#Trucks

The urination for distance competition (that’s a metaphor, and not literal, thank heaven) continues among the automakers who produce full-size pickups.

This time it’s the Blue Oval, firing a shot across the bow (or over the balcony, as it were), with the towing numbers for the 2021 Ford F-150 released today.

Auto high beams were not the feature I thought I’d miss when our family switched from a 2018 Honda Odyssey to a 2019 Honda Ridgeline. I spent more than three decades living in urban environments. High beam use was limited to vacations or weekend getaways in country idylls.

Even after three years of rural life, auto high beams still seemed to me to be just a frivolous luxury. At least they did, until we gave them up in the switch to the Ridgeline, which isn’t the top-spec model needed to acquire the auto high beams. It was a switch that occurred during some of the longest days of the year, when there are roughly 16 hours between sunrise and sunset on Prince Edward Island.

Now the daylight hours are shrinking and I am forced to repeatedly push and pull a signal stalk forward and back with the sheer strength of an index finger, like some sort of penurious Suzuki Equator driver. It’s cruel and unusual punishment, that’s what it is. DIY high beam engagement may well be an enhanced interrogation technique, the details of which have not yet been uncovered in a David Shepardson exposé.

Fortunately, almost everything else about the 2019 Honda Ridgeline has fostered an increasingly contented ownership experience, the likes of which I’ve ever encountered in a 5,000-mile/4-month test.

So you just bought your 2021 Ram 1500 TRX. You’ve got a supercharged 6.2-liter V8 from the Hellcat underhood, making 702 horsepower. You’re ready to take on the desert, if not the world.

Yet, you have no frickin’ clue what a certain infotainment-system setting does. You’re stumped. You’ve dove into the owner’s manual and the dry prose has you flummoxed and the index is no help. What’s a truck owner to do?

Chevrolet teased it last week, and now it’s here: The Multi-Flex tailgate that will be available on the 2021 Chevrolet Silverado.

In other news, towing capacity is upgraded.

No word on a new interior, though.

We’re as tired of teasers as you likely are, but Ford nevertheless slipped one into its other news from earlier this week.

Matt noted that Ford claimed the truck would be cheaper to own than the gas model, and that it would be produced in Michigan as part of a major investment, but what else do we know about it?

Ford had a short Web meeting for the media earlier this week, and a big chunk of the time was spent on the newest version of the F-150 pickup truck, including confirmation that the company will be building an all-electric F-150 at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center, as Matt wrote Thursday.

The other big announcement from the Blue Oval focused on how the F-150’s existence helps America. Drawing on a study from Boston Consulting Group, Ford says the F-150 is among the most valuable consumer goods sold in America.

Ford has really been hyping the upcoming F-Series EV this week by assuring customers the new pickup will make the gas-powered one look like the unsightly substance you cough into the sink every morning. Not only with the electrified F-150 come with more power than your standard Ford truck, but it’ll also be cheaper to own and operate — once you get past the higher purchasing price, of course.

The automaker is spending a whopping $700 million to add EV production facilities at the Dearborn Truck Plant on top of the lofty cost of development, so it’s going to tell you whatever it takes to get you to buy one. It has to recoup those expenses somehow and, unless it’s a bald-faced lie, the automotive industry always seems willing to be “extremely optimistic” about a vehicle prior to launch. Unfortunately, Ford has to remain slightly more grounded than some of its peers because the electric F-150 isn’t so completely novel that the manufacturer can claim it will totally transform the driving experience or makes ludicrous suggestions about it driving itself.

We already have an F-150 and people seem to think it’s good enough to warrant nearly a million sales per year. The electric version is a spin-off Ford wants us to understand builds on those strengths.

The amount of limited editions that Ram puts out seems limitless. Yet the brand doesn’t stop.

Here’s one that’s intended to honor the people who serve in our military. Without getting political, I think whether you’re liberal, conservative, libertarian, or somewhere else on the political spectrum, saluting the troops for their service is a good thing. Even pacifists likely acknowledge the sacrifices troops are asked to make.

Ram sure does.

I spent the first part of this morning out of the office, putting miles on a test car before it went home. When I returned to my desk and caught up on emails, I saw one from Chevy PR labeled as a teaser for 2021 Chevrolet Silverado news.

Ford’s Ranger is getting some serious off-road goods for 2021.

No, we don’t mean the Ford Ranger Raptor is finally coming Stateside, although most of us here in TTAC-land would love that. Nah, today we’re talking about a Tremor off-road package for the 2021 Ford Ranger.

Dodge fielded a full-size, truck-based SUV for many years and called it Ramcharger. Eventually for Some Good Reasons, ChryCo abandoned the segment and let Ford and General Motors rake in the dough instead. Today we check out a beautiful truck from the later period of the Ramcharger’s run.

Hope you really like brown.

If Fiat Chrysler handed a dime to auto scribes every time it introduced a new trim or special edition Ram, there’d be quite a few additional millionaires roaming the streets.

Today they’d be 10 cents richer.

Yes, there’s more choice to be had in the Ram lineup for 2021, both in the light- and heavy-duty camps. Because Night editions already exist in the Ram lineup, the truck maker was forced to think long and hard for this one.

Introducing the Limited Night:

If the current vehicle landscape tells us anything, it’s that Americans have never gone so far afield, well beyond the reach of pavement, in as many numbers as they do today. How else to explain the emergence of so many off-road focused pickups and SUVs? Road infrastructure maintenance costs should decline in the coming years as new vehicle buyers blaze their own trail to the office and supermarket.

Watch out, nature.

Or maybe people just like the ability to do such things. Whatever the reason, the list of brush busters grows by the year, and might soon include a new entry from Chevrolet.

The General Motors name might be synonymous with SUVs and pickups in North America, especially after the automaker’s recent passenger car cull, but the Chinese market mostly associates it with SUVs and a bevy of cars. GM apparently wants that to change.

Government documents reveal The General is interested in getting the go-ahead for a Chinese-market pickup.

Today’s Rare Ride joins the exclusive club of ultra-expensive V12 SUVs presented in this series. Thus far, the population was one: the Lamborghini LM002.

Today we take a look at a limited-run SUV that Mercedes made as expensive and gauche as humanly possible.