehicles are the way to go.
Competition? Its not like ford is the only seller out there.
I think the bigger issue is parts availability over the repairability issue... from what I understand, these have been quite reliable but parts for Ford's EVs have been backordered as much as months, where having a "work truck" down for months is an intolerable position.
The cost is also kind of crazy between inflated factory and dealer pricing as much as $20k over sticker price. Yeah, there was some early demand, but over-charging really cooled that and the demand overall.
I'm with you on some of the interior features, they're cool, but the overall inflated price is just too much. On the flip side, the Chevy "Work Truck" is kinda too far the other direction imo.
Similar on the more complex exterior, though I actually like it, it's not practical for its' prescibed purpose. If Ford could create a stripped down EV equivalent to Chevy's "Work Truck" at even 50% higher cost, I think it would do very well. They're very good for in-city use in terms of range on a charge, it's definitely good enough for most general tradecraft use, but the bloat and pricing really drag it down. Much like most cars in general these days.
Pretty much the only interesting new car I've seen this year was the Hundai Palasade, which IMO was just a good value for what it is. Kind of disappointing to see Nissan drop the Titan line. While I'd prefer to buy American brands, the fact that is that I don't think they deliver on overall value or reliability as well as competing brands. And it gets muddied further with foreign brands with US assembly and American brands now owned or otherwise operated or significantly built outside the US.
> parts for Ford's EVs have been backordered
The part with the worst availability is the godforsaken shifter, which happens to be shared with the ICE F150s.
I mean the biggest issue is that “trucks” like F-150 are actually used because of US tax system that exempts such massive vehicles from emmision taxes because they are work trucks. They are pretty ineffective work vehicles but some people just love them as a symbol.
That symbolism goes completely against electric/green vehicles. In other words - people who buy F-150 would never buy electric vehicle and people who are looking for electric truck for work wouldn't buy F-150.
> people just love them as a symbol
This is an unfortunate trope that is oft repeated by those that live their life in constant upgrade cycles.
The regular F-150 is a pinnacle of value engineering for Ford. It's infinitely repairable for owners. Look around on the highway, you will see hundreds of 15+ year old F150s on the road, and a few times a day I will see 25+ year old trucks on the road too. There are thousands of aftermarket parts for repair or customization. Owners are happy with them, and they recognize the truck as something they buy once and keep for a long time.
If it is any kind of expression of self, its one of "I don't need to be consumeristic; I picked something simple that will last a lifetime."
'99 F-150 with >250k on original engine and transmission here. Going to pick up 900 lbs of rock tomorrow. Suspension is pretty poor, but it still pulls hard under load. I'd like to upgrade to a newer model, but the '99 refuses to die.
Also, a truck can be used like a car. But a car cannot be used like a truck. If you need to haul 4x8 sheets of plywood or drywall, dimensional lumber, piping, ladders, etc a truck (or work van) is pretty much it. If I could only afford one car it would be a truck.
And sure, for the exact target demographic of carpenters and such that's... false.
What you do is get a regular car that's great for everyday stuff and buy a trailer. You get a flatbed that's what, 4x the size of the one on your truck? And it's cheap, at knee-level, and detachable, so you only pay the cost of inconvenience and extra fuel when you use it, not all the time.
You won't use it much anyway, because a regular car fits more than you think.
As European. If you do that stuff semi-regularly just get a trailer. Couple thousand and they last decades.
a car cannot be used like a truck.
I think that’s more down to choice than possibility. I’ve hauled all those things home from the diy store in my boring Volvo with its roof rack. Had 600-odd pounds of sand in the back just last week.
4x8 plywood isn’t particularly heavy, and little consumer “150 pounds max” roof racks can hold a lot more than they claim.
The old Dodge Grand Caravan with the fold flat sheets fits 4x8 sheets inside. The built in roofrack is also very ergonomic for ladders, canoes, etc.
We have pickups and the minivan and I often prefer to haul with the van. Better fuel efficiency and lower load floor are nice.
Yeah minivans can be quite useful. A bit of a PITA to fold or remove seats, depending on the model, and typically can't tow much or really carry much weight but for the occasional large item they can work.
Hey, you can fit 4x8 in a Maverick, and that's barely a truck.
I (and practically most people) are rarely to never carrying stacks of full sheets of drywall. Having that be the basis of your needs for a car is absurd for most people.
Even then, my minivan can pack some pretty long and pretty large things inside. Meanwhile it's got a better turning radius than most trucks, it has way better visibility, it's far less pedestrian unfriendly, it's got an easier loading height, sliding doors make it easier to fit the back five passengers in and out, the stuff I'm hauling doesn't have to risk getting wet or affected by the outside environment. Seems like the minivan is way superior than a bed for suburban life if one needs such a large vehicle.
I've needed to move homes requiring the need for a 24' box truck more than I've needed to haul a stack of drywall around. Should I daily drive a uhaul truck?
Those were some examples, not an exhaustive list. What about hauling a load of mulch or topsoil, you're not doing that in your nice minivan. Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush? I do that a few times a year. Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash. An open truck bed is the most flexible configuration in my experience. Of course it's not perfect for everything.
A utility trailer could do a lot of that too, if you have a suitable tow vehicle. Sometimes the extra space taken by a trailer is inconvenient.
A family sedan is a suitable tow vehicle for the large flat bed twin axle + four seven tonne truck spring configured trailer we built 35+ years ago for hauling across broken land in the Pilbara.
It's a good idea to use anti-sway bars on, say, a Hayman-Reese hitch when things get technical and loads want to skid sideways.
Rig your trailer right and you can have a removable gull wing hutch for sleeping in / tool security, etc.
IMHO there's more room on a dedicated heavy load trailer than an SUV "truck" bed and there's usually better tie down with a custom trailer as the rope rails run full length for hitching.
Those are good examples, I've hauled most of that on a trailer attached to a cheap family sedan. With the upside of the trailer receiving the brunt of the abuse, having probably 4x the capacity of your truck and the car being super convenient to use on a daily basis to say, commute.
> What about hauling a load of mulch or topsoil, you're not doing that in your nice minivan
I've mostly just had that delivered when doing a big job, but I have just laid a tarp before. It's not that big of a deal really. And I don't even bother with a tarp for the smaller jobs, it's already bagged. Just don't grab bags with holes in it, and use the vacuum later. It's fine.
> Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush?
I live in a suburb. The trash service picks up brush. If it's more than what I can fit in a few bags I just put in a bulky trash request and the send a truck with crane to pick up the pile. Welcome to living in a society, it's quite nice.
> Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash
Once again, large furniture moves have been easily handled with cheap rentals. One-off pieces have usually been easily partially disassembled to load even into a hatchback. I've had no issues putting my lawn mower even into my old Accord, they're not that big when you fold the bar down. Spend a couple of minutes unscrewing things and suddenly you no longer need a truck. Not that I need to move my lawn mower much, I'm not in the lawn service industry. I'm also not in the piano moving industry. But maybe most Americans do move pianos on a quarterly basis.
And once again, a small tarp and I've carried plenty of firewood for my fireplace. But once again like the majority of Americans I live in an "urban" area and don't rely on multiple chords of firewood to make it through a winter. But the family I had that did live in a rural area that did mostly heat by firewood just had it delivered. You might as well argue one needs a trailer rated to carry fuel oil or large quantities of liquid propane.
You know what's inconvenient? Navigating urban spaces every day with a giant oversized monstrosity that my kids can't even easily climb into on their own. A vehicle where I can barely open the doors on an average parking spot. A vehicle that gets less than 20mpg compared to 35+ (or even way more than that with my EV). A vehicle where each tire costs $200+ compared to $100. A vehicle where a brake job costs way more than it needs to.
Perhaps a truck isn’t the ideal vehicle for someone who lives in a city and has easy access to rental vehicles, but a lot of people don’t live in those conditions.
Most Americans do. The vast majority of Americans live like me in terms of housing and transit. And yet pickups are still the most popular vehicles. In the parking garages of the urban apartments around me, they're filled with pickups. In the offices filled with accountants and salespeople the lots and garages are filled with pickups.
Don't get me wrong, some people definitely have a legit need for a truck. I've eyed them as I've been contemplating the pros/cons of a camper trailer vs. an RV. Some people own businesses that actually need it. But most people don't have a camper trailer or horses or work a small construction company out of their home and yet trucks are most vehicles bought these days.
The F-150 is valued because it is utilitarian and the platform is engineered for a pretty abusive duty cycle. Ford understands this. If you use trucks in anger, you start to appreciate this.
The entry of Japanese automakers into the F-150 market is instructive. While the Japanese trucks looked similar, the early versions had a bad reputation for slowly coming apart under the typical workload and stresses people put on the F-150, which Ford had been refining for many decades. Those trucks often get used hard, and because people know an F-150 can take it they aren't afraid to use them hard. The median abuse significantly exceeded what the Japanese engineers anticipated. Japanese trucks are much better now but the attention to survivability is a big part of the F-150's enduring reputation.
I've taken the Ford platform through situations where I've seen many other vehicles get destroyed. That's where the loyalty comes from and why it is a default choice for many. Most people aren't using them as hard as I have but it does provide a safety blanket.
Not just emissions taxes, small businesses are incentivized to overbuy and get a bigger truck. GWVR>6,000lbs and a full bed gets a better first year tax benefit.
Ford actually makes a highly practical electric work vehicle. It's called E-Transit.
I don't mean this personally against you, please don't take it as such, but the number of people in this thread who seem to have absolutely no idea what a work truck is used for is absolutely wild.
Not surprising, since Asians & Europeans get lots of work done without using monster American trucks. They use vans, pickups with drop sides, trailers, et cetera.
The closest big city to me is 150 miles away. I don't know anything about how general contracting is done in mainland China, (I bet they use trucks!) but other than that I'm really not sure any other Asian or European countries are facing the same logistical hurdles as Americans.
Vans, drop side trucks and trailers have no problems traveling 150 miles. American trucks seem so horribly impractical since they're so crazy tall.
Imagine thinking vans can't travel 150 miles. Wild.
I'm one of those people. What is a work truck used for?
I saw (and rode in) a lot of them in Alberta (Canada's Texas). Typical day for a work truck:
-owner starts you up from the hotel parking lot
-3-5 guys get in, you get your morning coffee via a drive through
-You pick up a 'slip tank' of diesel (think a metal box with its own fuel pump that sits in the bed and holds about a ton of liquid when full). You might fill up your own tank at the same time, typically on the employer's dime.
-you drive 1-3 hours over dirt roads and ice to get to the work site
-you fill up the heavy equipment from your slip tank, then stand for about 10 hours - you might be idling for part of that depending on temperature
- you drive another 1-3 hours back to the hotel parking lot. the owner plugs in your block heater so your fuel doesn't solidify overnight and you get ready to do it again the next day.
Trucks look impractical when they're getting groceries in the city, but everything about them - the height, the large cabs, all of it - is highly optimized for a particular kind of job. It might not be as common a job as it was when this design rose to prominence, I have no insight as to that, but there is a reason for everything about them being the way it is.
Yes this is why every other driveway in the zero lot lines of DFW need 1-2 pickup trucks. Totally.
This is way more extreme of usage than 99.99% of trucks made will ever see.
I wonder whether it's a nostalgia thing. People rode in these trucks and saw senior guys they admired owning them when they were young and on the make, and now they think that's the kind of truck successful people own even if it's not necessary for their own workday.
Other replies here have covered 'work truck' better than anything I'd come up with but I'll also add that some of the reasons people purchase trucks is:
- To be able to help your friends move.
- To be able to purchase supplies and move big things over long distances.
- If you raise horses, you have to have a truck to pull your trailer.
- If you own a tow behind or fifth wheel, you have to have a truck to pull it.
- If you like canoeing or camping it is a lot easier if you have a truck.
- If you live in a seriously rural area, or you enjoy hiking, you will need a truck or other vehicle in order to reach your home or many other destinations. I've gone up mountain roads in a Camry, and it's not a great experience.
- To comfortably haul a family
The rest of the world does all of this without widespread truck ownership. The reason trucks are so widespread in the US is a combination of culture and regulation, not any special needs Americans have.
So, not work then?
Ive helped my friends move many times. We just rented a uhaul and did it in way fewer trips (one, generally). If we did the same in a regular pickup it would have been a lot more work and a lot more time just to "save" $50 or so.
The vast majority of people don't have horses.
The vast majority of people don't have a fifth wheel.
I've tossed canoes on top of a focus hatchback. You don't need a truck to go canoeing. A canoe is like 50lbs, you don't need a few tons of towing capacity to carry a canoe. I've also gone camping in small cars. Get this, I've gone camping with just what I've carried in person for many miles! You don't need a few tons of towing to go camping.
I comfortably carry multiple kids and a spouse in vehicles other than a pickup truck. In fact, other vehicles have generally been comfier and easier. In the minivan the little kids can easily get in their seats and buckle up on their own. In the truck I had as a rental, there was practically no chance they had to climb in on their own, much less open the doors.
And yet trucks make up the majority of the most sold vehicles in the US.
When my neighbors hire a contractor to do some work, they show up in a work truck carrying supplies and tools. If their truck is broken, they are losing money every day.
When I was working at Boeing, my lead engineer explained it to me this way. When the airplane is flying with a payload (note the word "pay" in payload), the airline is making money. When the airplane is sitting on the ground, it is losing money at a prodigious rate.
The point of making an airliner is so the airline can make money, and that means minimizing time on the ground and maximizing time in the air carrying payload.
Perhaps this term is specific to americans, however to an Australian a 'work truck/ute' would be used for labour purposes and not for the family, for example hauling materials, transporting tools or as part of the business itself ?
How do you (I assume american) define it ?
Yes, American. There's other better descriptions here, but generally speaking most contractors I know have a truck, which they use for work. That's really all that I mean. I mean we just call them trucks. Nobody would say "Hey, nice work truck!"
People buy vehicles based on their needs. The F150 is sort of a hybrid between a work truck and a prestige family SUV like a Ford Explorer. If people are doing serious towing regularly, they will probably upgrade to a 250/350 class (3/4 ton or 1 ton). Plenty of people buy smaller trucks like the Ranger, which is basically like driving a crossover mini-SUV with a bed. People who are doing really serious transport may have a flatbed on an even bigger truck, but nobody uses those as family vehicles. I know people who have those little RHD mini trucks, which seems super useful to me.
I don't know Utes, which by googling, basically looks like a midsize (Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma) with a flatbed. We don't really use those.
Actually, it's kind of a market problem. Tons of people I know have expressed desire for a smaller truck like that little barebones Toyota Truck, but they don't make them here and we aren't allowed to import them.
Oh I agree! I didn't mean that they can't make a good work vehicle.
That's a van, not a pickup truck.
Yes, that's the point.
When they were first released, there was a fleet/commercial only model that was stripped down and roughly $40k. _That_ was the model that I expected to succeed. Presumably the same type of truck my employer bought from dealerships 20 years ago, with the sterile interior.
