A recent report states that an all-electric Ford F-Series is coming in addition to the F-150 Hybrid. Detroit Free Press reports that Ford executive, Jim Farley, made the following statement: “We’re going to be electrifying the F-Series – battery electric and hybrid”.
This is big news because none of the mainstream truck manufactures have yet to answer the call to make an all-electric pickup truck. Tesla announced an all-electric pickup truck many moon ago. Upstart companies, such as Rivian, Bollinger, and Atlis all have shown prototypes or renderings of electric pickup trucks.
We reached out to Ford for comment, and here is what they say about when an all-electric Ford truck is coming: “We are not specifying timing. We are constantly looking at new ways to better serve our truck customers.“
Recently, Ram and General Motors have been experimenting with mild-hybrid pickup trucks. Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra have been selling mild gas/electric hybrids for several years on a limited basis. Ram has recently launched their eTorque mild-hybrid powertrain in their 2019 Ram 1500 trucks as standard equipment.
GM and Toyota have also shown either military truck or semi truck concepts that use hydrogen fuel-cell electric powertrains. Chevrolet calls their fuel-cell prototypes ZH2.
Toyota and Nissan are yet to answer the call for electrification of trucks. Anton Whalman, Automotive Industry Analyst, and I have discussed this topic recently (see the video below). United States is seeing electrification of every car, crossover, SUV, van, and commercial vehicle segment with the exception of the pickup truck.
What gives? Why hasn’t any manufacturer brought an electric pickup truck to market already?
It appears that Ford is serious about not just building an F-150 Hybrid, which is coming in about a year. The company wants to go all electric with their F-Series trucks in order to make their truck business “futureproof”.
The report quotes Ford as saying that their F-Series and commercial van business had a revenue of approximately $70 billion in 2017. That revenue is higher than that of Facebook in 2017, according to Ford. The company sold over 1 million F-Series trucks world-wide in 2018.
This statement in turn suggests – Ford leadership acknowledges that all-electric pickups are at least part of the future. Electric motors offer maximum torque from a stand-still, and this can allow a truck to move very heavy loads.
Naturally, battery-electric trucks are not for everyone. Please let us know in the comments below whether you like or hate the idea of an electric pickup truck.
While we wait for a Ford F-150 Hybrid and an all-electric F-Series, we will have to settle for good old-fashioned gas-powered Ike Gauntlet towing competition.
