All,
"Remember where you were when you heard about it."
Actor Bryan Cranston, of "Breaking Bad" fame, asked me, so I am going to tell him.
I was watching a Cleveland Indians-Detroit Tigers baseball game, a 0-0 affair with a combined total of 7 hits, so the commercials were more interesting than the baseball game. A game Tiger manager A.J. Hinch later described as a little bit old-school baseball and new school. The Tigers won on a sac fly in the 8th inning, 1-0.
A little bit old-school, a little bit new-school. Maybe that also describes the Ford F-150 Lightning, Ford's first electric pickup. Now, for those of you who don't know, F-150 is the best-selling vehicle in the world. Has been for years. Ford sold nearly 900,000 F-150s in 2019. Put another way, one out of 18 new vehicles sold in the United States is a Ford F-150. It is Ford's cash cow. Without it, the company would disappear, in my opinion. Maybe I'm slightly biased. I helped launch the 2014 F-150, so I know first-hand how important that truck is to Ford.
I know this, you don't mess with success. For 44 years running, F-150 has been the best-selling truck and, for more than 30 years, the best-selling vehicle. So how do you introduce a powertrain without an engine in this category? Very carefully.
Lightning cracked, popped (or insert whatever pun you want here) when it was unveiled last week. President Joe Biden helped launch it; even test drove it when he was in Detroit last Tuesday. "This sucker is quick," he said as he rolled past a gaggle of media.
And here's the other thing. Play-by-play announcer Matt Shepherd, who calls all the Tiger games on Bally's Detroit, actually promoted the commercial before they left the Tiger broadcast and bragged about the truck when he returned from the commercial. I've never heard such a setup before on local sports programming.
Now we could quibble. The commercial is full of self-importance as most Ford truck commercials often are. It is shown pulling a flatbed with a lightweight glider/helicopter thing, which looks wimpy and lightweight. But it is rated for towing up to 5,000 pounds or carrying a payload of 2,000. That's well off what gas-powered F-150s do, but it is impressive for an EV truck. It does claim a range of 230 miles (if you don't carry anything or pull anything and you are light on the throttle and avoid highways). And 775 foot-pounds of torque. I'd want to drive like the President did. Jack rabbit start on a test track, to go from here to there right now. But do that more than once on your average commute and you will be stranded.
Here's the thing that impresses me the most. The price. At least for a stripped down commercial truck. It's just under $40,000 -- where it needs to be.
I've talked to a lot of service guys in the last few months -- guys that run a Christmas tree farm, a tree trimming service, a lawn care service, animal control service, plumbers, electricians -- they all arrived in trucks. Trucks they needed for work. And they love their trucks, with a passion you don't often see in passenger cars.
And I had this exact same discussion with all of them. Not one of them is in the market for an EV truck. They have heard of it, for sure. If they are Ford guys, they talk about the Lightning. If they are loyal to Chevy, it's the EV Silverado. Some even know about Rivian -- though none can afford a truck that expensive.
But they don't see how a battery is going to outwork an engine. They won't be able to haul stuff or pull things. And that is the fundamental problem. I think these trucks will have to bought by people who want the "brand image" of commuting in a truck but never really use it to do work.
Ford knows what it is doing, certainly. Maybe there is a huge market for city and government fleets, for delivery of flowers or lightweight packages, but I can't see my next contractor pulling up in one.
So, Bryan Cranston, will I remember where I first heard about or saw the Ford F-150 Lightning? Only when it sells 900,000 units a year. Now that is a big load to carry, a tough road to slog.
Scott