But that doesn't address any of your other points, and I can't imagine a business owner that has very little incentive to change how they're buying vehicles to even care about the Lightning if they aren't seeing their friends or themselves in the modern minivan that's called a truck today, just electrified.
I wonder if that $40k price was a loss leading tactic. Seems unrealistic for an electric truck to cost basically the same as the ICE version work truck.
I guess we will find out if many of these things actually matter with the Slate truck. It is in many ways the antithesis of this electric F-150. If that vehicle fails then there are no more excuses, a significant chunk of Americans just don't like electric vehicles and are destined to be laggards.
I'm just a Dutch guy that emigrated to Thailand, but I'd never trade my Toyota Hilux diesel for an electric truck. I don't want to have to rely on electric to be able to drive my car. A hybrid could be ok though.
The nice thing about diesel, in case of emergency is you can have a couple of filled jerrycans around so you can always move if needed. I like the reliability, it feels more anti-fragile, if that makes sense.
I wonder if the Gibraltar company that produces Toyota trucks for UN [0] is going fully electric anytime soon, if ever.
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[0]: https://www.offgridweb.com/transportation/toyota-gibraltar-t...
While ICE vehicles need gas/diesel specifically to run, EVs can be charged from a variety of sources, including a diesel generator. Electricity is the great unifier. You could pedal a bike to make some electricity, but no amount of pedaling will create fossil fuels.
“ in case of emergency is you can have a couple of filled jerrycans around so you can always move if needed”
How many times has this been a problem for you?
Luckily I haven't had any emergencies. But in Thailand recently there's been flooding in the south, many people stuck. And in eastern part many people have been evacuated due to border tensions with Cambodia.
I live in the north-west Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar. An area known as the Golden Triangle [0].
About once a month or so we don't have electricity for a about 10-12 hours or so.
I also experienced a quite big earthquake here about a year ago.
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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Triangle_(Southeast_Asi...
Seems like an electric vehicle that could serve as an electricity backup might actually be more useful for you than not.
That's a need that can also be met with a towable trailer that locks up tools, carries batteries, and supports panels for charging, eg:
* https://www.solarbatterywarehouse.com.au/solar-battery-shop/...
In an emergency you can leave the house in regular vehicle leaving trailer behind to power the freezer.
In other times it's handy for powering tools away from a main supply.
It's also a honeypot of nickable stuff so it'd be good to invest in quality locks and towball / wheel locks.
The Slate initially looked good to me, but there were three things about it that were not upgradeable that seemed problematic:
* Bed size is fairly small
* Towing capacity is low (Just 1000lbs)
* RWD -> AWD
I liked the idea of buying a barebones truck and customizing it myself, but if it can't tow much, can't carry much, and can't go off-road, it's only really a truck in terms of its shape.
There really is always going to be something. shrug
Those are all the things people use trucks for
I might be biased because I hang out in the slate subreddit and have been pretty attentive to The product as a whole since they announced it this spring but I think they're on to something assuming they can figure out how to build out the service and parts network.
The vehicle itself may be a runaway sales success but if there's only or two locations in each major state where you can get it serviced, that runaway success will be extremely short-lived.
In theory the simplicity means that it shouldn't be difficult to partner with any independent shop... No complicated or proprietary software theoretically means that any shop with tools and a lift can do the work.
Time will tell, though. I remain optimistic and eagerly await delivery of my truck.
Their wikipedia page says they announced “a partnership with RepairPal, a network of certified auto repair shops and dealerships across the US, to give owners access to 4000 service points from day one”. I don’t know if a “service point” is the same as a mechanic shop though.
RepairPal is just a rent seeking middleman like Angi's list. I don't see what that partnership will provide, certainly not shops that are trained to repair the truck.
I hadn’t heard of it before reading that paragraph on wikipedia, but the name combined with the wording made me suspect as much.
That only matters if said repair shops are A: actually trained on the vehicles and B: can get parts.
Have they even given anyone a test drive or shown anything other than that single press car at all their events? Im starting to get worried that as we approach release expectations may fall flat. I am tired of all the youtuber just sitting in the truck and repeating the same press release.
They seem like Framework for cars. Am also following closely.
I love electric vehicles, but I want something that lands somewhere between the DIY-esque Slate and the literally-costs-more-than-I-paid-for-my-house F-150 Lightning. I have a 23 Chevy Bolt EUV which is the sweet spot for me right now, I just wish it had AWD for the winters where I live.
I want a BYD that costs less than a 2000 Camry did brand new in 2000.
EVs are inherently pretty simple machines. All the complexity is in the battery, and China’s crushing everyone at battery tech. It’s not even close. It’s like a human trying to beat a polar bear in hand to hand combat.
They really need to deregulate the auto industry and let us buy the Yugos with a Jetsons battery. America is a poor country now. Nobody can afford used cars in this economy, never mind new ones.
> literally-costs-more-than-I-paid-for-my-house F-150 Lightning
I'm on board for a house that cost less than 50K.
Ok, where are houses going for 60k? I need to know this secret.
Haha, I'm in rural Iowa – my house was $89k for 3 beds, 2 baths in 2016. When we were looking at electric vehicles at the end of 2022/early 2023, the F-150 Lightning was pushing 70k-100k for the trims and ranges we were looking at.
Yes, early adopters paid extra, as is normal when demand is high and supply is low.
The interior is more or less the same as the ICE version of the F-150, and there is a lot of parts sharing between them. Probably part of the reason why it didn't have great range. EVs are also much simpler to repair, on average. Definitely not disposable. They sure were expensive, though.
> A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired
True but they also break, a lot. Workmanship and materials are poor, things that should be made for the life of the car break well before they should. And not just trim, engine and transmission supports, supension and steering components and so on.
They were good cars. In the 70's or so, and it has been steadily down hill from there, even though the engines themselves have improved considerably the rest of the car has only become more and more fragile.
> single-charge range issues are pretty much non-existent (for non-towing applications).
Readers might enjoy this, though I can't find the conclusions section at a glance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKf8smvGsA
"The Truth about Electric Towing" - The video author says that weight doesn't make much difference, but aerodynamics does. Towing a big flat piece of plywood that weighs 50 pounds but catches the wind is much worse for your range (or MPG) than towing an entire second truck, if the towed truck is aerodynamic.
He's only comparing highway driving. As he notes, city driving (or really anything with a lot of accelerating) will see the impact of weight on fuel consumption. Seems like regen brakes can help mitigate that for electric vehicles.
Side note, if he set the parking brake when getting loaded then the second tailgate denting might not have happened. It'll also help save the transmission.
Yes, Ford has done plenty of tests as have regular folks, loading the bed to the weight limit of the truck doesn't have much impact at all on range. It's 99% about the aero.
I feel like many of these comparisons are more applicable to an F-150 of twenty years ago. Modern F-150s start at forty grand, are so hard to repair that the CEO of Ford whines about not having enough mechanics willing to get a PhD in Ford Repair, are absolutely software-constrained to the extent they're legally allowed, and have almost as many cockpit gizmos. The primary difference is the flashy bloat, but the majority of F-150s are sold at trim levels that include such things. Even the lowest-trim fleet F-150 these days is basically a luxury minivan with a bed compared to the models of yesteryear.
My guess is that grid operators are offering more money than carbuyers, with the wild popularity of solar and wind.
Yeah the F150 is a strange vehicle. It has a proven reputation as a blue collar workhorse. However, a fully loaded Raptor trim is a 6 figure price tag easy.
And somewhat more relevant, the Transit product line is doing a brisk business in the fleet market. Unless you specifically need to tow, a lot of trades are better served with a van these days.
> *They're loaded with useless/barely-functional interior electronics that are poor copies of Tesla
Having owned both an EV Ford and a Tesla I can say with absolute certainty that the ford runs circles around the Tesla. Outside of having steam games on the screen, Tesla’s infotainment does literally nothing better, and the interface itself feels like an early 2000s Linux gui. Oh, and Ford actually supports carplay and android auto.
Outside of... having Steam games? What?
Tesla's briefly had Steam
Insane take. If you actually own a Tesla and have this opinion I’m gonna eat a dick. Ford’s software can’t even do navigating via chargers right. It’s universally panned.
So, I haven't driven a Ford EV for any significant amount of time so can't comment on the "navigating via chargers" part, but I'd take Ford's non-EV infotainment system over Tesla's system. Ford's is obnoxiously laggy, basically just above the bar of that I'd consider a shippable product, but Tesla's touchscreen for things that should be buttons is awful, and the lack of Android Auto/Carplay is crippling.
And tangential to the infotainment system, Tesla dropping sat radio receivers is pretty annoying if you're frequently outside of cell service.
Nah everything you need is available on the steering wheel contextually. You would know that if you had one. You would also know why Tesla owners don’t care for android auto or carplay much (though I recognize that it’s definitely a selling point because people have this stance from their experience with other cars, which suck)
New person to the conversation: I just want to say that even if the CEO's politics weren't awful I would never want a Tesla. I don't want a touchscreen to adjust the direction of the AC. Audio, climate and basic media functions should all have tactile control.
Tesla is to blame for my parents thinking EV = complicated iPad on wheels. An electric drivetrain doesn't have to come with a touchscreen UI for everything.
Volume up/down (scroll), previous/next track (left/right), mute/play (press) are all on the steering wheel's left button.
Not being able to adjust climate with a tactile control is mildly annoying, but the "temperature X degrees" voice control works fine.
You can change the temp and media etc on the steering wheel. Air is generally automatically adjusted
Yeah it's terrible, but it's way cheaper than engineering a bunch of buttons and switches, which is why Tesla did it. Somewhere along the line car makers decided non-mechanical door handles were a great idea too. Polestar is the only one that had some sense in that area.
> * The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
I paid 50K. A comparable powerboost was 10% more expensive.
> They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable
Huh? These share a lot of parts with a regular F150. Just not the motor.
> They're loaded with useless/barely-functional interior electronics that are poor copies of Tesla
You mean it has a normal infotainment system like every other F150?
> excessive exterior accent lighting, badges, over-complicated blinkers
Are we talking about the same truck? Aside from some trims with the light on the tailgate, I don't know what you're talking about. ICE F150s have the same sorts of lights and badges and as far as I know exactly the same blinkers.
> single-charge range issues are pretty much non-existent (for non-towing applications).
Hey, we agree on something after all.
> They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable
Is this due to the parts problem?
It's due to ignorance. The Lightning is an F150 with a battery pack and motors instead of an engine and gas tank. It shares a -lot- with the 'regular' F150. It's just about the least complicated EV you can buy, which makes it extra funny to hear someone compare it to an iPhone. Sit inside and you can't tell the difference except for how much quieter and silly fast it is.
Honestly sounds more like a regulation problem to me.
So many companies will not prioritize serviceability unless mandated by law.
> companies will not prioritize serviceability unless mandated by law
Ford is “expected to take about $19.5 billion in charges, mainly tied to its electric-vehicle business” [1].
If serviceability was the problem, that sounds like a solid incentive to get it right.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-takes-19-5-billion-c...
I'm not sure quite sure how your comment relates to mine.
The way I see it is if there was sufficient enforcement of regulations around spare parts and serviceability then there's no way Ford could have stood up a factory that spat out a bunch of electric trucks without also producing a bunch of spare parts so the unreasonable delay to end users trying to repair their vehicles didn't occur.
I don't have to worry about getting a car battery or sparkplug because these things are standardized and mass produced. That's due to regulation.
The regulations just don't go far enough and the enforcement of them is obviously lax in 21st entury America
The interior is identical to the gas F-150
Isn't the only EV F-150 the Lightning? The Lightning has always been the sports model, so I can't imagine it ever made sense economically as a work truck.
They reused the name much like they used the Mustang name for their electric SUV. Past Lightnings were single trim level performance trucks. The current Lightning mirrors the regular F150 trim levels but with an electric drivetrain.
It's a little more complicated. The Lightning has always been about performance, and that includes the EV. It'll demolish every other F150 (and most other regular cars for that matter) that doesn't say "Raptor R" on the side.
Insurance is a higher cost too.
> * The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
> * They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable.
Add in the crap tow range and it looks like Ford upmarket, as it's known to do, and failed. Just reading these points makes me think that it was designed to fail.
> The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive
So are RAM trucks and I don't think they're hurting for customers.
I think there are two fundamental issues. One is that pickups are a weirdly-politicized lifestyle choice in the US - i.e., if you're progressive, you're supposed to hate them and see them as the symbol of the gun-totting macho redneck culture, and if you're conservative, you're supposed to love them because they're gas-guzzling freedom machines that "own the libs". An electric pickup straddles these political choices in a hard-to-market way.
The other problem is that electric pickups don't really solve any pressing problem for the buyer. They're more expensive up front, more expensive to keep running (unless you also invest a lot of $$$ into solar), and harder to repair, but they don't boast better specs... well, except for acceleration, which isn't a huge selling point for trucks.
> One is that pickups are a weirdly-politicized lifestyle choice in the US
Based on my personal experience traveling, there's a more practical reason for the political divide.
I spend a good portion of my life in rural parts of the US these days, where most of the residents are pretty conservative. But these are also parts of the country where I get nervous when I'm on 1/4 tank of gas. If you're routinely out in places where the nearest gas station might be > 50 miles away, you also see a dip in e-vehicles for very practical reasons.
When I'm at home in a city, it makes perfect sense to own an e-vehicle: typically I'm only driving a few miles a day, and the car spends most of it's time at my house or in a parking garage. When I'm out on business, and driving across hundreds of miles of barely inhabited land, I cannot imagine the stress of having an electric truck. It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that.
In rural parts of the country, especially when you're out working, you can easily be putting on mileage combined with being far enough away from a charger that it just doesn't make sense to have an e-vehicle.
I do know someone who bought a Tesla after debating it for a long time. And it was only after getting comfortable with the range for a mostly weekly drive into the country.
You're also likely to have to wait in line to charge.
Try this map: https://supercharge.info/map , it has a feature called "range circles". If you set it to 50 miles, you'll see that most of the country is well within 50 miles of the nearest supercharger. Including almost all of Texas.
At 100 miles of range, you only have a couple of blank spots.
With third party chargers, there's really only one blank spot in Montana. At this point, the range is already a solved problem.
Earlier this year, I did experiments with placing stations manually on the map and using the US road networks to calculate the isolines. With just about 70 more stations, you can make any point on the public road network in the entire contiguous US lie within 50 miles of the nearest charger.
So the charging availability is likely going to be solved completely even during the current shitty admin.
> It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that.
At 325kW charge rate (common on recent chargers), you're looking for maybe 20 minutes to get enough charge to reach your destination.
The kinds of situations that drive range consideration for things like trucks is that your planned route suddenly becomes unavailable after you've already burned most of your range. Range anxiety isn't about the ideal case.
