Live data from Hacker News

Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

wired.com

301–310 of 915 posts

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#301

The F-150 is in one of the markets I think ev's will take over first (small commercial vehicles) but it just was not the right vehicle to start with. To expensive, even when the tax incentives were still a thing, and Ford suffers from having corrupt dealers taking a large cut on top of that. So you are selling to either the top 5% or bigger businesses. If you are a top 5% buying this you want it to tow your expensive…

My electrician drives an electric F-150, it's impressive how useful it is for him. The frunk carries a big box of tools, there's tons of outlets to charge his power tool batteries, he can even run a small welder

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#302
post #94

Not surprising. For what it cost you could get a Model Y and a gently used gas truck. Running your house off it in a power outage was a super cool idea, but man that price.

Huh? My Model 3 cost more than my Lightning. LOL.

> Running your house off it in a power outage was a super cool idea

Yes, it is fantastic, can confirm.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean this personally against you, please don't take it as such, but the number of people in this thread who seem to have absolutely no idea what a work truck is used for is absolutely wild.

I'm one of those people. What is a work truck used for?

I saw (and rode in) a lot of them in Alberta (Canada's Texas). Typical day for a work truck:

-owner starts you up from the hotel parking lot

-3-5 guys get in, you get your morning coffee via a drive through

-You pick up a 'slip tank' of diesel (think a metal box with its own fuel pump that sits in the bed and holds about a ton of liquid when full). You might fill up your own tank at the same time, typically on the employer's dime.

-you drive 1-3 hours over dirt roads and ice to get to the work site

-you fill up the heavy equipment from your slip tank, then stand for about 10 hours - you might be idling for part of that depending on temperature

- you drive another 1-3 hours back to the hotel parking lot. the owner plugs in your block heater so your fuel doesn't solidify overnight and you get ready to do it again the next day.

Trucks look impractical when they're getting groceries in the city, but everything about them - the height, the large cabs, all of it - is highly optimized for a particular kind of job. It might not be as common a job as it was when this design rose to prominence, I have no insight as to that, but there is a reason for everything about them being the way it is.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#304
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would've loved to get a lightning when we replaced the farm truck this year. If would've been great to be able to charge it while our solar array was pumping out power. But the price on those things is eye wateringly high. We got a gas f150 for about half the price of the lightning. I'm not sure who they were trying to sell those to, to be honest.

I got my extended range for $51,000

Hello fellow Flash owner. I assume (that's basically what I paid for my 2024 Flash; I was a little under that, but close enough).

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#305
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive They definitely aimed for the luxury market, like Rivian. Who knows how successful they would've been if they aimed for mid-range like Scout. That's the market they claimed to be entering when they started taking reservations. They also could've offered a fleet ready version without the luxury features, but must've decided not to. > They'r…

Significant portions of the body and interior were not shared with general F-150 models... At least those parts most likely to be damaged in minor accidents... imagine having your work truck in the shop for 2-3 months for want of a corner light fixture.

Parts availability is not a problem for established manufacturers, especially mass market vehicles.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#306

So they’re not killing the lightning, they’re adding a range extender? I guess that’s not gonna get as many clicks, but it hardly seems controversial given market reception of the current lighting (basically everyone who wanted one bought one and then sales tanked).

Yes, they're killing the Lightning. They are replacing it with a new Lightning EREV, there will not be a BEV version. It's not just a new option they are bringing to the existing truck.

How much are they actually changing though? We could imagine they take literally the same design and stick a generator in the corner. Making that mandatory would not be "killing" the Lightning. At the other end is a total redesign that cuts most of the battery, which would be killing it.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of F-150s are daily driver grocery-getters. That was the target for the Lightning, not truck stuff.

My hunch is that the people who buy an F-150 for groceries are not the people interested in buying EVs. The advantage of an EV truck is solely on cost and maintenance, so the natural market is businesses looking for practical vehicles, not people who buy impractical vehicles that are costly to operate for status reasons. Then again as I’m typing this I realize that I have a phone with a better processor than most com…

This is anecdotal but I have a gas F-150 that is often a grocery getter (I work from home and take a motorcycle when I can so gas mileage for me isn’t as big a concern as for some) and I would gladly trade it for an electric or a hybrid version (one that does not have the gas motor do anything but charge the batteries). But the cost was absolutely asinine for the Lightning. These trucks were made from unobtainium.

But I would also trade this truck for an all electric or mostly electric Maverick as long as it had enough cabin space for my needs (children).

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#308
post #233

We don't want your electric car ... we want your car, but electric . We want an electric F150 or an electric Suburban or v90 wagon or whatever. But instead we get e-initiative i-mobiles. We get TRON-cars. We get iModels. There is a reason for this: The incumbent auto makers understand fully that the ICE version of whatever model they electrify will suffer enormously. They believe that they can somehow retain all of t…

I'd love an off-road capable electric 4WD (because think about how amazing having computer controlled precision torque applied to wheels individually would be for getting out of a tricky situation).

Especially if you could buy some kind of field charging kit - maybe something you could power off a wood fire or flexible solar panels that you could stow. I imagine that's not realistic at the moment, but a boy can dream.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean this personally against you, please don't take it as such, but the number of people in this thread who seem to have absolutely no idea what a work truck is used for is absolutely wild.

Not surprising, since Asians & Europeans get lots of work done without using monster American trucks. They use vans, pickups with drop sides, trailers, et cetera.

The closest big city to me is 150 miles away. I don't know anything about how general contracting is done in mainland China, (I bet they use trucks!) but other than that I'm really not sure any other Asian or European countries are facing the same logistical hurdles as Americans.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#310

I expected the "T word" to come out in the article, however this fails to address any of the practical reasons it isn't a good replacement for the value-engineered F-150: * The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive * They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable. * Parts availability is scarce, contra…

> *They're loaded with useless/barely-functional interior electronics that are poor copies of Tesla

Having owned both an EV Ford and a Tesla I can say with absolute certainty that the ford runs circles around the Tesla. Outside of having steam games on the screen, Tesla’s infotainment does literally nothing better, and the interface itself feels like an early 2000s Linux gui. Oh, and Ford actually supports carplay and android auto.

Post reply on HN