Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#871

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

omnimus wrote: post #496

queuebert wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of touch with the working class. Some people practically live in these trucks. A little comfort goes a long way toward making their day bearable. Leather is easy to clean, power adjustment makes the seat more comfortable. Auto wipers, climate, etc., help them focus on the calls they're taking. And so on. Fleets of these are bought for commercial purposes as well. Companies wouldn't spend that kind of money…

Maybe you are out of touch. I bet even many people here think it's mainly virtue signaling. I mean… do any of the commercial services in US use pickup trucks? It seems to all be vans? Why not to get a van then as a contractor?

Here (southeast US), lawn services use pickups, often also with a trailer. Most other services (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) use vans. Less sure about contractors, I interact with them less.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#872

Post by potato3732842 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #857

potato3732842 wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>AWD is a luxury outside of the most extreme of extreme locations. Only in the most strictly technical "I'm not touching you" sense. Either AWD/4wd is necessary-ish when you're going to other people's property because you can't guarantee any given property isn't an icy shithole and when you're a professional being paid by them to be there for a specific purpose the last thing you wanna do is slip out trying to do a 2…

There are exceptions, like to everything in life. They just aren't really that interesting to discuss when talking about trends and averages. The average contractor servicing suburban and exurban properties in a work van is going to be able to trivially navigate 95% of all snowfalls with FWD with a modicum of winter driving skills. It's just not that hard, and very few places get the type of snow that requires a full…

>If I lived in the mountains of Colorado and servicing ranches or something of course I'd be buying for those conditions. But a standard city in the northern US or Canada? Meh. Total waste of money for a fleet vehicle. These sorts of locations are where something like 99% of all vehicle miles are put on.

I'm not talking about places that can be written off because "the boonies are a rounding error".

I'm talking about some guy who owns a plumbing business in Boston and wants to reduce the number of days per year that conditions make things sketchy. $3k per truck or $4k per van is absolutely chump change compared to the PITA of having to add more buffer to winter scheduling to account for delays and inconvenience.

>for personal use now that I can afford it? AWD is on all my vehicles. It's a magical technology since it allows turning your brain off, and making some situations comically easy to navigate. But I'm not optimizing for cost efficiency or practicality there - I'm optimizing for luxury and convenience.

Baffling that someone who readily admits that "you can turn your brain off" doesn't see why people who either have to drive their own work vehicle every day, or put a vehicle in the hands of an employee wouldn't value that even higher.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#873

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:11 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #230

Spooky23 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother has one, it is an amazing vehicle with better range performance than Tesla. It's dramatically better in the snow. Towing of large loads is a valid downside, but reality is that most people don't tow, and people who do are probably fine with 80% of the use cases (construction trailers, lawn trailers, etc). The business problem Tesla solved at Ford cannot is the dealer network. He pre-ordered his, and the de…

Electric cars still need maintenance. They don't get regular oil changes, but they wear out tires sooner. They have more recalls in general than ICE (this will likely change, but manufactures are still learning how to make EVs reliable). The parts of a car that are not common with EVs don't break for the first 100k miles, and almost nobody is using the dealer for cars that old. There is plenty of other work that is c…

It displaces well paid mechanic jobs with greasemonkey stuff.

It's not bad for consumers, but a significant amount of the economy is maintaining cars. It's the same thing that happened when emissions standards made cars more reliable. The corner repair shop was displaced by convenience stores, and repair consolidated.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#874

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #659

aembleton wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs are typically heavier than ICE cars so will cause more tyre wear.

Yes, but typically by a small margin. Close enough that tire wear is dominated by driving style. The problem is that instant torque is simultaneously addictive and also maximally damaging to tire tread.

The F-150 lightning weighs about 25-35% more than the ICE version. That's a significant margin.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#875

Post by Der_Einzige » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #861

tyre wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vans don't project manliness. Most people don't use pickup trucks for pickup truck things. They'd be fine with a station wagon, but they have self-confidence issues.

This is the main thing. The US is very, very weird in terms of how it genders every possible lifestyle choice, and polices those gender norms. The rise of SUVs in the US was partly driven by things like inconsistent emissions standards, but also by the need to make a more "masculine" alternative to the minivan or station wagon.

