Charged EVs | 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning First Drive: Ford’s most valued mannequin is now electrical

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Ford is aware of vans, and demand for its F-150 Lightning exhibits truck consumers is probably not as afraid of EVs as many assume.

The 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck could be the first actual mass-market electrical automobile offered within the US. Utilized by particular person house owners and companies alike, pickups are a large a part of the auto market—20 p.c in 2021, totaling almost 3 million items, in keeping with Motor Intelligence. On the prime of the heap is the Ford F-Sequence, the best-selling US. automobile line for greater than 40 years.

We drove a number of F-150 Lightnings, in numerous trims, with and with out payloads or trailers, out of San Antonio and thru the winding roads of Texas hill nation in the course of the first week of Could. Ford rolled out a full staff of managers and executives who’d created its first electrical pickup, however the truck itself was the main focus for dozens of reporters, analysts and reviewers.

The F-150 Lightning is sweet. Adequate, maybe, to persuade non-coastal US drivers that electrical autos are actual, and that they’re neither nerdy hatchbacks nor luxurious vehicles from Silicon Valley startups run by erratic egomaniacs. Certain, they’re hardly essentially the most environment friendly EVs available on the market. However the F-150 Lightning is an EV mass-market consumers will doubtless discover reassuring, acquainted, and largely predictable. That may solely be factor for EVs total.

Higher on the highway

Stepping into an F-150 Lightning is not any totally different than stepping into every other F-150. Step on the sill or climb onto the working board (if there may be one), seize the pillar-mounted deal with, and swing into the seat.

When you’re perched within the command place, you’ll see a protracted hood, massive and helpful door mirrors, a view by way of the vertical rear window (except your mattress load rises to dam it), and one among two touchscreens within the middle of the sprint. Decrease-line Lightnings use the 12-inch horizontal show from high-end gasoline F-150s. High trims improve to a portrait-style 15.5-inch display just like the one within the Mustang Mach-E—however with further truck-specific data and choices. Alter the steering wheel (guide or energy, relying on trim) and people mirrors, and also you’re off.

The very first thing present F-150 drivers might discover is the journey: That is the smoothest and best-riding model of the F-150 nameplate, ever. That’s as a result of two issues: the impartial rear suspension and an ideal 50-50 weight distribution when unloaded. With the battery pack under the cabin and mattress, the Lightning has a a lot decrease middle of gravity than any F-150 powered by an engine. That and four-wheel impartial suspension make it far simpler to toss round curves.

That weight distribution, nonetheless, presents execs and cons. On the plus aspect, you’ll be able to confidently energy a Lightning by way of a curve sooner than its fuel counterpart—although we additionally felt some uncomposed habits and what chassis engineers name “head toss” on uneven pavement.

On the minus aspect, including 1,500 kilos of plywood within the mattress or 5,000 to 9,000 kilos of trailer on the hitch makes the entrance wheels gentle. With each a full mattress and a trailer, we have been capable of spin the entrance tires on laborious acceleration—on, say, uphill freeway on-ramps. (All-wheel drive is commonplace on all variations of the Lightning as we speak.) Flooring the pedal even produced some squirming because the rear wheels powered ahead whereas the fronts fought for traction. The nose-heavy weight distribution of an ICE-powered F-150 goes some technique to alleviate this.

What no different truck can do

To be honest, Ford has to accommodate a vastly larger set of use circumstances for an F-150 than it does for, say, the Mach-E. And the Ford’s typical steel springs and shocks need to deal with all of the totally different masses and weight distributions thrown at them. No model of the Lightning presents air suspension, not like the GMC Hummer EV and the Rivian RT1.

An enormous a part of the Lightning’s attraction has turned out to be a use case that has nothing to do with on-road efficiency. It’s the flexibility to make use of its battery to energy your own home throughout an electrical energy outage—in the event you get the massive battery and high-end spec, and have a home with wiring that accommodates it.

We surmise Ford was startled on the diploma to which this concept propelled the truck’s recognition. Definitely the week-long Texas energy outage of February 2021 can’t have harm, in a pickup-crazy state. Nevertheless it’s not a brand new thought for EVs—Japan used the comparatively tiny 16 kWh battery packs in tons of of Mitsubishi i-MiEV minicars to energy cellular medical items within the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear plant.

There are asterisks, in fact: Powering your own home requires the larger-battery model of the Lightning, together with the PowerStation Professional house charging station, which delivers as much as 19.2 kilowatts (a $1,310 choice for decrease trims). Ford has partnered with Sunrun for set up of a $3,895 house integration system that features a 9.6 kW DC-to-AC converter and an automated switch swap for the house’s electrical panel. Nonetheless, it’s a use for EVs that gasoline vans can’t duplicate, one which justifiably seized public consideration.

At its presentation earlier than the drives, Ford confirmed one other aspect of the F-150 Lightning’s power-out capabilities. With an obtainable adapter, a Lightning was capable of recharge the battery of a Mach-E utilizing that automotive’s transportable charging twine. EV-to-EV charging, whereas hardly quick, presents the roadside-rescue equal of that 5-gallon can of gasoline.

Firm core: vans

Ford is aware of vans, which in North America are its core energy—to the purpose that it sells no passenger vehicles apart from the Mustang sports activities coupe. The whole lot else is an SUV or truck of some kind, together with its wonderful new Maverick compact pickup. However a battery-electric truck was nonetheless an enormous evolution. As Tesla gathered steam from 2012, Ford spent the last decade grudgingly producing minimal numbers of the uncompetitive Focus Electrical, purely a compliance automotive that offered lower than 10,000 items in eight years.

