2022 Ford F-150 Lightning • Hacker News Board

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#151

Post by bb123 » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #133

bb123 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric vehicles often have much better safety credentials than their ICE powered counterparts for a few reasons: * All of the weight is in the bottom of the vehicle, giving a lower centre of gravity. I'd bet this will kill the old F150 in a moose (or child!) test. * The lack of engine means the entire front part of the car is a huge crumple zone. This gives designers more wriggle room for pedestrian protection too.…

> * All of the weight is in the bottom of the vehicle, giving a lower centre of gravity. I'd bet this will kill the old F150 in a moose (or child!) test. The important thing to note about the moose test is that it doesn't specify that the moose has to survive. It's simply a test of whether the occupants will survive hitting a moose. I would wager anything that is designed to pass the moose test will kill anything tha…

Ideally in the moose test the moose and car never make contact. It is a test of the car's ability to safely support extreme evasive manoeuvres, rather than its crash survivability.

Tall SUVs typically fare worse at this because of their higher centre of gravity causing instability:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_test

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#152

Post by idiotsecant » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

mfer wrote: post #108

CalRobert wrote: post #8

It's great to see the best selling vehicle in the US be zero emissions. It's wonderful. But this truck will be very heavy, very tall, and very fast. Drivers are already the leading killers of children, and more and more people are being killed while walking and cycling. I'm very worried about the effect of making this vehicle even faster and heavier. Hopefully reduced deaths from pollution offset this.

Trucks very much have a place in society. Farmers, construction workers, and some other areas definitely need them. The trend that they need to be an everyday vehicle for anyone is something that should be looked at. What is the psychology and intentional planning that's caused this shift? What subtle population engineering has lead to this without people realizing it?

There are a certain group of users that need the machines to be strong for towing, tall for required ground clearance, and with bed capacity to haul material, tools, and other everyday cargo.

There is another group that doesn't need any of things but is convinced that they might some day. They are aspirational requirements. Why are those people convinced they need these things? The same reason anyone is convinced they need anything in the modern world. Advertising. Truck ads tell you that the Ford F150 is a tough truck for men who are tough (or want to be) and don't take nothin' from nobody (once they get out of this crappy job) and are masters of nature (or surely would be if they didn't live in the suburbs).

They buy product placement in all the badass movies, their commercials look like b-roll from a transformers movie, and the trucks themselves get more comfortable and less utilitarian every year.

Ford is not in the business of selling (light) trucks - they are in the business of selling an aspirational lifestyle to a population that thinks they might one day become an action hero. The F150 is, and has been for a long time, a consumer toy and not a serious work vehicle.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#153

Post by toast0 » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #8

It's great to see the best selling vehicle in the US be zero emissions. It's wonderful. But this truck will be very heavy, very tall, and very fast. Drivers are already the leading killers of children, and more and more people are being killed while walking and cycling. I'm very worried about the effect of making this vehicle even faster and heavier. Hopefully reduced deaths from pollution offset this.

Fuel efficiency standards killed the small truck. In the turn of the century EV era, Ford had an electric Ranger which was built on the much smaller (at the time) Ranger platform. But you can't make an ICE small truck that meets the 200x updated CAFE standards, so the small trucks either disapeared (S10) or got bigger (toyota small trucks), or got bigger then disappeared and later reappeared still big (Ranger).

An EV truck presumably can be any size, but there's no current small truck platform to build on.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#154

Post by jonfw » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

seanalltogether wrote: post #7

I'm sure this image is heavily photoshopped, but it looks like they're trying to make a center console that's half touch screen, half physical controls. I wonder what that will look like in reality. https://www.ford.com/is/image/content/dam/vdm_ford/live/en_u...

Range rovers have been doing something like this for a few years. Theirs can go between being radio controls and climate controls pretty seamlessly. I think it's a great compromise between touch controls and tactility

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#155

Post by tmh88j » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #30

pionar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been one of those things, but they're still useful. I had an F150 for a while that I only used to transport things like mulch or helping friends move or moving myself. I still have an old Ranger that I use for those purposes today. It seems insane to assume you can be the judge of what's "useful" or "utility".

