Ford stuck to the basics with its first electric truck, and that’s OK.
I am driving a pickup truck through Texas hill country. The buzzards are circling overhead, the road is empty as a moonlit prairie, and all’s right with the world.
The near-instantaneous torque — 452 horsepower in the standard range, 580 horsepower for the extended range — is also typical for an EV but totally ludicrous for a truck the size of the F-150. I’ve driven a lot of EVs but not a lot of trucks, and the combination of power, acceleration, and size of the F-150 Lightning was thrilling — and even a little unsettling.
We don’t know yet how much non-exhaust emissions the F-150 Lightning will create, but we’re likely to find out soon enough.Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The VergeIn terms of energy capacity, I found that I was getting around 2.3 miles per kilowatt-hour of battery usage on surface roads and highways.
The ability to draw power from the battery pack isn’t limited to these extreme scenarios, though. All of the base trims of the F-150 Lightning can put out 2.4kW of onboard power, and the more expensive Lariat and Platinum trims offer a total of 9.6kW of onboard power. The more expensive F-150 Lightnings also have 11 built-in power sockets — seven in the cab and bed, including a 240V outlet, and four in the front trunk — plus a handful of USB ports.
Like other automakers, Ford markets BlueCruise as an active safety feature, but I see them more as convenience features designed to take some of the stress out of long highway trips and stop-and-go traffic. Perhaps I was paying too close attention to the wealth of information provided on the gauge cluster to notice the sign being crushed under the wheels of the boat behind me. Ford went the extra mile in taking a lot of the guesswork out of towing, enabling owners to create a profile based on the object being towed. In the case of the 8,000-pound boat, I could see that the added weight would shave almost 100 miles off my range, from 250 miles on a full charge to 161.7 miles.
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