If the advance notices are even halfway accurate, electric vehicles are about to become part of the popular culture — and maybe put these $4 and up gasoline prices in their place.
On Wednesday, Ford Motor Co. unveiled its all-electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning. The company says it can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 4.4 seconds. It can tow up to 10,000 pounds. Its battery also functions as a backup power source that can do everything from charge power tools at a work site to provide electricity to a home for up to three days.
Its standard battery will travel 230 miles when fully charged, while the extended-range version can get 300. These are lesser distances than those provided by a gasoline-powered pickup, but they’re a good first step for an electric pickup.
The big question, of course, is price. The high cost of the Tesla sedans kept more of them from selling for years. Ford’s Lightning has avoided that trap: The base model starts right at $40,000, and once you include incentives such as a $7,500 tax credit for buyers, the electric model is expected to be one of the least expensive pickups in the American market when it goes on sale in 2023.
Two columnists for the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell and David Von Drehle, provide excellent context for the importance of this vehicle’s arrival.
Von Drehle noted that 2021 marked the 45th consecutive year that the F-150 was the best-selling vehicle in the United States — a streak, he added, that is older than the original “Star Wars” movie.
And it’s not just Ford pickups that American drivers love: The country’s second-best-selling vehicle last year was the Dodge Ram, while the Chevrolet Silverado was third.
Rampell put more numbers to the story, writing that Tesla produced a total of 500,000 vehicles last year. But Ford’s F-series is in a league of its own, with more than 800,000 pickups sold in 2021.
Customers will be the judges of the Lightning and all other electric vehicles. But Von Drehle said the initial reviews are “beyond positive.”
From The Wall Street Journal: “The Lightning represents an American manufacturing triumph, a brand resurrection, a win for working people, a vehicle segment stepping out of the darkness into the light. ... Finally, an EV that isn’t a soft-handed, overpriced toy for white-collar commuters.”
Rampell believes the Lightning could tip the market battle, eliminating complaints that gas-powered cars are being forced out of production by environmental extremists.
“The Lightning will be a better, faster, more functional and more affordable truck that can appeal to red-staters and blue-collar workers,” she wrote. “If produced and purchased at scale, trucks such as this one could revolutionize car culture and eventually shrink the country’s carbon footprint.”
The future of driving is battery-powered. We’re about to find out how close that is.