I think you're being a bit unfair. We all agree that they're useful, but surely in a world win which we need to a) reduce road and parking space in order to encourage better forms of transportation , b) reduce our consumption of natural resources ,maybe we need to discourage individual ownership of 3000kg utility vehicles?

> I think you're being a bit unfair. We all agree that they're useful, but surely in a world win which we need to

>a) reduce road and parking space in order to encourage better forms of transportation ,

I don't see that happening. SUV's and pickups are so popular in the US because most cities are more similar to Houston and LA than NYC or Chicago.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#156

Post by mavhc » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

mkmk wrote: post #14

seanalltogether wrote: post #7

I'm sure this image is heavily photoshopped, but it looks like they're trying to make a center console that's half touch screen, half physical controls. I wonder what that will look like in reality. https://www.ford.com/is/image/content/dam/vdm_ford/live/en_u...

This interface is already in production in the electric mustang. The buttons are all touchscreen, with the exception of the physical center wheel which is embedded in a hole in the screen. The photo on this article may be helpful: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/02/im-obsessed-with-the-ford-...

It's just stuck on the touchscreen I thought, like that microsoft puck thing for their non portable Surface device

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#157

Post by goodcanadian » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

luxuryballs wrote: post #110

To me electric cars are still far overpriced if you account for the astronomical number of routes and places you could never even think about going. Also have they solved the electric gas can problem? Maybe they can equip them with a small removable battery so you can go get a “5 gallon” charge and then go fetch your vehicle if the battery dies, otherwise a simple hike to a gas station becomes a tow job!

The solution may not be as far off as you think. These guys are targetting a different market, but a possible solution exists: https://chargefairy.com/

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#158

Post by thrdbndndn » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #27

dubcanada wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so you're against cars? I am confused as to what any of that has to do with the new electric F-150.

EVs are heavier by nature (this vehicle’s battery pack alone is ~1800 lbs). Your average driver is not good at driving. The F150 sells very well. Ergo, more risk of more property damage and human harm. You can’t get around physics. More mass with more force carries more risk.

Is there any actual data that shows there is correlation between the mass of vehicles and number of people killed?

Obviously heavier cars are more deadly when hitting people with all the other variables fixed, but not all these variables are independent. They could also depend on the weight of the cars. For example, maybe the car becomes easier to control/steer when it's heavier (totally made up point), which counters the inherent risk introduced by the weight.

Without real-world data I won't be too quick to say heavier car is more dangerous.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#159

Post by throwawayboise » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

bluesquared wrote: post #121

thanatos519 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that electric vehicles are almost silent.

Even with the noisemaker my Chevy Bolt has still been quiet enough to surprise unaware pedestrians in parking lots.

What is this noisemaker? Is it sort of an electronic whine? I thought that was just the motors. Otherwise I've never heard any kind of artificial noise from a slow-moving EV.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#160

Post by brazzy » Fri, May 21, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #133

bb123 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric vehicles often have much better safety credentials than their ICE powered counterparts for a few reasons: * All of the weight is in the bottom of the vehicle, giving a lower centre of gravity. I'd bet this will kill the old F150 in a moose (or child!) test. * The lack of engine means the entire front part of the car is a huge crumple zone. This gives designers more wriggle room for pedestrian protection too.…

> * All of the weight is in the bottom of the vehicle, giving a lower centre of gravity. I'd bet this will kill the old F150 in a moose (or child!) test. The important thing to note about the moose test is that it doesn't specify that the moose has to survive. It's simply a test of whether the occupants will survive hitting a moose. I would wager anything that is designed to pass the moose test will kill anything tha…

> The important thing to note about the moose test is that it doesn't specify that the moose has to survive. It's simply a test of whether the occupants will survive hitting a moose.

Completely wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_test

The car fails the test (at that speed) if the "moose" is hit at all (or it skids, turns or tips over).