I’m still bummed that they didn’t call it the E-150. Seems like a missed branding opportunity.
I currently have a 2015 Silverado and might investigate electric pickups when it’s time to trade that in. That won’t be for many years yet; I imagine Chevy and Toyota will have their own electric pickups by then.
For those of us who aren’t drivers, how does this compare to a gas-powered F-150?
I have no idea what a gas-powered F-150’s acceleration is, or it’s horse power, or it’s range, etc.
I’ve seen references to vehicles powering the house, which is just confusing. I thought the house’s power supply powered the truck.
This looks like it could be a killer app. I figure many truck buyers barely know more about vehicles than I do. I just hope this is a bit cheaper than the gas-powered version so they will give it a chance.
Ford has traditionally badged their vans as E-series, and trucks as F-series. I suspect that, for the commercial buyers, in particular, it would have caused unnecessary confusion.
It’s bidirectional. Normally you charge the truck with house power. But if the power is out, then you can use the truck’s battery as a backup. The battery is so large that you can potentially get several days of backup power from it. It would need a special switch circuit on the house site to keep everything safe, but there are home battery backup systems that already do this.
OK, the EF-150 then. 
Yep, same idea as a backup generator for your house. You wire it into your panel (or use a proper inlet receptacle) and a transfer switch to isolate your house from the grid while the generator (or battery) is providing power.
I like that they didn’t rebrand actually. It makes the fact that it is electric seem more mainstream. It’s just a regular F-150 with the form and function that people seem to love. I suspect that perception is intentional. I mean, they’re not branding as D-150 and G-150 for the diesel and gas versions 
It makes sense if they targeting commercial operators too. They know the size of truck they need in the fleet (i.e. the F-150). They look at the various gas versus diesel versus electric specs for the F-150 and make the best practical, cost effective call. If the electric version truly is lower cost due to maintenance then that’s a strong factor in its favor, assuming it meets all the power, range, etc. requirements a specific operator might have.
A lot of contractors do use vans, in some cases more frequently than pickups. So I hope Ford does also make an electric E-series van for the commercial market.
Jalopnik reported that Ford is limiting production in the first year to only 20,000 vehicles, although I’m sure they could have sold a lot more. That’s a tiny fraction of total F-150 sales. And the thing seems to have a fairly spacious “frunk”.
The electric F150 pickup trucks will carry “Lightning” badges. Works for me.
In similar fashion, I wish that Ford had resurrected the Thunderbird name for the Mustang Mach-E.
Finally - it was not unusual to have flames painted on hot rods - coming back out of the grille. “That engine is so hot that it’s on fire!” Maybe someone will customize their electric vehicle with lightning bolts coming back from the front (don’t know if you could call the front a “grille” anymore).
I wonder what longer range vehicle will really cost? I looked at one car where a sunroof would cost $15,000 (it was ‘only’ a $2800 option but you had to go up two trim levels from the base to even have it available as an option). Would Ford do this; you want an extended battery - Go up a few trim levels from the base to then be able to get it? Will that 300 mi range be a $50m or $60m+ vehicle?
Something doesn’t seem right here. I know the rate of charge slows down the closer it gets to full but 41 mins to 80% then 9+ hours for the last 20%??? If you want to go away for the weekend, you’d have to come right home after work to have a full charge for leaving in the morning, no happy hour, no kids sports, no running errands.
Any figures on how much various towing weights will being that range down? You want to take the boat to the lake cottage for the opening of summer; do you really have anywhere close to 300 miles?
That brings up another point - Does charging infrastructure need to change to accommodate towing? Most of the chargers that I’ve seen are pull into a single parking space. If you have a boat/trailer/camper behind you you’d be blocking the way. Currently one would need to drop the trailer to use a charger. At least some chargers should be longer spaces & allow the driver to pull alongside of the charger, like today’s gas pumps are. What percentage of current EV chargers could accommodate a vehicle & trailer w/o issue?