The origin story of the F-150 Lightning wasn’t one thing the EV world noticed coming within the mid-2010s. The choice to affect the corporate’s core product and crown jewel got here out of the Staff Edison group assembled by CEO Jim Hackett after his predecessor, Mark Fields, was summarily fired in Could 2017 after three years. Among the many causes for his departure: zero significant progress on EVs.

The group concluded that Ford needed to change course, and achieve this quick, radically and successfully. The outcome was the Mustang Mach-E, which audaciously used Mustang design cues and efficiency traits in an all-electric four-door crossover that was initially developed as one other compliance automotive. Then got here maybe the obvious market phase: city and suburban supply vans—the primary Ford e-Transits have been delivered earlier this yr.

However constructing an all-electric model of its core product, the corporate’s golden goose, took the EV program into the center of the corporate. Staff Edison surveyed truck house owners, and located many have been open to the concept of an electrical F-150—although skeptical. The message was clear: It needed to do all the things the gasoline F-150 did…and it couldn’t be “bizarre.” It needed to be, in different phrases, an F-150.

Retaining it an F-150

So how do you make an F-150 powered by electrical motors and a battery, if the chassis and powertrain should change radically? The reply was to maintain the look, the acquainted consumer interface, and the present utility of a gasoline F-150—however add capabilities the non-electric F-150 can’t presumably present.

The body rails that encompass battery packs of 98 or 131 (usable) kWh differ tremendously from these of a gasoline F-150, as do the dual electrical motors powering the entrance and rear wheels. The Lightning is the first-ever F-150 with impartial rear suspension, and eliminating the engine and transmission allowed Ford’s designers to create a entrance trunk. Whereas the corporate insists on calling it a “Mega Energy Frunk,” it nonetheless presents 400 liters (14.1 cubic ft) of capability and 400 kilos of load score—sufficient for the baggage of 4 journalists en path to a drive occasion.

What didn’t change was the cab construction and pickup-bed inside. The sheet steel is smoother and extra aerodynamic, however the Lightning is clearly an F-150. The inside, too, might be acquainted to any F-150 driver—as will the mattress, which retains all mounting factors, tiedowns, tailgate, and different options so house owners can switch specialised “upfit” gear from one F-150 to a different.

That final level is very necessary, as a result of Ford is closely centered on the fleet utilization facet of an electrical pickup. Contemplating its two different EVs up to now, the Mustang Mach-E is offered virtually solely for private use, whereas the e-Transit purchaser could be very doubtless a industrial or fleet consumer. The F-150 Lightning bridges each these makes use of, with the Professional trim for fleet customers and the XLT and Platinum trims for retail consumers.

Ford is already discovering that its electrical pickup is bringing first-timers into EVs, and new clients to the corporate. 4 of 5 reservation-holders for the F150 Lightning are new to EVs, execs mentioned, and three of 4 haven’t beforehand owned a Ford.

Discuss trailering

A essential problem for the F-150 Lightning—and EVs on the whole—might be towing. Ford says its knowledge exhibits that 75 p.c of all F-150 house owners use their vans to tow, and that 85 p.c of them tow 10,000 kilos or much less. Certainly, the drive occasion included trailers of 5,000 to 9,000 kilos hooked to Lightning hitches.

Ford’s Clever Vary algorithm and numerous trailer-towing options ask the Lightning driver to “qualify” a trailer by towing it for a number of miles so the truck can calculate its impact on battery vary. Its Clever Scales and Good Hitch features assist house owners place masses accurately over the trailer wheels for correct tongue weight.

Towing the lightest of these over 16 miles that included twisty nation roads and a brief phase of Interstate, we noticed vitality effectivity of 1.3 to 1.4 miles/kWh. And our truck with a 5,000-pound trailer confirmed a recorded 1.3 miles/kWh over 1,300 miles. That’s roughly 60 p.c of the two.1 to 2.3 miles/kWh we noticed in unloaded Lightnings—and matches outcomes achieved in exams of trailer towing with a Tesla Mannequin X, which minimize vary by as much as half.

The vary impression of towing is similar for an electrical as a combustion-engine truck, mentioned Dapo Adewusi, the Lightning’s Car Engineering Supervisor. However even the top-trim Lightning, which is EPA-rated at 320 miles, is more likely to return extra like 250 miles at regular freeway speeds. That would fall to 130 to 150 miles if towing, in comparison with some F-Sequence variations which will go twice the gap even whereas towing because of their huge diesel tanks.

There’s additionally the problem of on-road charging whereas towing. Drivers might must recharge each 90 minutes to 2 hours, however just about no DC fast-charging websites as we speak provide pull-through layouts for trailer towing. That’s beginning to change—Electrify America’s newest designs embrace pull-throughs. Nonetheless, we don’t anticipate towing to be a significant a part of the Lightning’s responsibility cycle for a while, pending bigger batteries and higher on-road charging infrastructure.

Truck bros approve?

Our remaining impression of the F-150 Lightning is way from statistically legitimate, however we expect it’s indicative. Heading again on one of many many four- to six-lane highways that lead into San Antonio, a lifted F-250—with wheels protruding simply a foot past the wheel wells—roared up behind us and drew stage.

The younger man behind the wheel slowed to tempo our truck, and gave us an enormous smile and an enthusiastic thumbs-up after we seemed over. We virtually modified lanes in shock. If Truck Bros just like the Lightning (a minimum of this one), it’s not laborious to think about a shiny future for the electrical F-150.

Ford offered airfare, lodging, and meals to allow Charged to deliver you this first-person drive report.


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