I've had several situations in the Mountain West when roads suddenly closed <25 miles away from my final destination (and fuel). Some of these required upwards of 100 mile detour on rural roads with almost no civilization. That detour was not part of the original range calculation. For an EV the detour may not even be an option, you have to go backwards to a major highway to find a charging station that may be in range.
Hell, I've nearly come up short in an ICE vehicle a couple times. I try to keep 150-200 miles of spare range on my vehicle when I am in that kind of country. That is hard to do on a typical EV.
>>I try to keep 150-200 miles of spare range on my vehicle when I am in that kind of country. That is hard to do on a typical EV.
Plus the additional anxiety of trying to figure out if dropping temperatures will add massive downside variance to your initial range estimate.
So if I have a vehicle with let's say 250 miles of range, you want me to let it get to 100 miles at least left to drive 100 miles to the charger, then drive 100 miles back, leaving me with 50 miles of range until I have to do it again?
I'm not really against electric anything, but not following the logic of the examples in this comment.
No. You normally don't charge at fast chargers at all. Instead, you start your trip with a 100% charge from home charging.
Then after 3-4 hours of driving (200 miles with towing) you stop for 20 minutes to charge to 80% and continue on your journey.
“There’s at least one spot within 100 miles where you can wait 20 minutes to get enough charge to get to the next charger” is not an argument that will convince someone to give up the convenience of the gas station.
The convenience argument works for a small segment of the population that road trips a few hundred miles at a time regularly. For the rest of us, EVs are far more convenient. I don't ever go to a gas station, and every day I start out with 320 miles of range. I stop at the EV equivalent of a gas station two or three times a year. I've saved a lot of time not having to get gas every week.
The people I know make those road triys. Sure 99% of the time we don't, but we expect the car to do it
And as I pointed out, pretty much all these road trips are already possible, although some may require slight detours.
With some fairly limited changes, they won't require any detours.
What exactly is convenient about gas stations?
They're everywhere and you can get a full charge in 5 minutes.
And you don’t need to fill up again at the next one.
Yeah that's what I meant by full charge. Most fast chargers only give you a topup in 20 minutes.
usually you don't need to fill up again at next 100 or so, given how much of them there are
The US isn't flat. Range can vary considerably with climbing into the mountain passes, or in cold weather.
It's mostly a wash, the efficiency on the descent balances the climb, and overall you get respectably close to the same range you'd have gotten on a flat route.
I rented a mach-e recently. Went up to Snoqualamie pass from seattle. I used over 60 miles range in 10 miles on the steep part at the end, 1/6th. Going the other way I got a maybe 20% boost in distance over flat. There were a few places I was able to regen-brake, but I never had the battery go up, only stay flat. And a few times I lost enough speed that I didn't handle an interim flat well. I was extremely disappointed.
It turns out friction and drag are still things. On a pure downhill you would be able to roll, but it's not as good as going down is bad.
I also found that the car did a lot worse rolling down hill than my mini-cooper manual when I just put the clutch in, which got up to hairy speeds. Heck vehicle seemed to have more inbuilt resistance to just rolling than the fire engine I've run down that hill.
Overall I got 90 total miles of range and hit the flat at 10% battery. I was able to get 290 miles driving in seattle with the same vehicle.
FWIW the mach e engages the regen brakes automatically when going downhill to prevent acceleration.
That's weird. Seattle-to-Yakima at 70 mph average speed and 85 mph peak speed is about 1.5x the normal energy use for me (260 Wh/m vs 350 Wh/m). Leaving me with 20% of charge when starting at 100% (260 miles): https://imgur.com/a/Dhs38kJ
And this was during the wintertime, so with a reasonable amount of heating.
F150 has a 130kWh battery, so heating is not an issue. Height changes are also not a problem. There are very few areas with large altitude changes, and even fewer ones that you'll likely need to pass through regularly.
This leaves mostly mountain passes around the Sierra mountains. And by some strange coincidence, they have plenty of superchargers in the vicinity.
The rest of the country can be, to the first order, considered flat. E.g. elevation change between Charlotte and Charleston is mere 300 meters.
The vast majority of truck owners do not live in these sparse / long distance situations. There just aren’t that many people as a % of the population that live that rural. Whilst a real factor for some, that is not the main reason behind the political divide over trucks.
The limited range and inability to refuel quickly and easily in the middle of nowhere remains a critical deficiency for EV trucks in many parts of the US. Range is something you have to be conscious of even with ICE trucks in some areas even though they have better and more reliable range. There are places where I'd start thinking about fuel once I hit half a tank.
Getting caught out in the middle of nowhere with a dead EV because conditions beyond your control changed the range requirements is a nightmare scenario. ICE trucks do much better in these situations.
Seems like EV trucks need the ability to do the equivalent of siphoning gas, or carrying some Jerry cans.
That is almost literally the entirety of it. If we could do that, EV would be lit. EV is honestly better for remote environments in most other regards.
I live in Truck Country, Wyoming
If you need a truck for work, you're probably going to be towing in it. Now, some of those guys who are hauling are gonna need a 250 or a 350, but a lot of them will do just fine with the 150.
Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly.
In addition, it's 2 hours to the nearest big city. So as a practical matter, you're adding an hour to your trip every time you go into town. I like Teslas a lot, but gave you ever been on a road trip in one? It's pretty brutal.
Plus, I feel like, aesthetically, there is a weird block. I would have no problem dumping a load of sheetrock trash in the bed of a new gas truck. For a brand new electric truck? It kind of feels wrong, don't you think? Maybe that is just me being a Luddite, but I really don't have a sense of an electric car as a tool, the way a good truck is.
I think EVs are great as a recreational car, or a useful commuter in the city. I've never seen a Rivian doing blue collar anything.
I drive a Camry btw
Interestingly, I live in rural Vermont, and there are a surprising number of Rivians around me - including those set up for contractors, complete with scaffolding in the bed with tools and ladders on them.
That said, we have an F250. I'd love to have an electric truck, but I use mine for towing almost exclusively. If I'm hauling a trailer hours away, I really don't need to deal with the hassle of stopping along the way to charge. I've yet to see a charging station set up for conveniently charging an electric vehicle with a trailer.
When we lived the Bay Area a decade ago, we had a Nissan Leaf, one of the early ones. It only got 95 miles to a charge if you were lucky, but for commuting in the South Bay we absolutely loved it.
Here in Vermont? F250 and a Subaru. I'd love to make the second an electric, but no one actually makes a good AWD electric Crosstrek equivalent that's actually designed for dirt roads and not the city.
Interesting! I lived in Illinois, where they are manufactured, and they were everywhere, but they were a luxury vehicle, I never once saw one as a work truck. I'm a little surprised but it isn't that strange.
My general impression is the product class of a Rivian / 150L is probably closer to a Ford Raptor than it is to a work truck. But interesting to hear that may be changing!
If you're buying a Raptor, that's a luxury purchase for sure. But I do know people who use Raptors to haul, so that kind of makes sense.
With the exception of the most ridiculous of chromosomemobiles, I think most people make a very rational calculation about what they will do with their vehicle, even if it's just being able to help somebody move a couch that one time. Usually it's more than that. And towing is a huge part of that equation.
The R3X will be that. Although you could just get an R1, incredibly capable off-road but yeah, bigger.
> Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly.
Hey now, my 8 year-old Pixelbook still has 2 more years before it's out of support.
> Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook
But that's like rich people. Nouveau rich sport designer fashion to show off how much money they have, but true wealth doesn't need to show off like that. If the tech lead came in with a battle hardens Chromebook running a distro they created on crostini, I would respect them more, not less.
"More expensive to keep running" might depend on where you live. My wife and I both have EVs and we drive about 2000 miles/month. At just over $.06/kWh our EV charger tells us that we pay about $30/month for "fuel".
The first tire rotation on my car was free, and the next two were about $60 total. The first tire rotation on my wife's car was free. We're both going to need another rotation in a couple of months. Other that that, the original wipers on my car were squeaky and I replaced them for about $40. Oh! And I replaced the cabin air filters myself at the 7500-mile service intervals.
When we lived in a much bigger city, there were time-of-day rates and assistance with the cost of putting in a charger offered by the local for-profit utility. The kWh rate was just over 3X what we're paying now and even that is cheap compared to some regions.
Insurance doesn't seem cheap but we moved from Farmers to Amica and there are a bunch of discounts for having cars with lane departure warning, collision avoidance, etc.
I expect to replace the tires at 40,000 - 50,000 miles based on what other people report they get with their original tires. I do get sad little postcards from the dealer about having our cars serviced because there's no oil changes, the brakes should last forever because of regenerative braking, there's not a catalytic converter to steal, etc.
I'm guessing you're often either towing or you're doing a bunch of shortish drives for construction, etc. purposes--neither of which are a great match for electric.
How are short drives not a great match for electric?
Indeed, a bunch of short drives would be ideal. My next door neighbor owns a small construction company and he switched from a gas truck to electric, went from filling the truck twice a week to charging at home. More than paid for the truck.
The details matter but just doesn't buy you a lot, especially if you have a second vehicle to drive a handful of miles a week. Per sibling comment, a couple of fillups a week really is a fair bit of driving.
Everyone like Tacomas though
That last point is important though. If you want a truck to be adopted it needs to tow.
LOL. Why would you need a truck if not for towing something?!
Modern cars are emotional purchases, manufacturers have figured out exactly which buttons to press to manipulate us into buying them.
They are pretty much the only consumer good whose price has outrun inflation over the last fifty years.
This is pretty much dead on. I live in a rural part of the US and there are tons of old, worked-on trucks. The idea that there might be an all-electric f150 hanging out in 40 years is, frankly, laughable.
I know a lot of city kids think trucks are some obnoxious luxury good, but they're basically a functional requirement in most of the (very large) country.
Less than 20% of Americans live in most of the (very large) country. The rest live in cities and suburbs.
And how do you think vehicle ownership compares between those two groups?
In the cities and suburbs—-where the vast majority of trucks are garaged—-they are generally an obnoxious luxury good.
Which is why new pickup truck models are so often not fit-for-purpose as a working truck of any kind. Like an EV F-150.
Those census definitions are not good. I’m sure the place I went to high school is considered “city” by that definition, but the average HN poster would not recognize it as one, and there were lots of farm working trucks around.
It turns out that anecdotes don't constitute data. If the place you went to high school is considered "city" by the census definition, then I guarantee the majority of pickup trucks in the area were obnoxious luxury goods that never hauled a single thing to or from a farm.
> The idea that there might be an all-electric f150 hanging out in 40 years
I should hope there is. The battery is good for 400-500K miles. The first real maintenance (which is still just flushing the coolant) happens at 200K miles. These trucks will be easier to keep on the road than you think, they're dead simple.
> I know a lot of city kids think trucks are some obnoxious luxury good, but they're basically a functional requirement in most of the (very large) country.
A van is almost always a better choice if you're actually looking at functionality. Shielding from the elements is way more useful than some mythical ground clearance benefit that you will never use.
Sure, a very small number of people go offroad and need that clearance--however, the number is small relative to the number of people who could get away with a van.
> some mythical ground clearance benefit that you will never use
Spoken like someone who hasn't lived past the suburbs.
I needed some plumbing work done last winter and had to hire someone new because my preferred plumber couldn't access my road with his van.
The lack of AWD/4x4, lack of ground clearance, inability to tow are all massive drawbacks for several lines of business. Tonneau or hard covers and enclosed trailers take care of shielding from the elements just fine.
That's not past the suburbs, that's a ridiculous outlier. Congratulations, you live somewhere without paved roads, which puts you at what, 0.00001% of all Americans? That's your argument?
> some mythical ground clearance benefit
Maybe not where you live but there are many parts of the US where you really do want significant ground clearance regardless of vehicle type. The ubiquity of Subarus in several regions of the US isn't because people are fond of Subarus as an automotive brand.
High ground clearance isn't about "going offroad".
My Renault Master van has more ground clearance than anything Subaru offer.
My VW T5 van has as much ground clearance as the Subaru Forester / Outback.
I live in a place where people drive either trucks or subarus. There are plenty of alternatives to subaru with high clearance (basically any small suv). People buy them because they work well in snow and well...everyone has them. Easy to sell, easy to get them worked on.
Iowa has over 68,000 miles of gravel roads, something like 60% of the state's roads.
"Offroad" is 60% of the state 50+% of the year
This could be said anywhere with snow, by time the DOT repairs the frost heave after winter its winter again.
Packed gravel is not "offroad", it's just a normal, flat road. Snow makes no difference either, obviously. You'd need to have quite a lot of snowfall to make travel in a regular car hard to impossible.
> The idea that there might be an all-electric f150 hanging out in 40 years is, frankly, laughable.
Why is it laughable? I'm not following your argument.
"They're loaded with useless/barely-functional interior electronics that are poor copies of Tesla"
Wow, must be absolute crap if they are poor copies of Tesla, given how plastic and uncomfortable Tesla interior/ux is
There is no plastic, everything is soft touch or metal and software is best in class
Tesla interiors are crap, but the infotainment is better than pretty much everyone else. It's the only thing I miss after getting rid of mine.
My thought exactly!
We don't want your electric car ... we want your car, but electric.
We want an electric F150 or an electric Suburban or v90 wagon or whatever.
But instead we get e-initiative i-mobiles. We get TRON-cars. We get iModels.
There is a reason for this:
The incumbent auto makers understand fully that the ICE version of whatever model they electrify will suffer enormously.
They believe that they can somehow retain all of the sales of the existing ICE model while adding growth sales of a different electric model.
And, of course, they are wrong: because nobody wants an "electric F150". They just want an F150. But electric.
I preordered a lightning and they never offered to sell me one for under $80k…
> The incumbent auto makers understand fully that the ICE version of whatever model they electrify will suffer enormously.
So you're saying they make _less_ profit on the EVs? That seems dubious.
> They believe that they can somehow retain all of the sales of the existing ICE model while adding growth sales of a different electric model.
Well.. precisely. Isn't the solution to make the EVs more profitable than the ICEs? Meanwhile Toyota's out here killing it in Hybrids.
When your entire supply chain is optimized in ICE vehicles, it’s a tough sell to re-org everything for EVs. And when you try to half-ass it, it doesn’t pan out well, and you end up in this situation.
Well, instead of cannibalizing ICE sales, why not have your cake and eat it to?
- Ford & Marie Antoinette
I'd love an off-road capable electric 4WD (because think about how amazing having computer controlled precision torque applied to wheels individually would be for getting out of a tricky situation).
Especially if you could buy some kind of field charging kit - maybe something you could power off a wood fire or flexible solar panels that you could stow. I imagine that's not realistic at the moment, but a boy can dream.
Isn’t that the rivian R1? Incredibly capable off-road. One of a small number of stock model cars to complete the Rubicon trail
The Rivian has pretty limited range. The Scout looks promising though.
People out in the ranch country, oil patch, some mining areas, etc often want a reliable 600-ish miles unloaded. That’s why extended fuel tanks are a common option. Even without an extended fuel tank, you can often achieve that with an ICE and a jerry can.
