If inefficiency were a virtue, President Biden is its champion.
Yesterday, President Biden test drove the new electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck which Ford will formally unveil at midnight tonight.
The F-150 is the best-selling vehicle in America, but is the American Everyman prepared to shell out $70,000 for an electric base model and over six figures for the top of the line? Those are the prices Car and Driver predicts.
Today’s pickup trucks are affordable. “The F-150 carries a base price of $28,940, which is one of the lower starting prices in the class. SuperCab models start at $33,025, and SuperCrew models start at $36,650.
Pickup trucks combine power with rugged hauling capacity that appeals to sports and tradesmen. A pickup truck enables individuals to start a business with minimal capital.
Buy a pickup, maybe add a trailer, and you’ve acquired much of the gear you need to start a business as a landscaper, handyman, repairman, mechanic, or carpenter. Add some skills and a lucrative career as a plumber, electrician, or tech specialist beckons.
Pickup trucks and vans are essential elements for many workers’ American dream.
Electric vehicles’ short ranges and long charging times are significant impediments to that dream.
The already-announced Ford E-Transit van “delivers an estimated driving range of 126 miles in the low-roof cargo van variant.” That’s assuming warm weather and driving maximized to fit the EV power curve.
We’ll learn tonight whether some models of the F-150 lightning might make 300 miles, but if they do, we know that will mean a substantial increase in cost and particularly weight.
Motor Trend wrote, “expect the electric F-150 to therefore fall on the heavy end of Ford’s light-duty pickup lineup when all is said and done.”
Ford told President Biden that the F-150 Lightning’s batteries will weigh over 1,800 pounds. That’s a lot of lithium.
Biden raved over one of the best features of electric vehicles: their quick acceleration.
“This sucker’s quick.” Biden remarked behind the wheel, “I think it’s going from zero to sixty in about 4.3… 4.4.” The Ford spokesman confirmed, saying, “right.”
EVs boast near-instant torque. However, that’s been true since the birth of the automobile at the end of the nineteenth century. Instant torque may be a cool feature for drag racing, but hauling capacity and range are what Americans demand in a pickup.
Ford partnered with Thomas Edison to develop an electric vehicle in 1914 but shelved the project due to limitations that while improved, persist today.
Lithium-ion batteries may be more efficient than the lead-acid batteries Henry Ford and Thomas Edison used, and technologies such as recombinant braking offer an efficiency boost with a cost in mechanical complexity, but the essential reasons electric vehicles never caught on remain.
Electric vehicles are costly to make, require massive batteries that don’t last, and are limited by short ranges and long charging times [If there are even charging stations available when you need one]. They require exotic materials, sourced overseas, often mined under appalling conditions.
It remains to be seen whether pickup truck entrepreneurs will overcome sticker shock and range anxiety and embrace electric vehicles.
Will they adopt electric pickup trucks voluntarily, or only through government coercion?
Read more at CFACT
“Buy a pickup, maybe add a trailer, and you’ve acquired much of the gear you need to start a business as a landscaper, handyman, repairman, mechanic, or carpenter. Add some skills and a lucrative career as a plumber, electrician, or tech specialist beckons.”
I agree, but this wasn’t written as well as it probably could have been. It gives the impression that landscapers, handymen, repairmen, mechanics, or carpenters don’t have much skill (and to be fair, as with any occupations, some of them don’t)!
With an electric pick-up, or ute (as we say in Australia), country tradesmen (bush tradies) will require another skill – avoiding work from outlying areas, because their brand new vehicles will simply not have the range for outlying jobs even if the tradies can spare the time to keep the batteries constantly charged.
Those who see logic and reason as a necessary skill will know that the electric truck and ute dream is rather fanciful to say the least. All these vehicles will do is kill businesses, by reducing available work and increasing expenses. But then, the anti-small-business greenies won’t be bothered about that, until they need a tradie or a product and can’t get one.
And that, of course, won’t be their own fault. Nothing ever is.
Betting Joey needed auto-pilot to drive for him. Sure, as long as the free government money keeps rolling in, millions will be able to shell out $75k for an EV. And don’t forget, like for rents and mortgages, the government will allow people to not have top pay for auto loans when the going gets tough.