Euros claiming we gender everything in the USA as though their romance languages don't arbitrarily gender literally every noun.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#876

Post by bombcar » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

BatteryMountain wrote: post #793

aggregator-ios wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. The misconceptions, even from other EV owners is astounding. People are constantly confused about kWh vs kW, Amps, voltage, temperature, range, mi/kWh, etc. Even PhD Computer Science and other highly educated folks who have owned EVs for a long time can't quite communicate the difference between those units of measurement. So of course when a curious person asks them or others, they only quote the falsehoods…

Most households do not drive more than 100KM per day... yet people are obsessed with range. My next EV will be a small BYD (dolphin or dolphin surf), these things can get between 200KM and 400KM per FULL charge, depending on your speed and settings. If you use the "slow" wall charger (that doesn't require installation or modifications to home circuits), not only will the batteries last longer, it will easily charge u…

The thing with range is it's another "thing to worry about" - with a gas car, it's basically nothing to worry about unless you happen to be absolutely on empty and no time to fill up the tank (5-10 minutes unless you have to go way out of your way for gas; rare).

It's like when phones went from 8-10 hour capacity to over a day; suddenly it wasn't a thing you think about anymore.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#877

Post by Der_Einzige » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

wooger wrote: post #819

edgineer wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's opinion/stereotype, and unsupported. From Rob Cockerham's experiment (2002): "I guessed that 98% of all truck beds are empty" "In 25 minutes I had counted 150 trucks, and 99 of them had been empty. This 66% empty ratio was much lower than I had expected. I hadn't realized that so many trucks were being so successfully utilized." "The results were similar: 39% of the trucks were hauling goods, and 61 of them we…

A vehicle thousands of pounds heavier, with much worse mpg, and almost by definition terrible aerodynamics, is no less efficient than a car with empty rear seats? Sure.

The only part that matters is the weight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#878

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #495

stbtrax wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that you share the same views but at least directly funneling money to someone harming many.

You do that merely by using the monetary system at all.

"You criticize society, yet you participate in it!"

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/259/257/342...

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#879

Post by bombcar » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:17 PM UTC

morshu9001 wrote: post #701

threetonesun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An F-150 Lightning and Cybertruck weigh somewhere between 6000 and 7000 pounds, so I personally think of them the same way as if you replaced your horse with a hippo. It's not hard to convince people to move to electric, just make it such a better economic proposition that it would be silly not to.

I don't need a pickup truck, but if I ever did, I'd get whatever my landscaper has. Unlike most people with Rivians, Lightnings, Cybertrucks, Ridgelines, and Raptors, he totally relies on that truck for work. So far it's Tacoma. Maybe some day he'll have an EV instead.

I knew someone who had a Tacoma for construction work; he got it because everyone had one.

Later he had to take it in to the shop and they gave him a loaner cargo van, and from then on he regretted not getting a cargo van instead of a truck.

The vast majority of what he did with the truck was carry tools, which are easier to access in a van; the few times he carried materials he would have to unload the whole truck or get the trailer anyway.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales

#880

Post by a4isms » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

potato3732842 wrote: post #554

a4isms wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifestyle sells. I drive a wagon. Of course wagon owners talk about the utility. And yet, you can buy a wagon with a twin-turbo V8 engine. What's the "sportwagon" segment all about? Certainly not going to Home Depot to buy four toilets for the new house, it's about putting your $15,000 Cannondale Black Ink MTB on the roof and swanking up to the trailhead.

I drive a wagon, among other vehicles. I live in a "tech area" of the country. Last weekend I hauled ~700lb of rebar on the roof (because they come in 20ft sticks so the wagon is the best choice). The number of dirty looks I got was off the charts. The same exact demographics that are in here shitting on pickups were judging me for not using one. Good thing I don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.

I'm a wagon-person. I picked up four new toilets when I moved into my home, take as many as four bikes to the trailhead, and our full-sized Chesapeake Bay Retriever likes having the entire "trunk" area to himself.

I also do not allow my lifted pickup and Model Y neighbours to choose my vehicle for me.