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In 2017, Ford announced that it would sell an all-electric version of its best-selling F-150 pickup truck, the vehicle which has outsold every other model car, truck, and SUV in North America, for 42 straight years.
It plans to start selling a hybrid version in 2020, and as a way to start priming the pump (or plug, as it were) for a vehicle that will no doubt be a very big deal, the company released a video Tuesday demonstrating the electric truck’s remarkable towing capacity.
This special version of the truck was hitched to the front train car. Then Linda Zhang, chief engineer for all things F-150, hit the throttle, and the all-electric Ford F-150 towed a 1.25-million-pound train.
Last year, CEO Jim Hackett announced the Detroit giant will invest $11 billion in EVs by 2023, with plans to roll out 24 hybrids and 16 pure electrics by 2022. Don’t be surprised if this truck’s among those sweet 16, even if it arrives on dealer lots in limited numbers.
An electric pickup truck makes sense, says Karl Brauer, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book. Pickups are Ford’s biggest sellers, in profits as well as volume (it moved nearly 1 million F-Series trucks in 2018), and can better absorb the added cost and weight of a battery than a car like the Focus. EVs produce prodigious torque, which accounts for the whole pulling-a-train thing. Trucks that run set routes (say between construction sites) can better handle limited range. And if Ford wants to show it’s serious about preparing for an electric future—which investors may well want to see, Brauer says—it has to bring batteries to the core of its business.
Ford recently announced it was teaming up with Volkswagen on electric and autonomous vehicles. VW is investing $2.6 billion on Ford’s AV effort, and Ford will gain access to the German giant’s electric vehicle MEB platform, which the Blue Oval says it will use to design and build at least one high-volume fully electric vehicle in Europe starting in 2023.
Also previously, Ford said it would invest $500 million investment in EV startup Rivian, and it will build an electric vehicle using Rivian’s tech. The new vehicle won’t affect the electric F-150 and Mustang-inspired crossover, though.
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