Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 915 posts

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#11

Post by kelseyfrog »

cpursley wrote: post #3
vondur wrote: post #2

I would imagine for 80% of truck owners, having an electric truck is fine. However, if you are towing or carrying heavy loads, they are a bad choice. I suspect most F-150 drivers barely ever do these sorts of things. I have an F-150 but do use it to tow my travel trailer on vacation.

The vast majority of pickup truck owners in America don't use the capabilities enough to make them worth the purchase; the phenomenon is mostly cultural.

> cultural

Specifically for the American male, the F-150 is a form of gender expression and gender affirming transportation.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#12

Post by vondur »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #5

We simply need an engineering generation of 50 mile range PHEV vehicles. It will get a huge percentage of low-efficiency driving electrified, won't be too big of a burden on the grid, educate more people on EV-style driving, adds regen braking, should still be able to provide high-torque towing and driving.

Yeah, Ford makes the F-150 Powerboost which is a hybrid version, but no plugin capability. I'd love to see a 50 mile plug in hybrid version of their truck line (Maverick, Ranger, F150)

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#13

Post by anticorporate »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #10

That is a disappointment. I was hoping that they would be introducing a new smaller EV truck in either the Maverick or Ranger line. I have no need for a large truck when something half the size handles all the hauling/towing I need.

Ditto. I'm a current Ranger owner, now seriously considering the Slate if it actually ever makes it to market.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#14

Post by dyauspitr »

That’s too bad, I love my lightning. I spend about $20/month on home charging, love the acceleration and it’s good enough to haul all the things I need for my small farm.

Also, it’s great for long distance recreational drives (from a very specific perspective)- I like driving 250-300 miles in a day and then parking at an RV spot for the night instead of a hotel room. I can run the heat and AC all night as well as have a “full tank” ready to go.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#15

Post by nomel »

charlesabarnes wrote: post #4

Wow, I was under the impression that these were selling incredibly well. I started to appreciate Ford's strategy recently after they lost my faith after they killed off sedans in the US. I'm now confused again by the company's strategy

As with all but a few EV manufactures [1], they were losing money each sale ( >$30k)[2].

[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/only-four-ev-brands-are-pr...

[2] https://www.theautopian.com/ford-lost-36000-for-every-electr...

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#16

Post by cogman10 »

izend wrote: post #7

I am actually surprised they cancelled the F150 Lightning, I see a lot of them the Metro Vancouver area where a lot of contractors, (gardeners, pool maintenance, labourers, etc...) are driving them as electricity is super cheap here and gasoline is quite expensive.

That's exactly where I expected this thing to sell like hotcakes. It's a perfect fleet vehicle for many businesses.

I think the price just wasn't right.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#17

Post by Spivak »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #10

That is a disappointment. I was hoping that they would be introducing a new smaller EV truck in either the Maverick or Ranger line. I have no need for a large truck when something half the size handles all the hauling/towing I need.

> Ford still plans to produce a midsize electric pickup truck with a target starting price of about $30,000, to be available in 2027. That will be the first of the “affordable” electric vehicle models it’s currently designing at a skunkworks studio in California, which are slated to use a “universal” platform architecture that will make the vehicles cheaper to produce.

Wish granted?

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#18

Post by AmVess »

charlesabarnes wrote: post #4

Wow, I was under the impression that these were selling incredibly well. I started to appreciate Ford's strategy recently after they lost my faith after they killed off sedans in the US. I'm now confused again by the company's strategy

Sales drove off a cliff. The larger problem is that Ford has lost multiples of tens of billions trying to do EV's.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#19

Post by oconnore »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #6

https://archive.ph/k2S9O for those who have read their last free article. Interesting that Rivian seems to be doing fine in this space.

I was considering getting a Rivian and decided that in fact I would probably not allow the 24 year old dude at my local construction supply co to use a skid steer to drop a load of gravel into the bed of my $75k+ electric vehicle.

So instead I got a used Ford F150 (gas) and when the skid steer guy drops gravel into the bed I feel fine.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#20

Post by xoa »

I've been in the market for an electric truck for a solid 5 years now to replace my aging Nissan Frontier. There has yet to be anything attractive at all that has made it into production at any price I've been able to find. Everything seems to be a gas truck with some electric stuff shoehorned in not taking advantage of the new design opportunities at all, and generally with a little 4' bed instead of 6.5 or 8 that I need. So far the best design I've seen was from the startup Canoo [0, 1], but as is unsurprisingly typically the case with a car startup (a really high capex challenging area) they have since gone bankrupt. The Cybertruck at announcement looked sorta promising, with a decent sized bed (6.5 at the time), decent top range (500 miles), and cab moved forward for better visibility with no engine in the way. And in principle there are some really good fully offline "cyber" sorts of features that an ambitious company could do, like making liberal use of modern screens to enable "look through your hood" and better all around awareness, built-in FLIR for enhanced animal detection at night, etc. A self-parking feature that was really solid would be good too, zero general public road self-driving needed for that to be handy. But of course the Cybertruck ended up downgrading in every respect, having mediocre build quality, being heavily delayed, full of Tesla spyware and stupid shit, and in general being made by a vehicle & power company that oddly doesn't actually seem interested in vehicles or power anymore.

It's frustrating seeing all the potential and then having to wait and wait for somebody to finally execute. Same as with PDAs/smartphones until Apple finally shook things up or countless other examples throughout tech history. Maybe it'll be China who actually does it this time around, and a small silver lining might be that could also go along with some actual anti-feudalism and pro-privacy laws in the US if we're very lucky :\.

----

0: https://www.greencars.com/expert-insights/all-electric-all-a...

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzjqfQdj3sM

Post reply on HN