It’s electric! And it’s got serious power.
In 2017, Ford revealed its plans for an all-electric version of its best-selling F-150 pickup truck.
Sure, going green would help the environment, but what good would a pickup be without its power? Well, Ford tried to answer that question in a big way Tuesday with a video demonstrating how powerful its all-electric F-150 is gonna be.
A gas-powered F-150 can tow 13,200 pounds. But an electric? How about more than 1 million pounds.
In a demonstration, Ford engineers hitched the all-electric prototype F-150 to a line of railcars — weighing in at 1 million pounds — attempted to pull them 1,000 feet. The length was set by using 42 gas-powered F-150s, which is the number of years the truck has outsold the competition.
The result? The truck made easy work of it.
Moreover, Ford’s all-electric truck has access to all of its torque from startup, something its gas-powered sibling must work up to.
“Instant torque combined with a lightweight vehicle helps us deliver a new level of power, performance, and efficiency,” Linda Zhang, the F-150’s chief engineer told Business Insider.
After the initial demo, the company put all of the 42 gas-powered F-150s into the railcars (adding another quarter million pounds) and repeated the pull.
“What we’re doing here is not just about air quality or rising sea level,” Ted Cannis, Ford’s global director of electrification writes in a press release. “We are all about building better trucks for our customers who have real work to do every day.
“We’re aiming to blow away truck customers with new capabilities that they never saw coming.”
