- The Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck has been revealed.
- The price tag is under $40,000 to start.
- CEO Jim Farley said even he wasn't prepared for how well Ford executed on the truck.
- See more stories on Insider's business page .
Before the all-electric F-150 Lightning debuted this week, Ford CEO Jim Farley and chairman Bill Ford — great-grandson of founder Henry Ford — took it out for a test drive.
The result was like that scene from "Ford vs. Ferrari," when Carroll Shelby gave Henry Ford II a ride in the GT40 race car that would go on to win the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. In the movie, "The Deuce" broke into tears. Farley and Bill Ford were a bit less emotional.
"Holy cow," Farley described it to Insider. "We should have done this a long time ago."
Farley called the electric pickup the "most breathtaking product I've experienced in recent memory." It can do 0 to 60 mph in the "mid-four-second range," has a dual-motor configuration that yields 563 horsepower and 775 pound-feet of torque, harbors a battery that can deliver 300 miles of range, and has a trunk up front that can handle 400 pounds. Depending on how the truck is set up, Ford claims it can also power an entire house as a backup generator for three days.
But the truck is also joining a family of F-Series vehicles that have been the best selling in the US since 1982. Alongside the new electric Mustang Mach-E crossover and E-Transit van, the F-150 Lightning is an instant icon and Ford knows it.
But unlike the $80,000 GMC Hummer or the $67,500 Rivian R1T, Ford didn't choose to price the Lightning at an elevated level. The F-150 Lightning starts at $39,974 before federal and state tax credits, which hovers around Tesla's claimed starting price for the Cybertruck .
That will likely make it the first affordable, full-size electric pickup to come to market in early 2022, beating the Cybertruck and Ford's key crosstown rival, the Chevy Silverado. And the electric F-150 isn't just affordable — it's a full-size truck that's just a few thousand more than the $36,500 Chevy Bolt EV, a subcompact hatchback.
Reimagining Ford's icons
The truck emerged from a sort of skunk works at Ford called Team Edison, which was formed about three years ago and quickly focused on electrifying the company's most popular and profitable nameplates. The result for F-150 was a pickup with some new design elements and plenty of innovative engineering, but not a truck that's a radical departure from its gas-powered stablemates.
"Our vehicle doesn't look like a spaceship," Farley said. He added that Ford didn't plan to make such rapid progress of reinventing the F-150 for new tomorrow, but that the company "worked really hard to make it happen."
The key insight, according to Darren Palmer, Ford's general manager for battery electric vehicles, was the once the battery costs were determined and a sufficient cell supply secured — a less difficult undertaking when you're talking about the electric version of a product that sells a million units annually and thus represents a limited risk to cell manufacturers — the rest of the vehicle doesn't end being wildly expensive.
"The motors are the same motors same tech as Mach-E," he said, and although Ford redid the frame of Lightning to handle the extra weight of the battery pack, the top of the truck utilized many parts that Ford already has in abundance for the gas-powered pickups.
"We're able to get some excellent scale," he said of the manufacturing process, which will take place at the historic Rouge complex in Michigan at a new facility now under construction. "We've reused so much and haven't had to invest billions, so we can introduce the truck at this price."
For Farley, the combination of the iconic F-150 nameplate with compelling performance and the kind of utility that should appeal to Ford's most demanding customers make Lightning a game changer.
"I would just say this is a watershed moment," he said "And we knew it could be when we started designing the truck. Even I wasn't prepared for how it came together."
Via PakApNews