2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

You'd need a study that actually looked at more than just "what happens if you hit a pedestrian at 25 mph" - because it's quite possible that a truck does more damage when it hits, but hits less often because it's higher up and has better visibility.

> At any rate, what exactly would objective supporting data look like here?

I don't know, which is why I wouldn't stereotype such a large group of the population. To a reasonable approximation, everyone in America is a truck customer. It's way too broad to have a common defining characteristic.

I agree that there is a subgroup (think of them perhaps as the 'brodozer' crowd, I guess) that seem to be who you're thinking of. They mostly don't drive F150s, they're more likely to go for a diesel HD pickup. And even then they are just a niche of that market. I know lots of superduty owners that want nothing to do with those folks.

1. I'm really glad they didn't go with the "futuristic" look of the bmw or Volt, where extra "techie" lines create a muddled design. Just make EVs look like aerodynamic ICE vehicles, this will increase adoption rates.

2. How much power does the generator/house back-up provide? I can see it being enough for a couple tools on a jobsite, but how long will it run a refrigerator, furnace, lights, etc.?

3. In this page, Ford claims to have the largest charging network in the USA. How is that possible, I thought Tesla had a huge lead on supercharging stations and destination chargers?

4. Price: At 40k base, you'll be seeing average costs of 50k+, even after the 7.5k tax incentive. I'd take the larger battery for sure, it would greatly increase the utility of the truck for my cases. 50k is what MANY truck buyers are already spending, I don't see that being an obstacle at all.

5. Gripe: Most people who claim to need a truck don't really need to OWN a truck; they should just rent. I live in a rural area and 95% of the trucks I see have 1 passenger and on average almost no cargo in the bed. We are polluting our planet for the occasional privilege of using our OWN truck...people simply buy vehicles for the outlying use case, not the modal case, and it's incredibly inefficient.

6. Overall: These EVs are a step in the right direction. It's still energy inefficient overall, and renting an ICE truck once a month would still be better than buying a new massive EV truck, but this is a step in the right direction. It'll nudge the "I want my own truck" people in the right direction towards efficiency.

> transparent info and pricing

TSLA literally lies about the cost of the car on their website though.

"* Costs above include potential incentives and gas savings of $4,300."

Gas savings... What? This isn't some special tax credit you get, they lie about their pricing by including savings over time of ownership...

I think it's interesting to look at this through the lens of Christensen's disruptive innovation idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

The move by Ford offers strong evidence that electric vehicles at this point have become a sustaining, not disruptive innovation. Incumbents like Ford can now compete using existing business models and possibly manufacturing practices/equipment.

EV companies like Tesla are now positioned very poorly. They've burned capital chasing the top end of the market during the disruptive phase. Rather than servicing unserved low-end markets that companies like Ford couldn't touch for business reasons, Tesla went after the very top end of the market. Piles of evidence say that this approach will fail, not necessarily for technical reasons but for business reasons.

Successful marketplace disruptors attack the market from the bottom by offering objectively inferior technologies with steeply improving performance. That tech trajectory eventually allows the disruptor to gobble the market from the bottom up, with incumbents only too happy to leave low-end, low-margin customers behind. Think microcomputers vs. minicomputers.

Rather than running this playbook, Tesla chose the alternative: attack the very top end of the market. It never went through the phase where its products were mistaken for toys.

Now that EV production costs and technologies allow easier transitions, Tesla's business model is upside-down. If Tesla couldn't consistently turn profits during the phase it held the advantage, it is going to become almost impossible now that the playing field has leveled and the incumbents can just run the playbook.