EVs have great potential as 4WD off-road vehicles. In a lot of ways they are more naturally suited to it. Their main weakness is range and loiter time. In many contexts it will be days before you’ll be able to get to a charging point.
The killer feature of ICE in this context is the tremendous range and simplicity of extending range if you need more. Fuel is very compact, easy to bring with you, and available from other vehicles if you run short. An EV that can augment its range indefinitely with fuel is probably the sweet spot.
I think we’ll get there relatively soon.
I guess you could strap a few kw generator in the bed with some jerry cans as backup. Would take longer, but if by loiter time you mean time out in the field where you’re not moving, then maybe that’d work. Would be cool if there was the equivalent of siphoning gas from one to another.
Is there electric infrastructure in the places you’re describing? If so, should be really easy to throw down some moderate-speed L2 chargers in various parts as a last resort. They’re incredibly cheap and don’t need much maintenance.
i was assuming the person i was responding to was talking about recreational offroading, not ranching, oiling or mining in the middle of nowhere.
A max pack rivian has a 400ml range, which is plenty for the vast majority of recreational adventures.
Holy hell, that's 640ish km, that's plenty - and yep, I'm not from a large continental country, 640 gets me to the other side of my island and 2.5 times, and to the northern or southern end once.
That’s fair. There are “recreational offroaders” in the sense of urban bros that do casual offroading on well-developed trails with associated infrastructure. That is the nerf version of offroading in the US. Some of those trails are cool on their own merits, I don’t want to take away from them.
The US has vast regions that casual tourists never venture into and have no infrastructure that are nonetheless economically important or excellent for exploring.
If you stay near the Interstates, you’ll be able to manage with electric vehicles. But the best parts of the Mountain West are pretty far from the Interstate Highways. The deep Utah, Nevada, or Arizona wilderness is phenomenal but you’d be an idiot to attempt that with an EV. Just getting caught in a mountain pass during a blizzard in May or September could be enough to cook you.
I’m not against EVs in any sense but the tech is still pretty risky for the realities of the Mountain West of the US. I have learned many lessons the hard way about how you can be stranded or die in the Mountain West that makes me cognizant of the limitations of EV currently.
I am bullish on EV, I’d love to have one if it met my technical specs, but they aren’t there yet.
I'm from NZ where 640km range is plenty, for even our gnarliest terrain, so I'm stoked. I have to say, this is a bit dismissive out of hand.
> urban bros that do casual offroading on well-developed trails with associated infrastructure.
Yeah, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Not everyone commenting here is from the US.
I'm talking about things like driving up braided riverbeds to places like this, Mathias Hut, just downstream of a glacier or two. [0]
Or like this, Avoca Hut, in an isolated valley two days walk in otherwise. [1]
Or some of the very rugged routes on the West Coast of the South Island / Te Waipounamu. [2]
Trips like this in the Southern Alps. [3]
Or Napoleon Hill. [4]
640km range would get me to that route, from the east side of my island via an alpine pass [5], through the route, and back home again, on one charge, which is awesome.
We don't have the same scale of distance as the USA, that's true, but we have the same scale of challenging terrain, so please don't be so quick to dismiss our use case as "urban bros doing casual offroading", just because the distances are lower, please.
As for well developed 4WD trails, lol.
I used to be a ranger in a national park here, and American tourists were routinely gobsmacked that our tramping (hiking) routes (trails) didn't have bridges, (and also, often didn't have an actual track or trail, you just picked your own way up the riverbed) and you'd have to walk through the rivers - and no, don't take your boots off, because you're going to cross that river another 5 - 10 times, you just have to accept you're going to have wet feet, welcome to NZ hiking.
So if we don't have that many well developed hiking trails, we certainly don't have well-developed off-roading trails.
[0]: https://dea83hfeh03sc.cloudfront.net/media/3171/conversions/...
[1]: https://www.doc.govt.nz/thumbs/hero/contentassets/10442f8efa...
[2]: https://nz4wd.co.nz/article/hard-drive-denniston
[3]: https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/nz/97642423/brea...
[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnZ6dMg4yvs
[5]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Arthur%2...
That looks amazing! I haven’t been to NZ yet. I was not trying to dismiss your offroad bonafides.
It is the distance scale in the US that makes the difference. In the mountain west, you can blow through a range budget of 640km really easily. There are weather and other events that add 100-200km of unplanned travel that you can’t know ahead of time. There is also no Internet connectivity in much of it! The sparsity of charging stations in more remote regions just makes it worse. If you find you need to re-route, you may be a very long way from the closest accessible charging station and it may be in a direction you did not intend to go.
I wasn’t trying to be dismissive. The US has unique challenges for EV range due to its scale. There isn’t much margin for error on range, especially if the road closes due to avalanches, flooding, etc. You can find yourself hundreds of kilometers from the nearest thing resembling civilization at inopportune times.
> having computer controlled precision torque applied to wheels individually
Fwiw many vehicles already have this. Mechanical torque vectoring via differentials, electronic controlled differentials, and electronic brake-based torque vectoring. The latter is the most common, works pretty well in modern cars
Look at the new Scout, they are planning to do everything you mentioned
I really miss all the short trucks.
For a long time I had a F150 supercab (made in the 90's) and while it was a great truck it was just excessive for 99% of what I used the vehicle for. That includes the vast majority of times I used it to haul and tow! I always envied my friend's smaller truck. Over a decade I think my truck was the better vehicle in only a handful of situations. (Far better to rent one for the day at that point)
I absolutely hate all the new trucks. That supercab was too large and trucks today feel bigger. Especially the front huge grill (which is also incredibly dangerous). That truck I had was already hard to drive. I loved having a truck but parking is an absolute nightmare, especially in cities where lanes and spaces are not only shorter but narrower. All these big trucks are even harder to drive but people love them because they feel safer (in a perverted and most American arms race imaginable)
But I do like things like power outlets in the bed. I don't give a shit about the infotainment system, but the sockets in the bed is actually helpful. I'd have used that a much larger portion of the time than I used the actual size of my truck. Just being able to plug in a drill (or charge one) is really helpful to more /general/ "truck activities". Not to mention all the things like camping or other things where you take a vehicle like that. But even in those situations you don't need a huge vehicle 99% of the time.
Side note:
I now drive a small compact sedan and am absolutely pissed by how many people drive with their high beams on and are putting in projector bulbs and not properly aiming them. I'm very close to installing a mirror to reflect peoples highbeams back into their own car. Blinding me may increase your visibility, but it also decreases both of our safety. Your brighter lights make you feel safer, but they make you less.
>I really miss all the short trucks
I hope the Telo pans out (and comes down in price to where I can afford one). Looks funny but it's such an obvious idea.
https://www.telotrucks.com/
It's funny because when I saw the Slate, I thought it was cool, but the bed was a bit too short to camp in. And there was a large front trunk, a little too large I thought. If only they could take a bit off the front, and put it in the back.
And then I saw the Telo! Hah, they went too far in the opposite direction. Something between these two is what I'd like.
Haven't heard of the Slate before. Not sure about only having two doors but the price is a lot more attractive.
Retro reflective material will do the trick. Try a retroreflective hi-viz vest on the headrest.
I don't actually think people are driving around with high beams on. Modern LED headlights are just brighter, and cars are higher up than they used to be, meaning older lower cars, especially sedans are just in the path of regular beams. I actually yelled at someone once to turn off their high beams because I was so convinced that's what it was. turns out, they just drive a tesla, which just have blinding lights. I guess there are also probably people with high beams, but most of the ones that are terrible aren't high beams, they are just modern.
I owned one of the first VW eGolfs, and it was an excellent car. Just a regular golf with an electric drive.
160hp and 0-60 at 10seconds. Yikes. That does sound like a regular golf.
The new Polo EV looks perfect.
I wish they sold the Polo in the US.
Maybe one of these days Edison out of Canada will get hybrid generator conversion kits out.
What particularly was overly "electric F-150" versus "F-150 but electric" on the Lightning? When i tested it, and when other reviewers talked about it they generally praised how normal truck like it was compared to even the Rivian R1T.
Chevrolet makes these. The Blazer and the Blazer EV look roughly the same. The Equinox and Equinox EV look more different but not completely different. The Silverado and the Silverado EV look completely different, but given those other models, I don't think it's for lack of trying.
Similarly, Volvo's EX cars look almost exactly like their XC counterparts.
"Similarly, Volvo's EX cars look almost exactly like their XC counterparts."
Interesting you should mention ...
Here is the interior of the 2025 XC90:
https://0x.co/AJ5PVP
... and here is the 2025 EX90:
https://0x.co/Z3ZQPF
That's not a mistake and they know exactly what they are doing: they think they can sell the EX90 in addition to the XC90 and the dramatically different UI/UX/styling is an effort to keep the XC money flowing.
If the electric one was just the XC90 ... but electric ... they know they'd barely sell another ICE one again.
They are completely different platforms.
The EX90 platform is from the a ground up a purely electric vehicle while the 2025 XC90 runs on the same platform with upgrades and face-lifts since 2015.
The EX90 is a couple of years late to the market due to software integration problems.
Previously they’ve been sharing platforms across ICE and BEV like the XC40 and XC40 Recharge now rebranded EX40. But now Volvo is going electric.
These two interiors look dang near the same. One has a faux stick shifter versus a dial. Big deal. You could randomize which was the EV and which was the ICE and I'd have no clue.
While this sounds clever, it just isn't true. The electric F150 looks and feels virtually identical to the non-electric one.
It's not some evil big business conspiracy. It's just that the F150 buyer tends to travel longer distances for work/play over traditional car buyers (more on the edge of suburban/rural, less urban), hence the range anxiety problem with all-electric. Couple that with higher upfront costs, lower resale values, and cheap fuel in the US, it's pretty obvious why the market would prefer a hybrid or ICE F150.
I am actually surprised they cancelled the F150 Lightning, I see a lot of them the Metro Vancouver area where a lot of contractors, (gardeners, pool maintenance, labourers, etc...) are driving them as electricity is super cheap here and gasoline is quite expensive.
That's exactly where I expected this thing to sell like hotcakes. It's a perfect fleet vehicle for many businesses.
I think the price just wasn't right.
I am reading this article and thinking, darn there's going to be too many people like me trying to find these on the used market, and the prices will stay high.
Big fancy expensive powerstroke mega trucks with a person-high wall in the front look cool, and occasionally haul heavy things, but little white trucks that are busted up and 20 years old do all the duty. And those trucks drive way less than the range on the lightning each day. Once these lightnings price down to work truck level, I expect to see them on the road a long time.
I thought the same thing too, when it was announced. But I suspect, in addition to the price, that not being able to buy a medium or long bed version also harmed fleet sales. The short bed being the only option is probably a pretty big limitation for groups who are buying them as fleet vehicles.
Just speculation but maybe the fact the world is in an oil glut right now and with the prospect that Russian oil could re-enter global market causing even more glut caused Ford to believe that gasoline will remain fairly cheap compared to 2008 era for the next decade.
it seems gas in vancouver (canada) is $4.50usd/gal ($1.18usd/liter)
that said, I'll bet the new one will be interesting for them, as I'll bet the gas motor can be used as an on-site generator which they might buy anyway.
The power boost hybrid has this and gets great mpg plus long beds and cheaper trims.
How it is better than a van?
Wasn't the original announced price like $39k? Did they ever hit that?
Not really. The Pro was about that, maybe a couple grand more, but I don't think it was ever 39K.
Gotta say, know few F150 EV owners and they all love it.
I can confirm that the F150 Lightning community is basically Canadians.
Yes, tons of these in BC. My friend and several neighbours love theirs.
> electricity is super cheap here and gasoline is quite expensive
Yeah, not everyone has that arrangement though. I was shocked (shocked!) when I realized that for my plug-in hybrid van, running it on gas can be cheaper than charging it, depending on the time of day and time of year.
Where I live, peak hours electricity is $0.22/KWh in the summertime during peak hours, or $0.18/KWh off-peak. My van gets ~32 MPG on its tank, but also ~32 miles on a 16KWh charge. So it’s easy math, 1 gallon = 16KWh, so $0.22 * 16 = $3.52, so gas has to be more expensive than that to be worth it. Off-peak it’s $0.18 * 16 = $2.88, which makes it barely worth it to charge, with gas prices near me being close to $3/gallon.
(I have since bought solar panels and now it’s basically free to charge my car, but I can totally understand why electric vehicles just don’t work out cost-wise for a lot of people, even when accounting for ongoing fuel costs…)
This is a shame. Coworker got a Lightning and he loves it. He doesn't tow with it but he does field work for fiber optic stuff, usually back home every day. Runs his computers, tools, ventilation for going down manholes, he even powered a sump pump from it, without needing to haul a generator. The hybrid truck can now do the same, but it's a really nice truck
The plain old ICE F-150 has had power outlets as an option package for more than ten years, i.e. 7 years before the Lightning even existed.
This is fine, for three reasons:
1. Electric trucks don't make sense. In the "I drive my truck to pick up groceries" sense, it's fine. But as a work truck, it's not ideal. You lose both payload and towing capacity owing to that huge battery. Gets worse in winter and at elevation. The bigger the truck, the more it weighs, the worse the EV part does (which is why nobody's making an F350/F550 electric). ICE trucks get over twice the range, more payload, more towing. And if you're using it for work, you can't waste part of the day charging it, you need to gas up and go. It's taking most manufacturers a long time to develop more rugged/capable versions of EVs, so stalling to prepare for an eventual better launch kinda had to happen anyway.
2. In theory, plug-in hybrids could be converted to all-electric, but you get way more utility out of a hybrid. The ability to use either fuel source solves a lot of problems. I wonder if we'll eventually maneuver these away from gas towards LPG; they already sell LPG trucks, why not LPG plug-in hybrids?.
3. We simply aren't ready for mass adoption, practically speaking. Apartments are 40% of all homes and there's no way they can plug-in. There's not nearly enough public chargers and jockeying for position is a joke. The software for chargers and route management is still a huge mess. It will take more government investment, which is dead for the next three years. Selling more EVs with no simultaneous infrastructure investment would be a disaster waiting to happen.
If a shelf stable fuel like LP could be integrated into an EREV, I think that would be the perfect combo. All the dynamics of an EV with the extended range and easy fuel availability.
I’ve owned a M3P and MY, and I really want a truck, but it needs to be more capable than the electric offerings. An EREV truck would be fantastic.
Electric trucks make perfect sense and are ideal for what most F-150s are actually used for. The problem is that the F-150 is a fashion accessory for low IQ types that cosplay as rancher/cowboy/whatever. They're buying the appearance of being tough. They're insecure. The electric F-150 doesn't make them feel better about their pathetic lives.
You can say they're victims of marketing but your vitriol goes too far. I wonder if you would say the same about any other consumerist excess: a bigger house, a nicer watch, a faster car.
Pretty surprised here and I think it was really just bad marketing or I guess unsustainable unit economics.