I do remeber about Obama driving or riding in a Volt Electric Car
Obama drove it about 10 feet.
And then got out and decon’d because that vehicle was such a piece of s***.
Yea, right, if you are a landscaper and have a trailer with your equipment behind the truck you definitely need to go zero to sixty in 4 sec.
What a moron!
All you have to do is hook it up to fossil fueled Generator to recharge it while Biden the Stupid cuts of all the use of Fossil Fuels
A lot has been said about math on this website, what about a high school level understanding of economics. In high school they taught us that as the price goes up, the sales will go down. The Ford EV 150 is about double the cost of the current models. In addition, it has lower value. The range is less. It takes a lot longer to charge the batteries than fill up a fuel tank. The vehicle has a shorter useful life before it has be scrapped or the battery replaced at a huge cost. Yet, Biden seems to think that the Ford EV 150 is a viable replacement for the current models. He needs to take a high school economics class.
Now let’s consider numbers and math. The cost range for a new f150 engine is $4,000 to $8,000. The transmission is $1300 to $3400. The transfer is case around $360. Using high end numbers for replacing the power train would be $11,760. Compared to the cost of $28,940 for a new vehicle, this leaves $17,180 to touch up the body, a new paint job, the suspension, the interior, and incidentals. I’m surprised more people don’t take this option today. Given the choice of an f150 for $70,000, I’m sure many will chose to rebuild older vehicles.
Neil Young did what you have prescribed. He took an old 60’s Lincoln, crammed it full of 12V batteries and converted the engine to burn ethanol. He then drove it to Alberta to an Oil sands protest. The batteries died and there was no ethanol to be had. He called the press to draw attention to his problem. Insanity.
What I prescribed wasn’t to change the design of the vehicle but rebuild it to manufacturer’s specifications. My father did this with a 1974 Oldsmobile Toronado including a paint job and totally redoing the interior. On a 1988 Suburban half ton I didn’t do the paint job or interior but had the entire power train rebuilt. It lasted us until 330,000 miles.
We gave up the Suburban at 330,000 miles because the axils needed to be replaced and it was cheaper to buy a replacement vehicle that was in reasonably good condition. In a nation where electric vehicles dominate the used car market, the cost of replacement batteries would make that option so expensive that the most economic option would have been to replace the axils.
N. Young reasoned that it was environmentally friendly to keep an old vehicle going, rather than scrap it. He could afford any transportation he wanted. He chose his LincVolt.
David, a very wise comment IMHO.
We have owned a 1989 Mitsubishi Triton dual cab 4×4 ute for 20 years. We bought it second hand in 2001 with 100,000kms on it. Two months ago, I had the engine rebuilt for AU$4,400 vs buying a replacement ute for ~ AU$15,000 and around 150,000kms on the clock. What problems might a vehicle like that have?
The reason I rebuilt the engine – compression and leak-down tests proved the engine was loosing compression every where. The body, gear box, transfer case and running gear – all good. The car had low power, fuel consumption was over 15L per 100kms and oil consumption – 400ml per month. It had traveled 290,000kms + spent a lot of time idling which is common for utes in the Australian bush.
After the rebuild, the car’s got its mojo back. Goes really well. Have to watch my speed now. Fuel consumption is 10l per 100kms and no oil use over 2 months.
I find it astounding that so many people are prepared to spend so much on a new vehicle when there are options to save many dollars. I guess that’s what fashion does. We have to keep up with the neighbours, don’t we?
On final point about buying new vehicles is the instant depreciation that occurs when a vehicle is registered. For some makes, it’s as much as 35%. So, if I paid $75,000 for a new vehicle, it would be worth, if the dealer was to buy it back the next day, around $56,000 depending on the resale value of the vehicle and how easy it would be for the dealer to sell it as a used vehicle.
And by the way – I will NEVER buy an electric vehicle.
Someone needs to ask old Joe if he considers the workers who build or service back – up generators to be in ‘green’ jobs.
If the GND gets enough traction, we’re gonna need truckloads of Kohlers and Generacs. Maybe Ford should make them an option with their 1800# battery pack.