I’m really surprised that I haven’t heard anything about a (Econoline/Transit/Sprinter) van yet. They’re used by tons of contractors, are almost exclusively used as work vehicles, which means both no long range issues on the weekend & more frequently replaced due to tax code/depreciation. The problem with pickem-ups is lack of internal storage for all your paint/plumbing/electrical/etc. supplies that the vans have.
I’d think that is where you’d get the ‘accidental environmentalists’ as in, Hey, I use one of those durn EV things at work; they ain’t so bad there.
I agree that something seems funny about those charging numbers. However, regarding your anxiety over a Saturday morning departure, it would be quite rare to plug in anywhere near zero on a Friday night. Even after an active day, we’re almost always over 50% power when we plug in at night.
It could go a long way to changing attitudes among the most resistant segment of society. I have a friend who runs a tourist based business in rural Tennessee and he says that a lot of times his clients who come down in EVs have a hard time accessing the few charging stations because locals block them with their ICE trucks because they think it’s funny.
I think it was just poor phrasing by the OP. There is zero chance that a home charger could do 15-80% in 41 min. The long range battery is likely 120 kWh or more, which makes 15-80% about 80 kWh. It would have to average 115 kW to achieve that, or 480 amps. No normal house would support that. It’s referring to fast (public) DC charging.
Home charging will probably be in the ballpark of 30-40 miles/hr.
I really hope so. I am not a car person at all and I fell in love with our electric car.
Since trucks are the everyday vehicle of choice for a huge percent of America, hopefully this is the inflection point of a big change. Just not having to visit the gas station every week, deal with oil changes, deal with emissions checks… switching to electric was a surprisingly large increase in my overall quality of life.
I was surprised how, in my blog comments, there was quite a bit of arguing about range anxiety. All electric is far simpler, but there are indeed some scenarios where hybrids are a safer choice than pure electric.
Towing range is one of the areas where EVs really have trouble. An F150 rated 24 MPG highway might get 12 MPG towing. EVs depend on high efficiency to get range, and a trailer obviously is going to add perhaps lots of weight, and definitely increase drag. That may cut range by more than half.
It is a matter of buying the right truck for the job. Do you need to tow a 10,000 pound horse trailer 1000 miles? Don’t buy the EV. Do you need to tow a 3000 pound utility trailer around town? Then an EV will probably work great. Do you have a 2000 pound aluminum fishing boat you usually only take 50 miles away, but sometimes you take 200 miles away? You’re going to have to make a decision.
Many Tesla supercharger locations have one of the chargers arranged so you pull in straight, to allow charging with a trailer. It seems like many of the Electrify America chargers are located so vehicles can get next to the charger.
I don’t think that’s quite right. Here’s the article:
All their information comes from here:
https://www.autonews.com/executives/ford-limit-f-150-lightning-output-44500-reservations-booked
They just say that there were 20k reservations in 24 hrs, and that there would be a limit. It also said:
Wolfe Research analyst Rod Lache, in an investor note Thursday, estimated Lightning production would be limited to 80,000 pickups per year, based on capacity data from parts plants that supply the truck.
Then again, the analysts were pretty far off with their base price estimates, so maybe they aren’t worth paying attention to.
I do worry though that it will be in the low tens of thousands. I think they could easily sell much more than that if they got everything in order, but I suspect they’re being cautious. And they may not be confident about the vehicles being profitable in the first couple of years.
Sorry about that.
You’ll often see smartphones advertise their 0-50% time or 0-80% time because you can safely give a LI-ON battery much faster charging when it’s low on battery. The last bit needs to go slower or the battery will get damaged. My guess is that the super powerful public chargers will probably only top you up to 80% to avoid giving it that high power charge for the last 20%, and if you want to top it off beyond that, you do it slowly.
What I wonder about every electric vehicle, is how heating and AC affect mileage.