Price out the cheapest F-150 (XL) with a supercrew cab and 4x4 and you are looking at $50k. Trucks are just expensive. The Lightning is expensive but not that much more than any other truck and the Ford incentives + EV credit brought it down quite a bit. The Lightning Flash (extended range) was routinely selling OTD < $60k with 0% financing.
I'd put off buying a pickup for a decade because I couldn't find the right one and the Lightning is awesome. I was skeptical at first due to range concerns but there are chargers in the middle of nowhere in 2025.
I think a lot of the other commenters might change their thoughts if they drove one for a bit.
Edit: I get somewhere around 50mpg (dollar equivalent when charging at home) in a full-size truck that fits my whole family and our gear + handles better in the snow than any ICE truck + can do plenty of hauling and light towing.
I think the Lightning is pretty cool but there's about 5 vehicle classes I'd want to buy before "electric pickup"
It could definitely be a niche thing with me squarely in the niche. It was my top pick for our mix of activities in the mountain west.
> The Lightning is expensive but not that much more
Indeed, I paid 50K for mine. The powerboost F150 I had been shopping for was a good bit more expensive.
I've been in the market for an electric truck for a solid 5 years now to replace my aging Nissan Frontier. There has yet to be anything attractive at all that has made it into production at any price I've been able to find. Everything seems to be a gas truck with some electric stuff shoehorned in not taking advantage of the new design opportunities at all, and generally with a little 4' bed instead of 6.5 or 8 that I need. So far the best design I've seen was from the startup Canoo [0, 1], but as is unsurprisingly typically the case with a car startup (a really high capex challenging area) they have since gone bankrupt. The Cybertruck at announcement looked sorta promising, with a decent sized bed (6.5 at the time), decent top range (500 miles), and cab moved forward for better visibility with no engine in the way. And in principle there are some really good fully offline "cyber" sorts of features that an ambitious company could do, like making liberal use of modern screens to enable "look through your hood" and better all around awareness, built-in FLIR for enhanced animal detection at night, etc. A self-parking feature that was really solid would be good too, zero general public road self-driving needed for that to be handy. But of course the Cybertruck ended up downgrading in every respect, having mediocre build quality, being heavily delayed, full of Tesla spyware and stupid shit, and in general being made by a vehicle & power company that oddly doesn't actually seem interested in vehicles or power anymore.
It's frustrating seeing all the potential and then having to wait and wait for somebody to finally execute. Same as with PDAs/smartphones until Apple finally shook things up or countless other examples throughout tech history. Maybe it'll be China who actually does it this time around, and a small silver lining might be that could also go along with some actual anti-feudalism and pro-privacy laws in the US if we're very lucky :\.
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0: https://www.greencars.com/expert-insights/all-electric-all-a...
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzjqfQdj3sM
Why do you need a truck? Serious question, in europe professionals have a van, like the Ford e-transit, and if you just need to haul some stuff from your summerhouse sometimes you hitch a trailer to your car. Why do you need a truck? Couldn’t you buy an electric van instead?
> Why do you need a truck?
To haul dirt. To haul junk out to the dump. Etc.
Do people load their Transits with piles of dirt and mulch? I doubt it.
I live in the US and have a small house in the city, and I haul stuff like this all the time.
Yes, you can rent a pickup truck as needed from U-Haul, but that gets old real quick.
Yes, I would love it if there was a nice small or mid-sized truck with an extended bed available, because most trucks are overkill for my use case.
But this idea that no normal person needs a pickup truck a dozen times a year is just weird.
Landscapers have trucks here too, but they look like this https://iveco.dk/shopping-varktojer/kampagner/MY24-IVECO-Dai...
For personal use, like you mention, people use a small trailer. You own one or borrow it freely from many places, hitch it to your car, haul dirt, and then detach it. No need to drive a truck everywhere because you need to haul some stuff once a month.
> But this idea that no normal person needs a pickup truck a dozen times a year is just weird.
Yet the US is the only country where office workers own trucks. The only real use of a F150 style truck is offroad hauling, which is not something most people have to regularly do.
The split for the rest of the world is: Transit-like van for almost everything in places with real roads, Hilux-sized truck in places without roads and contractors who mostly carry dirt, gravel etc. Only the US and Canada use F150-sized trucks.
> Do people load their Transits with piles of dirt and mulch? I doubt it.
I am from the UK but live in Canada. I only see three types of businesses using those Transit style vans here in North America: food delivery, parcel delivery and landscaping businesses. I assume the landscapers are carrying dirt at least some of the time.
I see carpenters and electricians who trick them out with a little workshop, but that's really it. Landscapers it makes sense because you're hauling equipment and storing it in the van, so you can probably both store more and protect from the elements
The Tacoma has an extended bed version that is on the smaller end of pickups.
Point of order: dirt goes in your dump trailer, hauled of course by your truck.
How far are you going to haul that dirt?
Trucks think only trucks can tow.
I tow a 24 foot boat with an Audi Q7. Reasonably frequently, truck guys say something like "You tow that, with THAT?"
Uh, yeah. 7700 pound tow capacity (nearly as much as a base F150). Tows really well.
> Couldn’t you buy an electric van instead
Not sold (really) in the US. There's the VW electric van but that's more of a gimmick than anything else.
In the US, there's also just a pretty big infrastructure around tooling trucks for professional work. Not that that doesn't exist for vans in the US, it's just somewhat more common to see trucks having full toolsets on the side for quick access with a decent sized bed. The F350 is a major workhorse for that sort of thing.
Ford themselves has the eTransit, and I guess it is mildly popular in a certain segment.
>> "VW electric van but that's more of a gimmick than anything else."
Really? ... I'm seeing them adopted more widely in Europe now by businesses. Perhaps as second hand or lease prices are coming down. Maybe that doesn't translate to the US ...
Quite nostalgic seeing them run around Central London with business signs on their side... much like the originals. My point: not a gimmick in my experience.
They don't sell the Cargo version in North America, and the price is a good chunk more expensive than, say, a Ford Transit or similar cargo van.
I live in rural northern New England, and as well on-road I have plenty of either off road or unmaintained road usage year round, and a number of loads in those conditions that exceed the width of the vehicle (so wouldn't be public road legal). Also equipment and loads that exceed the height of the vehicle (which is road legal if properly secured). In principle a van with sufficient towing capacity and off road capability could use a trailer of some kind for those roles, I have nothing against vans per se, but since I don't need extra "interior space" the bonuses of vans don't help much vs the reduced flexibility and extra complications. I do keep my eye on them too because the line between "truck" and "van" can be fuzzy and if something sorta convertible or with some innovative ways to straddle the sufficient for my purposes came along I'd certainly consider it, but it hasn't been the case yet and the truck form factor is just really handy for making do with a surprise need on the spot far from anything with sufficient straps and bungie cords, without needing any other equipment.
It'd be nice if it could be a reasonable price too and not include a lot of the bling, though I'm perfectly aware a huge percentage of the truck buying audience cares about that a great deal vs having their truck all beat up and just wanting it to go forwards/backwards/left/right on demand reliably with a bunch of random stuff every day. But it'd be good to see anything at all that tried to work with the advantages of electric vs the limitations and both give a good truck experience and improve the experience for others that share the land, like with greatly enhanced visibility and better shapes that enhance safety for pedestrians. Don't need a ginormous engine to have very good torque with electric. I'm hopeful somebody will get there eventually but I guess the path has proven more winding then I'd once thought it'd be, I'd expected the iteration to be going pretty hard and fast by now (in America/EU I mean, it does seem to be moving real quick now in China).
Anyway, hope that gives some answer to your question. Just one solitary data point, I don't mean to do any extrapolation from this to the wider market, but I do actually use my truck pretty hard for truck things. We have compact efficient cars as well though for long distance travel and the like, my truck at least will spend 99% of its time within a 150 mile radius for work or any other use.
On the flip side, as a van owner (though not a professional "working van") ...
1. you don't need straps and bungees for the van - ours can take pipework, framing lumber and other "long" stuff up to 16', straight on the floor, fully interior.
2. you don't need the gate down - it handles 4x8' sheet goods with all the doors closed, either vertical or horizontal
3. security concerns are much better
4. weather concerns are much better
5. for some folks, you can have highly effective work space inside the van (granted, I've seen some loose equivalents on custom work trucks)
6. mileage is generally significantly better
From my POV, the two wins of the truck form factor are (a) easy of loading/unloading bulk material (e.g. the van is 100% useless for gravel) (b) tall loads. That said, I don't think I've ever need to move anything that was too tall for our Sprinter - worst comes to worst, it gets laid down.
That's not a "flip side" just different uses. I said wide as well as tall, not just long. Truck is also useful for loose loads, including that I can put stuff (sand/gravel/soil) directly into the bed from my tractor bucket as well. And the form factor does feel better sometimes too imo. Like, just 3 days ago I moved around 1100 lbs of concrete mix for a small job, and even though I could have fit them into a van in principle for loading/unloading and cleaning of all the nasty dust it's nice just to have a truck bed. Security is whatever here, and I don't think weather is actually much of an impact either since you can easily add a basic cover if you want (and then have it out of the way when unneeded). They're useful and at least in the past could be had pretty utilitarian and cheap. Small little things too, like just plain less volume for environmental control in a no-cab or half-cab vs a full or van, always seemed a little easier/faster to heat up or cool down. But this is all really personal, and as they've turned more and more into show vehicles the value has gotten worse for sure.
I rented a van to move a bed frame and I needed straps.
Not a big deal, but things still slide around in a van.
People buy them _because_ they are ginormous and hostile. It's part of the marketing. Ford could make a pedestrian safe work vehicle but they won't because selfish people love these. Especially when it becomes an arms race when half the population drive them. Oversized vehicles need to be taxed more and regulated properly.
I have heard great things about the Rivian trucks. They seem to have rabidly loyal customers, like the Teslas.
>I have heard great things about the Rivian trucks. They seem to have rabidly loyal customers, like the Teslas
Dead last...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/cars/research/2025/10/24/cons...
And have you seen the stories about fender benders?
https://www.thedrive.com/news/rivian-r1t-fender-bender-turns...
https://axleaddict.com/news/a-small-rivian-r1t-dent-just-cos...
https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/threads/7-months-later-an...
https://insideevs.com/features/669752/rich-rebuilds-rivian-r...
Your linked article does say Rivian ranked first in satisfaction, which does support the GP’s “rabidly loyal.”
Nice catch thx!
From your first fender-bender link: “So a $42,000 rear bumper replacement seems exorbitant, but Apfelstadt says he’s happy with his truck.”
The bed is only 4.5' long. The 5.5' short bed available on an F150 Lightning is too short for me, the ICE F150 with a 6.5' bed at least lets you have flat sheet goods with the tail gate down.
For $70-100K, I'd hope so.
From what I understand, many of these jacked-up compensator trucks cost a similar amount.
I remember when pickups were considerably cheaper than cars, but no more.
Yeah, there's really no reason why something like the Isuzu Elf couldn't be electrified for cheap.
Car manufacturers wanting to make EVs premium products is what I think hurts them the most. That along with tariffs keeping the price of Chinese batteries much higher then they should be.
Given what you need, you should look at a Telo.
https://www.telotrucks.com/
Not launched yet though.
All of these are "not launched yet."
I thought the Slate looked interesting. Then the price started creeping up.
I'll just buy a Ford Ranger or Maverick instead.
From Ford...
Ford Follows Customers to Drive Profitable Growth; Reinvests in Trucks, Hybrids, Affordable EVs, Battery Storage; Takes EV-Related Charges
https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/ford-re...
>As part of this plan, Ford’s next-generation F-150 Lightning will shift to an extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) architecture and be assembled at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan. Production of the current generation F-150 Lightning has concluded as Ford redeploys employees to Dearborn Truck Plant to support a third crew for F-150 gas and hybrid truck production as a result of the Novelis fires.
>The F-150 Lightning is a groundbreaking product that demonstrated an electric pickup can still be a great F-Series,” said Doug Field, Ford’s chief EV, digital and design officer. “Our next-generation Lightning EREV is every bit as revolutionary. It keeps everything customers love — 100% electric power delivery, sub-5-second acceleration — and adds an estimated 700+ mile range and tows like a locomotive. It will be an incredibly versatile tool delivered in a capital-efficient way.
Okay are we just saying they just discontinued one electric F150 in favor of another? Meh.
Edit: Oh, an EREV is fancy way to say "hybrid" ok
>Oh, an EREV is fancy way to say "hybrid" ok
Kind of. EREVs are what locomotives have been doing for a century (and to a lesser extent barges), which is called diesel-electric in that field. I agree the terminology is lacking, but EREVs are quite compelling (and their high market share in China supports consumer demand).
Hybrid: * ICE must run during regular operation (except for ~very short distances at ~very slow speeds) -- this increases operational costs (oil changes, economy, engine designed for torque and wide RPM range). * Complex drivetrain with wheels moved by electric motors and ICE, axles, etc. * Generally 10-40 miles of EV range
EREV: * Basically an EV with a short range, and whenever you want to charge the battery on the go (or use the waste heat from the ICE) it can use an efficient (Atkinson cycle) engine to do so. (Though american EREVs have used poorly suited engines for parts availability and enormous towing numbers) * Generally 50-200 miles of EV range * Think "EV for daily commute; ICE for road trips (and heating)"
IMO EREVs would've been a better development path than hybrids or pure EVs.[0] Immediately lower TCO in various interest rate environments via highly-flexible battery sizes, no cold or range anxiety issues, technically simple drive train and BTMS.
[0] I mean the Prius made a lot of technical strides given the battery technology/costs and familiarity the industry had with ICE at time. Tesla went full EV which is a very optimistic approach, and works well enough if you stick around the charging network, but the batteries are still expensive and heavy compared to a small ICE + tank.
I agree EREVs make a lot of sense, electric first but not requiring a full commitment, especially for a truck that sometimes has to do things like towing.
https://insideevs.com/news/777407/scout-motors-erev-reservas...
I'm sure this wasn't lost on Ford, 80% of Scout reservations come with the EREV and only 20% BEV.
Maybe one day they will have enough volume in the segment to justify making the pure BEV version again but with parts sharing with the EREV. An advantage to EREV design is that if done smartly you can offer the same vehicle stripped down and BOOM you have a BEV too.
The problem with EREVs is they are more complex than a BEV. More parts to go wrong, to purchase, and ultimately a (potentially) higher price.
The reason to do EREVs for a manufacture is, IMO, primarily because they can't get a hold of batteries for a cheap enough price. And I think that's the weakness of the way Ford has attacked EVs. They haven't (AFAIK) really built out battery plants. As a result, they are at the whims of their supplier for their battery packs.
For a truck like the F150, that's a large pack requirement that probably ultimately likely killed their margins.
Edit OK, they've been working on a plant for the last 5 years, but it looks like they've done almost nothing. Like, literally just have some support structs up.
