In January 2019, at a private investors event, Ford announced its intention to make an all-electric Ford F-150. Ford made it perfectly clear that they were talking about “fully electric,” too.
“Here’s what’s going to happen next to future-proof that global juggernaut of commercial vehicles,” Jim Farley, Ford president of global markets said, reported the Detroit News. “We’re going to be electrifying the F-Series, both battery-electric and hybrid. And we’re doing the same for Transit.”
As the Verge says, the video – produced by The Blue Oval brand as a PR stunt involving an F-150 prototype towing over 1 million pounds worth of train cars, “is a way to start priming the pump (or plug, as it were)” for a pickup that really is “built Ford tough.”
In the video, the F-150’s chief engineer Linda Zhang presents the F-150 prototype pickup to a group of Ford truck owners. First, she demonstrates that the vehicle can tow 10 empty double-decker freight trains (that together weight over 1 million pounds) for 1,000 feet at roughly 4.5 mph.
Readers might notice the group of Ford owners were an all-male group. Either Ford couldn’t find any women who loved Ford trucks or they just didn’t look hard enough. I sure would have been right there watching because I come from a long line of Ford truck owners.
But wait, Zhang takes the demonstration a step further and has the Ford team load the train cars with 42 modern Ford F-150s, and Zhang tows the now-1.25 million pound load for another 1,000 feet, smiling all the while. How cool is that?
Ford describes the towing stunt as a “one-time short event demonstration” and claims it is “far beyond any production truck’s published capacity.” To be fair, right now, Tesla holds the record for pulling the heaviest load, when a Model X towed a 287,000-pound Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner nearly 1,000 feet on a taxiway at the Melbourne Airport in Australia in 2018.
“What we’re trying to show is the benefits of that instant torque from that electric motor,” said Linda Zhang, chief engineer of the F-150, according to USA Today. “The electrified F-150 will be able to add new possibilities that are only possible with an electric motor.”
Ford plans on introducing the all-electric F-150 about the same time it introduces the company’s forthcoming battery-powered Mustang-inspired crossover.
