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Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

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331–340 of 915 posts

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#331
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…

Isn’t that the rivian R1? Incredibly capable off-road. One of a small number of stock model cars to complete the Rubicon trail

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#332

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.

Perhaps this term is specific to americans, however to an Australian a 'work truck/ute' would be used for labour purposes and not for the family, for example hauling materials, transporting tools or as part of the business itself ? How do you (I assume american) define it ?

Yes, American. There's other better descriptions here, but generally speaking most contractors I know have a truck, which they use for work. That's really all that I mean. I mean we just call them trucks. Nobody would say "Hey, nice work truck!"

People buy vehicles based on their needs. The F150 is sort of a hybrid between a work truck and a prestige family SUV like a Ford Explorer. If people are doing serious towing regularly, they will probably upgrade to a 250/350 class (3/4 ton or 1 ton). Plenty of people buy smaller trucks like the Ranger, which is basically like driving a crossover mini-SUV with a bed. People who are doing really serious transport may have a flatbed on an even bigger truck, but nobody uses those as family vehicles. I know people who have those little RHD mini trucks, which seems super useful to me.

I don't know Utes, which by googling, basically looks like a midsize (Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma) with a flatbed. We don't really use those.

Actually, it's kind of a market problem. Tons of people I know have expressed desire for a smaller truck like that little barebones Toyota Truck, but they don't make them here and we aren't allowed to import them.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#333

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…

Rivians are all over socal. I think there is a lot of demand in certain markets.

In NYC al the Amazon delivery trucks I see are purpose-built Rivians. And this is the hyper-frugal, penny-pinching Amazon.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#334

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…

Rivians are all over socal. I think there is a lot of demand in certain markets.

The Lightning is the 10th-best-selling EV in California and the Rivian R1T is not even in the top 25. Rivian is also one of the handful of brands selling fewer vehicles so far in 2025 compared to 2024.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#335
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be cheaper than the F150 but Ford can’t figure out how to make batteries cheaply. Evs are a lot less complex, no gas engine, no transmission, no exhaust systems with hundreds of dollars of precious metal in them. It should be cheaper than a gas equivalent.

Cheaper? Not sure how. While an ICE engine does have cooling systems and fuelling systems, water pumps and fuel pumps are relatively cheap and simple devices. An EV generally has a battery cooling system along with regenerative braking. EVs have roughly the same mechanical things as an ICE vehicle too, HVAC, suspension, brakes, in car entertainment, heated seats. Lighting. An entire 12v subsystem to power all that st…

I don't understand this comparison. An EV's battery cooling system is a cooling system. Regen braking isn't more complicated than an alternator.

The rest, yeah. The chemical stacks in the batteries are expensive, and dealer markup was a problem (now they're 47-56k new). But the energy costs! $7-12 for a fill-up on home power overnight instead of $75-85 at the gas station.

And maintenance. So little maintenance. For local non-towing fleets these would save a lot.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#336
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Slate initially looked good to me, but there were three things about it that were not upgradeable that seemed problematic: * Bed size is fairly small * Towing capacity is low (Just 1000lbs) * RWD -> AWD I liked the idea of buying a barebones truck and customizing it myself, but if it can't tow much, can't carry much, and can't go off-road, it's only really a truck in terms of its shape.

There really is always going to be something. shrug

Those are all the things people use trucks for

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#337
post #324
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 owned one of the first VW eGolfs, and it was an excellent car. Just a regular golf with an electric drive.

The new Polo EV looks perfect.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#338
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be cheaper than the F150 but Ford can’t figure out how to make batteries cheaply. Evs are a lot less complex, no gas engine, no transmission, no exhaust systems with hundreds of dollars of precious metal in them. It should be cheaper than a gas equivalent.

Cheaper? Not sure how. While an ICE engine does have cooling systems and fuelling systems, water pumps and fuel pumps are relatively cheap and simple devices. An EV generally has a battery cooling system along with regenerative braking. EVs have roughly the same mechanical things as an ICE vehicle too, HVAC, suspension, brakes, in car entertainment, heated seats. Lighting. An entire 12v subsystem to power all that st…

> A good old ICE car will be cheaper to make than an EV

How much of that is the result of the relatively maturity of the technology? We've been continuously improving ICE based transportation for well over a hundred years. It's been a lot shorter for electric vehicles.

I suspect that there are bigger strides to make with electrics that may eventually turn that around.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#339

Pretty surprised here and I think it was really just bad marketing or I guess unsustainable unit economics. Price out the cheapest F-150 (XL) with a supercrew cab and 4x4 and you are looking at $50k. Trucks are just expensive. The Lightning is expensive but not that much more than any other truck and the Ford incentives + EV credit brought it down quite a bit. The Lightning Flash (extended range) was routinely sellin…

I think the Lightning is pretty cool but there's about 5 vehicle classes I'd want to buy before "electric pickup"

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#340

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…

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

Which is odd because this is how they mostly marketed it on release:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42BmZ6Rgqkc

Also most people I know who use F-150s in the way you describe also typically have two children or more. It's not as if this was a segment that was particularly hard to pin down.

They just completely wiffed.

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