Even if batteries were very cheap, you run into scaling issues where your battery pack ends up very heavy, so then you're using increasingly more energy to lug your heavier battery back around for everything that isn't long-range towing.
One factory was done, and already producing EV batteries. They're converting it to fixed energy storage:
https://www.wdrb.com/news/business/all-1-600-kentucky-batter...
Are they really much more complicated than a hybrid? Think RAV4 Hybrid. I’d much prefer a fully electric drivetrain with an electric generator to the joyless CVT.
I think the term of art in the automotive space so far has been "series hybrid". But like you said, the differentiation here may just be the size of the battery. Series hybrids are still predominantly driven by fossil fuels, even if the drive is an EV drivetrain, due to the battery mainly acting as an energy buffer.
The absolute sweet spot, as someone from a country with long long distances, is a plugin series hybrid that has ~150-300km EV range and a ~60 litre fuel tank. That's getting me to work entirely electric, and then once a month when I need to see family I can chew down the fossil fuels.
EREV is different from diesel-electric in that the EREV has a large battery whereas the diesel-electric locomotive does not. But the "ICE engine drives a generator which drives a motor" philosophy is similar in spirit.
I wonder about the specs though.
I recall the bmw serial hybrid was called a range extender, because the gas motor couldn't actually put out enough energy to drive the vehicle on the freeway.
So basically it was an EV with a small +xx mile extra range from the gas engine.
so no "ice for road trips", more like "ice for an additional +xx miles" then you need to recharge.
In comparison the chevy volt had a better hybrid design (not a serial hybrid) and you could drive it on gasoline only.
is there any good comparison of Hybrid vs EREV efficiency (when main battery is depleted), even with Atkinson cycle ICE for EREV? my understanding was that the main reason for all this complexity in Hybrids was due direct-to-wheel power transfer efficiency, while in EREV there's efficiency loss when converting ICE output to electric current...
I guess you’d call my Chrysler Pacifica an “EREV” then.
It’s honestly perfect for us. 32 miles on a charge, we barely touch the gas except for the winter when it’s so cold out we need the engine to warm us up. Any other time and the battery is all we need, and it charges overnight on a simple 110V wall outlet. Long trips are still possible, you just drive. We go through maybe 8 tanks of gas per year with our occasional long trips (compared to having to stop at a charging station for an hour, I’ll take it.)
There have been no EREVs produced and sold yet AFAIK (though maybe BMW had a version of the i3 that did? I'm not sure). Dodge has one in the works. Ford has now announced one. The old Chevy Volt was philosophically wanting to be an EREV but was as a practical matter still a parallel hybrid.
That version of the i3 definitely is one. Though the way it limits the gas tank and won't let you control it manually in the US for tax purposes sucks.
No. The ICE isn't connected to the drivetrain in an EREV; it's only used to provide power to the EV drive system.
The Pacifica is what you'd call a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) because the ICE is still connected to the drivetrain.
I get that a hybrid is attractive because of the flexibility, but still the change is a strange decision. EVs are simpler to maintain than ICEs, but a hybrid is more complex, it adds the possible EV problems atop possible ICE problems.
Maybe keep the trucks as much they are now, just the essential changes to replace the engine? There's plenty of space on those huge trucks.
I think it's still simpler, actually. IME the most complicated part of an ICE vehicle is the power delivery system. Transmissions are nightmares to work on. Making that all-electric and just using an engine to generate power significantly simplifies the system. I'm not a mechanic though, so take my word with a grain of salt.
My understanding is that going to hybrid actually allowed Toyota to significantly simplify their transmissions relative to ICE vehicles, even without going full EV.
The planetary gear "eCVT" systems that Toyota and Ford use in many models are mechanically a lot simpler than a traditional automatic or sequential manual transmission. Few moving parts and no clutches at all. I don't know what the long term reliability of those drivetrains is is but I wouldn't be surprised if it's measurably measurably better than a traditional transmission + engine. There's a long educational video from Weber State University that gives a good walkthrough of what's going on in those things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O61WihMRdjM
The biggest loss in the EREV in my opinion will be (I assume) the frunk. That has turned out very handy on multiple occasions.
The difference is what is actually powering the wheel. Hybrid is still primarily ICE. EREV is electric motors (with the ICE just charging the batteries).
I literally couldn’t think of a better truck than an EREV. Give me an ICE engine that can haul my trailer into the boondocks knowing I just need a gas station nearby, but can power my trailer off the battery.
I wish if this U.S. administration and U.S. carmakers don't care to promote EVs, that they'd at least let in the Chinese manufacturers that are interested in them.
They view EVs as a moral threat. Can't get cognitive dissonance about your neighbor's dope new EV with perks your new ICE doesn't have, if your neighbor can't get EVs either. Loads of examples of "this is worse, so we're going to make it worse, so we're sure that it is worse".
I wish my ev has dope perks... too bad California is dead set on making EV charging more expensive then gas lol.
Yeah, I was being a bit glib about that part.
IMO, the biggest perk is dependent on the ability to charge at home. If you can, then the price per mile is about half (if Google is right that California rates are about $0.30/kWh) or less than for an ICE. But even if the $/mile were equal, never needing to visit a gas station again is itself the biggest perk.
And sure there are people for whom an EV won't meet their range needs, but probably way fewer than think that's the case for them.
It’s closer to 0.40-0.70c/kwh. My lowest rate is $0.40c/kwh and that goes away insanely fast just doing almost nothing. PGE is criminally priced in CA. I get maybe 200kwh before it jumps to $0.50/kwh rate and will keep jumping.
I don’t have AC. I don’t have anything. That’s just a fridge, computer, and a little bit of cooking. Genuinely have no idea how I even hit 10kwh/day because I have nearly nothing on in this place.
>But even if the $/mile were equal, never needing to visit a gas station again is itself the biggest perk.
I maybe fuel up once a month unless I'm doing a road trip. It isn't that big a deal.
Charge at home, that’s the whole point. My F150 lightning costs about $14 in electric charges a month for about 600 miles on average.
Home electricity in California is about 45¢/kWh. If your F150 mileage is typical, you're getting about 2 miles per kWh. 600 miles would cost about $135 here in California. Meanwhile, a 20 mpg gas car would cost about $110/month at $3.65/gallon.
You must be paying about 4.7 cents per kWh, or about 90% less than you'd pay here.
That's only certain parts of California, right? I mean, a big part, but definitely not all of it. PG&E is a tire fire, I feel bad for you guys.
Everywhere I can reach with an extension cord. :)
7c/kWh, 11c/kWh at peak hours
Those prices are wild.
They also view the Chinese as a moral threat. They'd rather set the country on fire than cede the territory that small Chinese EVs could take (which, given current American consumer preferences, would likely be rather small.
>> they'd at least let in the Chinese manufacturers that are interested in them.
China's anti-market tactics in EV/battery supply-chain past 15 years haven't exactly helped promote EVs outside China -- they are now countervailed not only in the US, but also the EU, Canada, Turkiye; even in China-friendly nations, such as Brazil and Russia now are imposing restrictions on Chinese EV imports. Not very realistic.
What anti-market tactics? My understanding is they poured money over the whole market in a way that helped it grow faster, but didn't pick winners and doesn't subsidize the current pricing.
Yeah this is an outdated talking point, because people can’t accept how far ahead Chinese auto are. They now just have a more advanced, innovative & competitive auto industry, with little subsidies.
subsidies ended in 2022 https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-cut-new-energy-veh...
Don't like posting a long comment, but re-posting a high-level chronological view of the problems past 15 years:
1) forced technology transfer/IP theft -- all foreign automakers/EV battery producers forced to give up IP to access China's market (and subsidies). This was litigated before the WTO by the EU in 2018 (see WT/DS549):
2) Once foreign battery producers made IPR/IP concessions to access China's growing EV market and significant investment in battery production in China, they were effectively banned. All domestic, foreign automakers were likewise forced to switch to local champions, namely CATL/BYD, promoted under MIIT's 2015 "Regulation on the Standards of the Automotive Power Battery Industry”: 3) Picking winners and losers: made sure no Chinese consumers had access to EVs with batteries from foreign EV battery producers effectively creating a captive market of buyers for CATL/BYD. 4) another fairly recent example of China's arbitrary regulatory barriers to keep out foreign competition, which was later dropped after the gov't found out their local "champion," CATL, couldn't pass the EV battery safety test: Then, you also have China weaponizing their EV raw-material supply-chain, such as EV-grade graphite used as battery's anode material. China torpedo'ed Swedish battery company, Northvolt, with an export ban in 2020 because Sweden protected Chinese dissidents and called out human rights violation. Northvolt went bankrupt last year.re: subsidies. China's consumer direct purchase subsidy ended in Dec 2022, but was extended again as tax credit for another 4 years in Jun 2023. Just to be sure though, there are many other subsidies besides the consumer subsidies at every layer of China's EV/battery supply-chain. The EU's anti-subsidy probe last year (see Regulation 2024/1866) for instance evolved around "export subsidies."
1) I'm unsure if that's more anti or pro market to be honest.
2,3) Okay, yes, half-separating China from the rest of the world is anti-market. But then they did a lot inside the country that was pro-market. With a population of over a billion, I don't consider that picking winners.
4) That's obnoxious of them but doesn't really affect what I was saying.
subsidies) I was unaware of extensions, and I thought the supply chain subsidies were already gone? But okay, let's assume this is accurate, 17% duty on BYD. Man. As I've said before when Trump was talking about 25% on everything, I wish the US was putting 25% tariffs on Chinese EVs instead of whatever dumb number it is.
1) anti-market. China was likewise taken to the WTO in 2018 and agreed to end their restriction on market access/forced tech transfer, implemented in 2020/2021. Tesla is however still the only foreign automaker operating without a forced JV to this date.
2) restricting market access (and subsidies) to foreign automakers isn't exactly pro-market -- especially to those who were already in China and manufacturing products that local "champions" weren't able to mass-produce. All domestic, foreign Automakers forced to source inferior, yet also costlier, batteries. ie, anti-market.
3) demonstrates Chinese consumers wanted GM Velites with LG, but their choice was denied. Limiting 1.5B consumers' choice in the name of promoting national "champions"? anti-consumer and anti-market. Definitely picking winners and loser, or foreign over domestic.
4) just another example of arbitrary safety regulation restricting market access to foreign companies. ie, anti-market.
re: subsidies. China's EV subsidies have been around since 2009; renewed/extended every 2-4 years. That's also in addition to provisional subsidies thrown around time to time, eg, ICE-to-EV conversion subsidies between May-Dec 2024 to prop up slowing EV sales.
EU is quite silly with countervailing measures against China's dumping/anti-subsidies. Despite 100+ ACTIVE counter measures, the EU Commission still think the targeted approach against China's anti-market/mercantile practices can work. The EU should also consider imposing country-specific tariff rate of 100%, akin to Biden's tariff.
China's export ban against Sweden has shown that their NEV initiatives aren't really aimed at addressing environmental problem or benefiting their population.
1) Getting in trouble doesn't make it anti-market. If you give stolen data to enough companies, you encourage competition more than you hinder it.
2) Restricting subsidies reduces the pro-market effect, but overall providing subsidies to such a big number of companies was pro-market.
3) Yes that's anti-market but when you're splitting up such a big market into two still very big markets it's not hugely anti-market.
4) It exposes corrupt motives more than it actually affects the market.
1) it was anti-market and that's why they were taken to the WTO, not the other around. This violation is also explicitly spelt out in Section 7 Non-Tariff Measures of China's 2001 WTO Accession Protocol. Not sure what point you are making with "stolen data," but subsidies must be given to all or none -- no picking winners or losers. The key idea here is a level playing field.
2) Restricting subsidies to some, but not others based on "local" vs "foreign"?-- ie, anti-market. All NEV subsidies were further conditioned on using Chinese batteries by local Chinese battery "champions" only to funnel them back to local battery industry is an industrial policy, definitely anti-market and anti-consumer.
3) what "two" markets? We are talking strictly about China's internal EV market and the Chinese gov't's anti-market policies; not the rest of the the World.
4) Sure, and the Chinese govt makes the "market regulation" in China. China's NEV market is likewise anti-market, anti-consumer, and corrupt.
1) Let me make a hypothetical. If you take tech from 2 companies and give it to 50 companies, that is both pro-market and something you will get sued for and lose.
2) You seem to be refusing to acknowledge that some actions have mixed consequences. Having many of those subsidies helped the market. Restricting them hurt the market compared to not restricting them. You can't look at just the restrictions to make the judgement, you have to look at the whole picture. Without the restrictions, they wouldn't have enacted the same subsidies.
3) If we're looking at just the internal market, then those policies made many more companies prosper and compete. I don't see how you can possibly say that they hurt the internal Chinese market! The EV market internal to China is far stronger than it would have been if the Chinese government sat there and did nothing.
There have been many demonstrations that F150, cybertruck, and others have short ranges when loaded and even shorter ranges when towing (I saw sub 40 miles on a full charge claimed by some people).
If you use your truck as a truck, that’s simply not feasible. If you just use it as expensive transportation, you probably still try to convince yourself by thinking about how you might use it as a truck sometimes and won’t buy an electric truck either.
There’s not much of a market, so leaving makes sense.
> I saw sub 40 miles on a full charge claimed by some people
I've seen some people claim the earth is flat, too! That 40 miles figure had 0 connection to reality
> There’s not much of a market, so leaving makes sense.
Let's be honest, most people who have trucks don't use them for work and towing
> sub 40 miles on a full charge claimed by some people
See, that's what you get for believing whatever you read on the internet that confirms what you already wanted to believe.
Back in reality, towing does demolish the range, you end up around 1.0 to 1.2 miles per kWh if you put a travel trailer behind a Lightning. Normal 70-75 mph driving is about 2.0 miles/kWh. Around town, depending on your habits, it's 3.5-4 mi/kWh. The battery is 131 kWh. So range can very quite a lot based on your current activity, but someone who told you sub-40 miles was jerking your chain (or had their own motivation for lying).
I think the issue is that the administration is in an adversarial relationship with China. Risky to allow a foreign power have a kill switch on critical infrastructure.
Just to clarify: We accept the security risk of kill switches in networking equipment, smartphones, laptops, servers, clouds, processors, bluetooth firmware and nvidia driver blobs, but we draw the line at civillian cars?
And in contrast to the listed items above, for civillian cars you can choose from dozens of countries who produce them. And if you cannot accept security risk of owning a "kill switch" car then you can still go back to gasoline or diesel.
I feel it's crazy to collectively accept security risks in vital electric equipment but suddenly cars are the one product that becomes a political issue. An unlike cars there are very limited alternatives with electrical equipment.
This doesn’t seem that crazy to me - a broadly applicable coordinated OTA zero day applied across cars during US rush hours has the potential to result in likely hundreds of thousands of deaths in a few hours if safety critical systems like airbags can be tampered/inhibited by OTA-capable systems.
