President Biden Goes Truckin' With Ford

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

There are lots of pros to being the president of the United States. There are also many cons. To me, two of the biggest drawbacks would be the ever-present threat of assassination and having to give up driving forever.

Well, the current commander-in-chief is a car guy, and President Joe Biden reminded us of his automotive bona fides while giving Ford a nice PR boost. He did so by toolin’ around in a truck.

More specifically, the upcoming Ford F-150 Lightning.

Biden was in Dearborn, Michigan to tout his infrastructure plan, dubbed the American Jobs Plan, and to talk up the future of electric vehicles — and how America needs to beat China at the EV game.

Part of his plan includes government assistance via tax credits to help establish EV and battery production in the States, more incentives for consumers to buy EVs, more focus on electrifying the medium- and heavy-duty truck fleet, more EV charging stations, and upgrades to the electric grid.

Coincidentally, I was just down I-94, leaving Ann Arbor after sampling the Volkswagen Taos. Perhaps I should’ve headed east instead of west and crashed this shindig?

The Lightning won’t even be officially unveiled until tomorrow — though one was parked, uncovered, in the background — but like a buff-book journalist on a long-lead media drive, Biden got an early chance at driving the truck.

He even provided a review, saying “this sucker’s quick.” Maybe Biden wants to trade the White House Resolute Desk for a home office and a car reviewer’s salary?

If so, my editorial feedback is this: Concise, Joe, but far short of our minimum word count for a review. Still, if you find yourself unemployed in 2025, TTAC does welcome pitches.

That is, if the rules change and ex-presidents are allowed to drive again.

[Image: Ford]

Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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  • EngineerfromBaja_1990 A friend from college had its twin (2003 Cavalier 2dr) which fittingly re-named the Cacalier. No description needed
  • Lorenzo GM is getting out of the car biz, selling only trucks, EVs and the Corvette. They're chasing the bigger margins on lower volume, like the dealer trying to sell a car for $1 million: "I just have to sell one!"
  • SCE to AUX "The closeness of the two sides"56-44 isn't close, if that's what you mean.
  • Jalop1991 expensive repairs??? I've heard that EVs don't require anything that resembles maintenance or repair!So let me get this straight: as EV design and manufacture technology, and as battery technology, improves over time, the early adopters will suffer from having older and ever-rapidly outdated cars that as a result have lower resale value than they thought.And it's the world's obligation to brush their tears away and give them money back as they realize the horrible mistake they made, the mistake made out of some strong desire to signal their virtue, the mistake they could have avoided by--you know--calmly considering the facts up front?Really? It's Tesla's obligation here?If Tesla continued to manufacture the Model 3 (for example) the same way it did originally when the Model 3 was introduced, Tesla would not have been able to lower prices. And they wouldn't have. But they invested heavily in engineering in order to bring prices down--and now the snowflakes are crying in their cereal that the world didn't accommodate their unicorn dreams and wishes and wants and desires.Curse the real world! How dare it interfere with those unicorn wishes!
  • Canam23 I live in southwest France and I am always surprised at how many Teslas I see on the road here. Mind you, I live in a town of 50k people, not a big city so it does seem unusual. On the other hand I also see a lot of PT Cruisers here (with diesel engines) so there's that...
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