The 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning – The Electric Truck That Couldn’t…
This is what happens when corporate zealotry takes command over practicality, consumer preference and the laws of physics.
Image: Ford Authority
If you’ve been following the news on Ford Motor Company, or if you work for Ford or one of its dealers, you are likely aware of the chaos engulfing the company. Between its collapsing stock price, the inability to deliver over 40,000 cars due to parts shortages and the recent announcement of massive layoffs, Ford is making all the wrong moves. Once a great company with over a century of market leadership, Ford is reportedly "at the very early stages of reinventing its business.”
To start, Ford is aggressively getting rid of its legacy workforce, particularly engineers and managers, as it prepares to shift from internal combustion engines and drivetrains to electric vehicles.
“Building this future requires changing and reshaping virtually all aspects of the way we have operated for more than a century,” CEO Jim Farley and executive chairman Bill Ford wrote in a message to Ford employees. With Ford showing open contempt for its legacy workforce and the gasoline-powered vehicles they developed, it’s not surprising that the entire vehicle delivery process has broken down.
But Check Out Our New Truck!
In the meantime, the company is touting the newly introduced F-150 Lighting electric truck with the ability to “run your household electricity system” should the need arise. The base model Lightning was recently raised to $51,974, a 30% premium over the gas-powered base model F-150 equivalent.
Will truck owners get 30% more value for an electrified F-150? Not if they intend on towing anything.
In what has to be one of the biggest product PR disasters to hit the automotive industry in modern times, a recent video of YouTube host Tyler Hoover (1.4 million subscribers) shows him towing a trailer carrying an old 1930’s Ford pickup with a 2022 F-150 Lightning. The video, titled “Towing with my Ford Lightning EV Pickup was a TOTAL DISASTER!” has amassed nearly 3 million views.
“If a truck towing 3,500 pounds can’t even go 100 miles…that is ridiculously stupid. This truck can’t do normal truck things,” Hoover says. “You would be stopping every hour to recharge, which would take about 45 minutes a pop, and that is absolutely not practical.”
A vast majority of truck owners don’t tow anything beyond 10,000 pounds and there will be some owners who don’t tow anything at all. But with range anxiety already a key concern with EV buyers, the truck buyer will look at this video and probably eliminate the Lightning from consideration. At least until the Lightning can “do normal truck things” like tow something heavier than laundry.
What Else Can It Not Do?
I’m sure Ford engineers knew that the truck could not tow anything of substance beyond 100 miles, but the company was instructed to build it anyway. How many more EVs in the Ford pipeline are going to be introduced with practicality failures such as this?
Ford has committed to a $30 billion investment in EVs and has a target of EVs delivering nearly half its global sales by 2030. That’s an incredible gamble considering EVs make up only 4 percent of Ford’s current global sales.
There is no doubt that electric vehicles will have their place in advanced markets such as Europe and the U.S., particularly within the profitable luxury market as well as the loss-leading institutional market. As EVs are force-fed into service by government mandates, there will be an unnatural adoption among last-mile delivery and commercial services visibly taking over the streets.
Whether consumers will fully adopt EVs depends largely on re-balancing the total cost of ownership in favor of EVs over gas-powered models. And it’s not looking good.
Ford has taken their F-150 model – the company’s best selling and most profitable vehicle – and pushed it down a disastrous path into electrification. I expect Ford will continue selling their gas-powered F-150, if only to help fund the enormous cost of transitioning to electric.
What a disaster in the making.