The scale of car travel plus the inherent kinetic energy involved make a correlated risk particularly likely to lead to a mass casualty event. There are very few information system vulnerabilities with that magnitude of short-term worst case outcome.
Sure but you could just nuke us too, given that the response to a mass civilian death event would be the same. Same reason the US would be foolish to destroy the Three Gorges Dam.
It doesn't need to be a mass civilian death event. They can wait, collect data and kill 90% of our most important soldiers, heads of state, spies and everyone needed to maintain critical sectors of our economy. They could kill everyone who is anti-china. They could kill all the members of one political party (any one) as a false flag and cause a civil war.
Surveillance technology is nessisarially selective, so these "all or nothing" hypotheticals do not apply.
See also "slaughterbots". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
Nonsense, if that's the goal the countries are at war and you have to worry about nukes, not your car being switched off.
I'd expect HN crowd to be smarter than nonsense security propaganda, yet it seems to work.
There was already a million vehicle recall for a vulnerability that allowed remote control of safety features (steering/breaking/acceleration control) that could be abused by anyone with a sprint mobile sim.
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2015/RCRIT-15V461-4869.pdf
.... and the second US civil war starts up and one side has hacked into the automobile kill switches ...
"security" and "war" come in all sizes and shapes. Even inter-national warfare can be of the "cold" variety, in which nobody is nuking anybody else, but making automobiles randomly unreliable could be extremely effective (for a while, anyway).
Not really convinced by your argument. If you want to achieve your scenario you just take a sysadmin from the Tesla shanghai plant and next time they go to the US HQ they gain access to a coworkers laptop and deploy an OTA update to the tesla fleet. And this is assuming that the Tesla OTA update deployment mechanism is actually separated between countries, and not simply accessible from the Tesla intranet.
No need to design & ship another low-cost car model for this.
The security risk of backdoors in your IT may drive you crazy, but backdoors in your car may drive you off a bridge.
I agree with your point. But cars are the last line of defense, and they are technology most people understand. With computers, you can just unplug them at the end of the day. A backdoor in a car or a drone or something just kills you.
Cars are not critical infrastructure, also, the idea that China would turn off their EVs or starting to use them as weapons from the other side of the world is borderline absurd.
Occam's razor suggests that the simplest solution is the most probable: they are scared of the competition, because they know that if those cars enter the market they will dominate it.
> Cars are not critical infrastructure
Their production infrastructure is.
> the idea that China would turn off their EVs or starting to use them as weapons from the other side of the world is borderline absurd
Is it? If we got into a shooting match with Beijing, would we not try to hijack Tesla’s OTA features to disrupt their economy?
If that's a normal thing to do, why aren't we hijacking russian teslas right now? Why haven't we made Microsoft push an OTA update to windows to bluescreen all military PCs in Russia? Why haven't we made Google and Apple push Android/iOS updates that cause all phones in Russia to crash?
I'm confident that even if at war with China, the US would not hijack random civilian cars, yes. That's absolutely absurd.
> why aren't we hijacking russian teslas right now
You mean Ukrainian Teslas. We are currently on Russia's side.
The issue is that the administration is in an adversarial relationship with “woke”. That EVs and renewable energy somehow fall into this category is one of the dumbest parts of this timeline.
No one in top comments is mentioning a key point. It was cheap looking.
How the truck looks is important. Outside the bottom end of market, it's a status symbol. I got a tundra TRD earlier this year and I've gotten multiple compliments on it because it's a good looking truck.
The F150 lightning looked cheap. The grill is this crappy plastic. And there was no upgrade feature to make it cooler.
If they had the option to make it look like the Raptor or one of their higher end F150s, it may have sold better.
It doesn't need a grille at all. There's a trunk in the front.
Meh, it just looks like any other truck to me. It even has a sprinkle of the silly "wow very technology!" aesthetic pandering that's typical of EVs. But plenty of strong-selling EVs do that (see: Hyundai).
But you're right! An electric pickup truck is a status symbol, but an F-150 isn't a status symbol. The F-150 brand, and the blue oval itself, is associated with being an appliance. The branding is at odds with the starry-eyed futurism that drives EV sales.
Don't get me wrong, plenty of folks buy F-150s and Rams and Silverados who don't need them. But, those people are cosplaying their imaginary blue-collar grandfathers. An electric car goes against that retrospective way of thinking.
As for folks who actually need a pickup for practical reasons, they don't want a Lightning. Ford doesn't sell it with an 8 foot bed. Every time you get plywood or drywall or whatever, it's gonna hang out the back. Can't wait to see the look on your face when a ladder falls over onto the hood of your $75,000 truck.
> It even has a sprinkle of the silly "wow very technology!" aesthetic pandering that's typical of EVs.
I've never heard it referred to that way, but you nailed the description.
The Toyota Silverado? The Chevy Tundra?
I can't get over how much Toyota fashioned their trucks after GM. Tacoma is a spitting image of the Colorado.
I'd still buy a Toyota before a GM 10/10.
I think that trucks are in worst position for moving to EV.
Customer base is quite conservative in how the truck should look like. For example,F150 lightning had to look like F150.
While a look of truck (and even ordinary car) is defined by the function - need to have beefy, but somewhat serviceable/accessible engine in the front. There is no need for this in the ev truck like at all. It's all dead space now.
I suspect that proper EV trucks eventually will look like current box-over-engine trucks (similar to kei trucks). Like Super crew truck with standard bed will probably have the same dimensions as current short bed truck, with better turn radius. But it won't look cool, and probably have the same stigma as minivans.
So, one of the main reasons it needs to look like a truck is because it needs to have a structure like a truck to be compatible with basically all of the aftermarket parts.
I want a truck with flat bed rails so I can put a cap on it. It needs to have a proper frame under the bed so it’s not bending with point loads.
I need a bed that’s a separate piece from the cab so they have flex for uneven grades.
> It's all dead space now.
Yeah, it's one of my favorite spaces in the whole truck. A great big trunk protected from the elements and not part of my passenger compartment. I hope we always have that feature.
FWIW, plenty of work trucks in lots of Companies are boring Vans or Pickups...
Even so, the issue comes to fit for use, cost (initial, ongoing), repairability and value. The F-150 Lightning only checked the fit for use box, since parts backlogs made it unrepairable for potentially months. The initial cost was okay at initial list price, but the actual price for purchase after dealer gouging and the factory raising prices through the roof was kind of insane... on top of a minor fender bender keeping your truck off the road an excessive amount of time killed a lot of momentum.
https://archive.ph/k2S9O for those who have read their last free article.
Interesting that Rivian seems to be doing fine in this space.
I was considering getting a Rivian and decided that in fact I would probably not allow the 24 year old dude at my local construction supply co to use a skid steer to drop a load of gravel into the bed of my $75k+ electric vehicle.
So instead I got a used Ford F150 (gas) and when the skid steer guy drops gravel into the bed I feel fine.
There is a lot to be said for that perspective. I wonder if any PMs have considered making the bed of the truck a FRU that you can swap out at home.
The bed of more traditional pickups like the F-150 can be swapped out in a couple of hours by one or two dudes with a lift and an impact wrench. Heck, you can buy blank F-250s without a bed at all.
Hell, a few hours with that impact wrench and you can also lift the cab right off the frame, too.
Anything can be field replaceable if your field has enough tooling. (j/k)
A modular open spec for attaching beds to trucks might be useful.
What are some possible attachments?
4-6.5' Truck Bed, Trailer, Camper, Mobile Workshop / Trade Rig, Car hauler, Bed with rack and storage and 270° awning
What all needs to be connected?
Mechanical attachment, 4WD/AWD/RWD axle and differential, CAN bus, backup can, lights
Public link: Open Truck Bed Standard Proposal https://gemini.google.com/share/1e70ae398d26 :
"Kinetic-Link" (K-Link) open spec:
> The proposed Active-AWD Trade Platform utilizes a Through-the-Road (TTR) Hybrid architecture to decouple the mechanical drivetrain while maintaining synchronized propulsion via a Vehicle Control Unit (VCU). By integrating high-topology Axial Flux or Radial-Axial (RAX) in-wheel motors, the system achieves exceptional torque density within the limited packaging of a trailer wheel well. The control strategy relies on Zero-Force Emulation, utilizing a bi-directional load cell at the hitch to modulate torque output via a PID loop, ensuring the module remains neutrally buoyant to the tow vehicle during steady-state cruising. In low-traction environments, the system transitions to Virtual AWD, employing Torque Vectoring to mitigate sway and Regenerative Braking to prevent jackknifing, effectively acting as an intelligent e-Axle retrofit. This configuration leverages 400V/800V DC architecture for rapid energy discharge and V2L (Vehicle-to-Load) site power, solving the unsprung weight damping challenges through advanced suspension geometry while eliminating the parasitic drag of traditional passive towing.
A modular truck bed could have Through-the-road TTR AWD (given a better VCU) and e.g. hub motors or an axle motor.
There's always a chance the new Scout will fit that model. I'm not getting my hopes up though. It seems every company that releases an EV truck says they'll sell it for $30-40k and then suddenly it's $80k+.
And I hope they eat Ford's lunch.
Wild time—seeing the country in full retrograde—back to the Middle Ages it seems.
I hope that Rivian does fine, but they still aren't profitable are they?
They turned a gross profit, but they've only been selling vehicles for three years. It'll be several more before they are a profitable company. No company can build out two manufacturing hubs (hundreds of millions each) and turn a profit so quickly.
Looking forward to the R2 and hopefully all goes smoothly.
They are a luxury brand. I don't think that they directly compete with Fords. I do see a lot of them here in SoCal.
The comments in this thread are far more interesting than the article. It really shows why selling EV's in America is difficult, especially in the pickup segment I think. The amount of arguments that are clearly just justifying an opinion held without ever actually considering an alternative is unusual for this forum.
It appears America is not ready for electrical pickups. Maybe other markets will be more eager for them?
America is the pickup market.
Europe doesn't do pickups.
Article says the next F-150 Lightning will be an EREV-style plugin hybrid. Which, if so, makes a lot of sense. EVs are great, but not so much for trucks.
I was always bothered about how cars were either supposed to be all electric or all ICE. Working together is the smart way forward.
I wonder if it's hybrid electric is super old tech and manufacturers can't have a monopoly on it or something?
Hybrids have been powering heavy industry and locomotives for the past 100 years or so, it seems like a perfect first step towards mass electrification of vehicles. Plus I imagine it'd be possible to swap the engine for more batteries as that tech improves.
Remains to be seen if it’s smart - personally I think erev is going to be obsoleted very quickly by batteries getting better and cheaper. You can already buy 1000v 5min charging EVs in china, as well as semi-solid state batteries. And the batteries get cheaper year on year, relentlessly.
EREVs are a way better idea than the lie of PHEVs, but their time in the market is still limited. I wouldn’t be making that bet as an auto manufacturer , unless I had protectionism to hide behind.
Chevy Volt my beloved
Which wasn't actually an EREV. They wanted it to be, but it was more efficient not to.
BMW i3 is a true EREV and I absolutely love it. Always drives like an electric, but can pound highway miles on gas. Best of both worlds. I hope to never go back to pure one or the other, until battery and/or charging tech leaps forward a ton.
Lots of speculation in this thread. Not a lot of talk about the international market where Ford has been mostly a no-show with the F-150 lightning. Internationally, Toyota and BYD are starting to dominate the electric truck market. The electric Hilux is launching next year and the BYD Shark is doing well in e.g. Australia and Mexico. That's a range extended vehicle similar to the new F-150 sold at an aggressive price point. There are a few other Chinese vendors getting ready to market their vehicles as well. It's a popular car type across South America, Africa, Australia, etc. And Toyota used to dominate that market. The market clearly exists and it's rapidly electrifying.
Internationally the trend is actually towards battery electric vehicles that are more affordable than their ICE or hybrid equivalents. If such non electric models are available at all. That's becoming true for a growing number of cars in especially the EU, Australian, or Asian markets. The cheapest cars in the EU are electric at this point. There's a growing number of cars priced well below 20K Euro. And not just from China. 2025 saw a few models for which that was true. 2026 will feature a lot more.
How is this possible? Batteries are now cheap. Electric motors were never that expensive. And the rest of the car is what it always was a bunch of wheels, window wipers, and other components. The cheapest car is the simplest car. That's going to be an electric one from 2026 onward.
Why did the F-150 electric flop? It was more expensive than the petrol variant. You have to pay a very steep premium for them. Ford never really figured out how to source cheap batteries. And even at that steep premium they never figured out profitability. It seems they are getting out of battery joint ventures even and reducing investment. They are giving up and ceding the market to others. Just as others are figuring this market out and are proving it is real.
Technically, if they ever wanted to make a cheaper version of this new range extended truck, all they'd have to do is junk the range extender and cram the vehicle full of cheap LFP batteries. As much as they can get away with. But that would require that they figure out how to source/make cheap batteries. Clearly that's not a problem that is solved in the US yet. They might get back to this topic in a few years.
Great news! We just started seeing theese dangerous huge ass US trucks on the streets in Norway the last year or so. The non-electric versions were priced out of market due to the emissions they put out.
How much of the aluminum supplier issue played into this?
>As Ford Authority recently reported, an aluminum plant in New York, owned and operated by Ford supplier Novelis, recently suffered its third fire since September, making many wonder if the facility was still on track to reach full-scale production by December. Turns out, that is indeed the case, but in the meantime, there's no denying that Ford F-150 production has been impacted - which is also true of several other Blue Oval models.
I still think that if they'd released an electric Ford Maverick sized pickup instead of the monstrosity that is the Lightning, they would have done much better, but everyone had to run after the story Elon was spinning with the Cybertruck, and unsurprisingly, they are similarly unsuccessful.
Wow, I was under the impression that these were selling incredibly well.
I started to appreciate Ford's strategy recently after they lost my faith after they killed off sedans in the US. I'm now confused again by the company's strategy
As with all but a few EV manufactures [1], they were losing money each sale ( >$30k)[2].
[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/only-four-ev-brands-are-pr...
[2] https://www.theautopian.com/ford-lost-36000-for-every-electr...
They were not losing money on each sale, that's silly. Your article is counting the entire EV R&D budget and extrapolating. For every Lightning they sold, the margins improved. They just did not sell enough of them to make the overall venture profitable.
The only two car companies to make any meaningful profit on EVs were founded as EV companies first?
That’s not that surprising. It’s very hard to make elephants dance.
If that remains true it means all these auto companies will be dead in 25 years, or eternally strung along on government support.
If there were no tariffs or other market barriers I get the impression that BYD would bulldoze the entire world and there would be one car maker with >80% of the market.
This video here describes why BYD is so competitive: They have done a splendid job vertically integrating as much as they can to get the price down. This $11,500 EV is an excellent example of how other companies should start to shift their thinking.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izvdO-zdlKg
Yeah, the problem is that the tariffs are letting our carmakers just become unproductive, uncompetitive leeches on the American consumer. They're getting lapped by China/BYD.
