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2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

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231–240 of 1001 posts

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#231
post #144

I hope the ability to use your EV battery to backup your house power becomes an expected capability in the future. Glad Ford included it. Too bad Tesla backed away from it, i’m guessing due to their powerwall business.

i wonder how long a car could possibly power a house

So the standard "house battery backup" systems are around the 20-30kWH range, and they are good for about 1-2 days depending on your usage.

The F150 Lighting has up to a 150kWH battery, so somewhere in the 1-2 week range, depending on use.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#232

I'm a potential customer on this. I'm in the market for a vehicle, need a pickup and towing (no really). My hesitance still is charge time on trips. If I'm taking my kids camping or something, I really don't want to add one or more hours to the trip. IMO for this sort of thing to really gain acceptance mainstream, we need 5 minute charge times and battery lifetimes on par with ICE engine lifetimes (300-500k miles). I…

I really hope Ford accounted for the possibility of a gas-powered range extender. Gas powered generators are extremely common on work trucks. And a moderately sized one could probably produce enough power to maintain this truck at highways speeds, or at least produce enough power to drastically improve range.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#233
There’s a lot of stereotyping of truck owners going on in this thread which is kind of funny given how pro-EV HN normally is. It’s like the aesthetics of a pickup truck is offensive to some people. Kind of bizarre and not something I’m used to seeing but I guess I live in Ohio so that probably has something to do with it.

A lot of people just want to move stuff, they don’t want to like…burn your house down while wearing a MAGA hat or something. There’s no reason to have an irrational hatred of a vehicle that is pretty practical in non-urban settings.

Edit: since this ended up as the top comment I’ll add some thoughts on the truck itself in the spirit of not being overly-negative. I’m interested to see what exactly is included in the base model and when that will become available since they’ve only given us information on higher trims so far. $40K for this vehicle is very affordable, that’s about as cheap as you can get a new Model 3 right now but at least for awhile it could be eligible for electric vehicle tax credits. Especially if the government extended these credits they could get A LOT of people to buy these trucks (and more Teslas which would help with EV adoption since demand for the Bolt and Leaf seem pretty low)

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#234
post #108

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?

>What is the psychology

Americans want it because everyone else has one. Down here in TX, the number of pristine trucks that have never seen a speck of dirt, never had anything in the bed, and that are parked on their 1/8 acre lots in the city is staggering.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#235
post #150

Ironically, the frunk on electric trucks is a game-changer. Complementing the bed with an enclosed, waterproof, secure place to carry things (and no mucking around with insecure bed covers) is a killer feature. No more springing for a crew cab just to carry groceries in the rear seats. In terms of practical carrying capacity this dominates an SUV.

I hope this displaces a lot of the adventure Sprinter vans out there. Obviously, the built-out vans for long-term living won't get replaced by a truck, but I live in Tahoe and could use an adventure ready vehicle for winter skiing and summer trail running and MTB excursions with the family.

The frunk makes a big difference for those kinds of things.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#236
post #23

I have no idea if this’ll be lightning or a lead balloon, because a significant amount of pickup truck buyers do it for the machismo. Which sounds like some city-slicker talking down to the cheap seats, except, I grew up in a town named Farmington. (Go Farmers.) I know pickups. I know the people who drive pickups. My dad sneers at fancy new pickups because he used to shove a good 700 pounds of mink pelts in a pickup,…

This truck will do very, very well in a fleet context. The price point here will mean that commercial and government buyers who pencil out TCO(total cost of ownership) will have a compelling cost savings in maintenance and fuel.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#237
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…what a non sequitur. The F-150 is already a bloated monstrosity, it makes no difference if it’s electric. It’s some tiny bit faster, but they’re all fast enough.

Well, There's speed, and then there's acceleration. This new Lightning (putting it that way because F150 Lightning once corresponded to a gas-guzzling Supercharged V8 trim) has 775ft/lb of Torque. For reference, the existing models are between 265 and 510 ft/lb. Additionally, one of the benefits of an electric motor, is that torque is essentially instantly available, compared to an ICE where there's only a slim power…

first of all, despite its prominence in marketing materials, engine torque doesn't tell you much about a vehicle's performance characteristics. torque is meaningless without knowing the overall gear reduction. a 911 gt3 is about as fast in a straight line as a tesla, despite having way less torque.

> compared to an ICE where there's only a slim power bad where that max torque range is hit.

second, this is only true of naturally aspirated engines, which are pretty rare these days. engines with turbos or superchargers are usually tuned to make (roughly) peak torque all the way from 2000 rpm to redline.

this is a lot of fretting over the peak acceleration of a truck. I believe the thing does 0-60 in something like 4.5 seconds. that's really quick for a truck, but only above average compared to performance sedans. in any case, most people (even the crazy ones) do not often hit peak acceleration from a red light, especially in an EV.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#238

I'm a potential customer on this. I'm in the market for a vehicle, need a pickup and towing (no really). My hesitance still is charge time on trips. If I'm taking my kids camping or something, I really don't want to add one or more hours to the trip. IMO for this sort of thing to really gain acceptance mainstream, we need 5 minute charge times and battery lifetimes on par with ICE engine lifetimes (300-500k miles). I…

If you've got kids, you need bathroom breaks. On our cross-country trip in our Model Y we calculated that we spent a whole 15 minutes waiting for the charger, every other time we charged while we were toileting, eating or sleeping.

That being said, the F-150 will be a lot worse than the Y. It only supports 150kWh charging instead of Tesla's 250kWh, it uses a lot more watts per mile, and it doesn't have access to Tesla's Supercharger network.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#239

I gotta say, I am very impressed by what I've seen with the F-150. It's clear that a LOT of thought has gone into this product and Ford clearly understands their target audience extremely well. There are so many nice features that are so well tailored to folks who buy trucks. All the features to power job sites, etc is really sweet and I can totally see that being super handy. Heck, it would make it super easy to wor…

The only gotcha with this, is that F150s are huge. I have an oversized garage and an F150 will barely fit. Many of my full-size truck driving neighbors opt to park in the driveway because they turn a modern two car garage into a 1.5 car garage unless designed specifically for giant vehicles. I haven't seen consumer chargers that are designed to be installed outside. Most people have wall chargers in their garages, bu…

At least in Europe, pretty much _all_ chargers are designed to be installed outdoors, as pretty much no-one has a garage anyway.

So outdoor charging should not be an issue.

Re: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

#240

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.

It needn't have been this tall. With the internal combustion engine out, Ford could have designed a lower, more curved, less deadly front end. Instead, they kept the high nose and used the space as a trunk. After all, injuring fewer pedestrians sells no cars. Indeed, the market prefers an enormous, deliberately threatening-looking chariot that makes you feel big and virile. Ford are behind this game in that they have…

I'm sure there's some societal tradeoff between global electrification and pedestrian deaths. Until the government adds pedestrian safety to US crash standards, Ford will make what the image conscious truck market wants.
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