Once BYD bulldozes the rest of the world, our domestic manufacturers are guaranteed to fail.
100% on BYD ... no one can match their current technology and pricing power. And it's possible they still will do that bulldozing, but much more slowly. Even now I'm seeing strong swapping out of Tesla's for BYD's in London.
Sales drove off a cliff. The larger problem is that Ford has lost multiples of tens of billions trying to do EV's.
> Ford has lost multiples of tens of billions trying to do EVs.
To the observer, Ford has done nothing right in recent years except to build combustion F150s for US buyers.
It's a shame they didn't ship an EV that fit the uses the F-150 serves. The Lightening is a luxury item. The F-150 is a tool, regardless of whether it's ICE or EV. I hope this puts more people in the market for the Slate truck. It won't serve everyone with an ICE F-150 but I suspect a bunch of farm and ranch vehicles that don't do many highway miles could be Slates.
>Ford expects to record about $19.5 billion in special items with the majority in the fourth quarter.
It is believed that this is the largest impairment ever from a company.
In addition to the AOL mentioned elsewhere -
1. GE took a $22B impairment in 2018.
2. Shell took a $22B write down in 2020.
3. ConocoPhillips incurred a $34B impairment in 2009.
It's such an absurd number that I strongly suspect Ford is taking this opportunity to play some accounting games.
If it is a real number, then I am darkly amused at how much money they could lose and still only make three EVs.
It's believed by whom?
I think AOL Time Warner still has the record at over $50 billion, unless you're talking about some specific form of impairment.
CNBC
So they’re not killing the lightning, they’re adding a range extender? I guess that’s not gonna get as many clicks, but it hardly seems controversial given market reception of the current lighting (basically everyone who wanted one bought one and then sales tanked).
Yes, they're killing the Lightning. They are replacing it with a new Lightning EREV, there will not be a BEV version. It's not just a new option they are bringing to the existing truck.
How much are they actually changing though? We could imagine they take literally the same design and stick a generator in the corner. Making that mandatory would not be "killing" the Lightning. At the other end is a total redesign that cuts most of the battery, which would be killing it.
The Maverick used to be the truck but they've jacked it by like almost twice the price since debut. With so much "upmarket momentum" the e-F150's days were numbered.
Now I'm sitting here wondering when we'll get another small Ford truck again. This same exact story played out with the Ranger and the decades without a smaller option sucked then too.
> Now I'm sitting here wondering when we'll get another small Ford truck again. This same exact story played out with the Ranger...
It's so bizarre to me because the Ranger used to be small. But then they became the size that an F-150 used to be (i.e. sane truck size), while the F-150 became enormous. Supposedly it's due to perverse incentives from regulation, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a smaller truck if that is indeed the case.
I'm not sure which dimensions you're talking about, but in terms of bed size the F-150 has been very consistent over the years (although I think Crew Cabs — although they always existed — have become more popular). The Ranger still cannot fit a full sized sheet of plywood flat in the bed.
Quick research: the new Ranger's bed size has only increased 0.9" (width) relative to the 1990 version. Bed length seems to be the same.
Everything except the bed size has grown enormously on modern consumer trucks. Nowadays truck beds look proportionally tiny compared to trucks from 20-30 years ago when the bed made up a much larger percent of the vehicle.
Ford knows their market. Most F-150 buyers aren't looking for a functional truck, they want a comfortable commuter car that looks like a cool truck.
You are looking at the wrong thing, look at overall vehicle dimensions.
1995 Ford Ranger Extended Cab - 3200+ lbs - 198" long - 69" wide - 6' bed
2023 Ford Ranger Super Cab (last year they had a 2 door) - 4100+ lbs - 210" length - 73" width - 6' bed
1000 lbs heavier, a foot longer, a few extra inches wide, with the same size bed.
https://www.edmunds.com/ford/ranger/2023/supercab/features-s... https://www.edmunds.com/ford/ranger/1995/extended-cab/st-754...
The 1998 ranger was the right size. 6 ft bed while not being monstrously sized.
The new rangers have the height of the old F150 which makes their beds look just weird.
The standard size f150 bed can't fit a standard 4'x8' sheet of plywood
It never could. An 8 foot bed has always been optional.
Can confirm. I have a 2020 F150 with a standard box. No way am I fitting a sheet of plywood flat.
I bought one of the first 2022 Maverick Hybrids and took delivery in January 2022. At the time my build came in at MSRP of $25k (+ tax). I just built the closest equivalent on the Ford website (several standard features then are options now) and it came out to >$34k. Not double, but that feels like whole different price category for the same truck in 4 years.
They've jacked the base price up from ~21k to ~27k. Certainly not almost twice the price.
Plug-in Hybrid with a small engine for charging purposes probably makes the most sense at the moment, although full electric is sexy, the range anxiety is real.
I bought some LiFePo power packs this summer. They are just 1kWh things, the size and mass of a crate of beer but having a power pack with mains voltage output is mind bending. Suddenly you can do all sorts of things you never could do before. It feels as bizarre as it might feel going camping with a magic tap that has permanent running water, or to have a bag of rice that never empties. I set up a tent with a household table lamps. It felt both weird and exciting.
The electric F-150 promised to be 100x and it was very appealing. It would have been a vehicle that was also a mobile untethered power station, and much more capable one than my power pack or even a mains outlet. Presumably with the right connections you could drain the battery at the same rate as the wheel motors. What could you do with a mobile 100+kW electricity supply? Brushless (corded) chainsaw, mobile log splitter, and charge my phone!
It’s a world I’m looking forward to. More utility EVs please.
These kind of vehicles, electric or not, should be killed or taxed heavily simply because they are the epitome of hostile individualism. They're designed to be a fist on wheels and it's known that they run people over.
I’ll never buy a Ford after dealing with a dealership during the pandemic pricing (sold my pre-order to the highest bidder).
I would imagine for 80% of truck owners, having an electric truck is fine. However, if you are towing or carrying heavy loads, they are a bad choice. I suspect most F-150 drivers barely ever do these sorts of things. I have an F-150 but do use it to tow my travel trailer on vacation.
> However, if you are towing or carrying heavy loads, they are a bad choice.
given the testing that has been done on this it's the aerodynamics that matter more than the weight.
> I suspect most F-150 drivers barely ever do these sorts of things
I would suspect that most of these oversized "angry boy" utes only ever see a non sealed surface when they're driving to park on footpaths.
> given the testing that has been done on this it's the aerodynamics that matter more than the weight.
At highway speeds with minimal need for acceleration.
Trouble is, while most truck drivers pretty much never tow or drive off road, most of them imagine that they will, so the truck still needs to be capable of it in order to sell. Or at least needs to appear capable.
>However, if you are towing or carrying heavy loads, they are a bad choice
The thing has 800 lb-ft of torque, it has absolutely no problem towing or pulling heavy stuff.
The issue is if you need to tow stuff long distances. That's where is becomes a headache. But bringing your huge boat 30 miles to the lake will be no issue.
The vast majority of pickup truck owners in America don't use the capabilities enough to make them worth the purchase; the phenomenon is mostly cultural.
> cultural
Specifically for the American male, the F-150 is a form of gender expression and gender affirming transportation.
> cultural
I think you misspelled marketing
Right. "You aiyunt no real mayun if you ain't got a brodozer like ur neighbor, Todd - who has a crappy truck from our competitor, anyways". It seems to work, the sportsball people with desk jobs love them (they get exposed to a lot of ads).
(I'm not against pickup trucks when actually needed, but most of the time an enclosed van is better for the trades - and when heavy lifting is needed, it's better to bring in actual big trucks. For all other times, Home Depot rents them by the hour).
I bought an F-150 last year and compared the lightening to their new Hybrid-Powerboost models. The hybrid was better in every single way. I have the same 30amp generator hookup in the bed of the truck, but instead of finding a charger to refuel the truck I can simply put another 25gallons in the tank and head to another job/project.
If they hadn't made the hybrid truck so effective the lightning would have had a chance. I get around 20+mpg on average with a ~600lb load always in the bed.
The powerboost is one of the least reliable cars on the market, way below typical F150s. It doesn't have quite the same level of pro power capacity as the Lightning, but it's close.
But the Lightning outperforms it dramatically. There isn't anything short of a tuned powerstroke that pulls like a Lightning.
Hard disagree: https://photos.app.goo.gl/4ebBSjmfouGjcGqm9
That is one truck
Maybe it is just me, but the “universal” platform architecture seems a bit inefficient. I think, with a software-first mindset and modularity in Hardware products, it is insane to think efficiency first, especially when the goal is to make it cheaper to produce and operate.
Its speed of execution. Tesla made designs and parts common across Model3/Y and BYD are excellent at this. However Tesla/BYD seem to move at the speed of a silicon valley company while legacies keep thinking in Model years. You can't do that in an era where the tech is rapidly evolving.
I have not once followed a link to Wired without it saying "You’ve read your last free article."
Is the limit supposed to be zero?
I remembering thinking it was a curious choice. The demo for consumer F150s often doesn’t even like electric vehicles. On the commercial side the electric version is obviously limited.
I've said this before: if you go to Beijing or any developed city in China, you'll be amazed by their progress on EV's. It's on a scale beyond America, that America is no longer capable of achieving.
Time will tell of their sustainability.
That is a disappointment. I was hoping that they would be introducing a new smaller EV truck in either the Maverick or Ranger line. I have no need for a large truck when something half the size handles all the hauling/towing I need.
Ditto. I'm a current Ranger owner, now seriously considering the Slate if it actually ever makes it to market.
I know they're marketing on price, but they really whiffed not offering AWD on that thing. Living in the Northwest, that's a total dealbreaker both from a skiing perspective and a getting-to-work-when-it-snows perspective.
> Ford still plans to produce a midsize electric pickup truck with a target starting price of about $30,000, to be available in 2027. That will be the first of the “affordable” electric vehicle models it’s currently designing at a skunkworks studio in California, which are slated to use a “universal” platform architecture that will make the vehicles cheaper to produce.
Wish granted?
I wonder how many people will be scared off by them killing off the lightning pretty quickly.
I'm in the market for an EV truck but none of the current offerings have made me want to pull the trigger, and my 10 year old ICE truck keeps chugging along just fine so far.
That’s too bad, I love my lightning. I spend about $20/month on home charging, love the acceleration and it’s good enough to haul all the things I need for my small farm.
Also, it’s great for long distance recreational drives (from a very specific perspective)- I like driving 250-300 miles in a day and then parking at an RV spot for the night instead of a hotel room. I can run the heat and AC all night as well as have a “full tank” ready to go.
I would've loved to get a lightning when we replaced the farm truck this year. If would've been great to be able to charge it while our solar array was pumping out power. But the price on those things is eye wateringly high. We got a gas f150 for about half the price of the lightning. I'm not sure who they were trying to sell those to, to be honest.
I got my extended range for $51,000
Hello fellow Flash owner. I assume (that's basically what I paid for my 2024 Flash; I was a little under that, but close enough).
2023 ER Pro actually
Most campgrounds I’ve seen here (Northern California) explicitly say you can’t charge your EV in RV spots.
Ah, maybe they’re catching on then. I haven’t run across one yet.
It's less a matter of "catching on" here, and more that if they get too many EV chargers in campground spots, breakers start tripping.
That seems to be the right direction in my opinion.
We simply need an engineering generation of 50 mile range PHEV vehicles. It will get a huge percentage of low-efficiency driving electrified, won't be too big of a burden on the grid, educate more people on EV-style driving, adds regen braking, should still be able to provide high-torque towing and driving.
Yeah, Ford makes the F-150 Powerboost which is a hybrid version, but no plugin capability. I'd love to see a 50 mile plug in hybrid version of their truck line (Maverick, Ranger, F150)
So basically a return of the Chevy Volt? I drive one for about 5 years before I went full EV and I could do about 80% of my driving on all electric.
Not surprising. For what it cost you could get a Model Y and a gently used gas truck. Running your house off it in a power outage was a super cool idea, but man that price.
Huh? My Model 3 cost more than my Lightning. LOL.
> Running your house off it in a power outage was a super cool idea
Yes, it is fantastic, can confirm.
Not a good thing. I think Ford has quality issues, but EVs with 500 miles of range are viable. Most pickup owners do not tow. This was an American foot in a market that the Japanese own
Ford's quality is about average. Not great, not terrible. They should have put a bigger battery in the Lightning, like GM does with the Silverado (and gets north of 400 miles of range). Instead, they are giving over the market to GM.
$20b capital write down means that consumers paid that much more for all vehicles to subsidize redundant and insolvent EV product lines .
Tesla is the only company making money off of these products .
People keep complaining about the AI bubble but we sustained an EV bubble for 15 years without it popping .
How did they lose $20B on this? Gigafactory was $10B.
EVs are >30% of the global car market and rapidly rising. There is no bubble. America is a bubble of lagging OEMs.
I think an electric full sized truck was always a mistake. To me the market is in the Tacoma/Ranger size for an EV truck. It's pretty simple. Those don't need to haul anything, they are smaller, more aerodynamic, can look sportier because they are more compact, etc. The Tacoma even today gets like 20mpg, which is absolutely abysmal for a 4-cylinder, it's so ripe for an electric motor. The obvious obstacle to overcome is longevity, given Tacomas especially are known to last practically forever.
The EV pickup obsession is so bizarre. Even moreso than the gas pickup obsession. The obvious next step was to take their brilliant EV Transit and scale up production. You don’t have to convince truck bros. There’s no cultural hang-ups. No issues with towing. Just make a nice cargo van with 120v hookups for $50k that’s easy to drive in the city and easy to convert into a camper. Could’ve built three vans with the lithium it took to build these obscenities.
And you know, I’m already compromising here, because it really ought to be a wagon instead of a van, if Detroit had any brains left.
Can’t wait until someone figures out how to smuggle those $15k BYDs in from Mexico. The North American car market needs to be disrupted badly. By China, not by some meme stock.
They botched it entirely. If they made it for $40k even if it only got 50 miles of range, they could have sold these. Instead they priced themselves out of the market. It's a clear example of the Innovator's dilemma, but now instead of cannibalizing their own market they'll just let it slip away to Tesla.
Hicks with overpriced trucks don't want EVs, shocker!
They are a status symbol for middle class workers with no taste
Alternatively, they are the most versatile vehicle on the road. But kids on HN have real trouble seeing outside their tiny bubble.
These trucks were a boondoggle to begin with
Electricity seems as expensive as gasoline in California, especially considering the cost of installing a charger. Also relying on fascist elon's network is a no go.
F150 turned to poo after the 90s. Nonsignificant news. Look elsewhere for your electric truck.
Detroit will continue creating crappy EVs rather than good one to defend their "whale oil" business by gaslighting people into believing "EVs suck" when they're strategically sabotaging products in this category. Been happening since the EV-1 and the horrific styling of the original Prius. They don't like change and don't care about the long term survival of the species if there's no profit in it.
good, it was a bad idea anyways. want an ev? just get a Tesla