#lightning

Eagle-eyed fans of the Blue Oval brand have spied a new trademark filing, one which could hold promise for a future performance – street or off-road – variant of the Lightning pickup truck.

Yes, I had to check the calendar to learn if this is April Fool’s Day. It is not. Ford announced this morning a new trim for their all-electric pickup truck. It has an extended range (320-mile) battery, popular equipment, and a price tag right at $70,000. 

A frequent remark about EV pickups is an argument that thanks to the limitations of electric motors and their attendant batteries, trucks powered by electrons can’t do the same amount of work as their gas-powered twins.

Turns out, if Ford’s findings are any indication, some EV pickup owners are actually using their workhorses more frequently than ICE owners. 

Following an extended production pause of the all-electric Lightning pickup, Ford has signaled its intention to boost production through the rest of 2023 – especially when it comes to its most in-demand models. While it’s undoubtedly wise for Blue Oval to ensure it can build enough vehicles to satisfy demand, the automaker is also trying to turn around any perceptions that it might be falling behind with EVs. Meanwhile, Ford is providing itself with an opportunity to preemptively dunk on General Motors after news broke that the rival automaker would walk back full-size pickup production to “ maintain optimal inventory levels.”

Prices of everything are going up these days – food, gasoline, our Managing Ed’s subscription to Utne Reader – and vehicles are not immune. We’re not just talking about the haywire used car market or greedy dealer markups, either; Ford has seen fit to hike its asking price for the dandy F-150 Lightning. Again.

Do you remember when suits at Ford breathlessly announced their all-electric F-150 Lightning was priced at a sliver under $40,000? Pepperidge Farms remembers – and TTAC does, too. Hot on the heels of a price increase two months ago, the least expensive Lightning now stickers for an alarming $53,749.

Yesterday, we (and the rest of the Internet) brought you our drive impressions of the all-electric F-150 Lightning, putting it through its paces in a variety of typically trucky situations and finding it to be a largely familiar experience behind the wheel – albeit one powered solely by electricity. If part of the challenge in getting truck customers to make the jump to electric is convincing them the experience will not be totally alien, Ford’s approach with the Lightning will pay dividends.

Here’s the thing about most electric vehicles: That enormous battery deep within its frame can, with some creativity, be used for more than just shoving a 6,000+ pound pickup down the freeway. Ford has a few ideas – some of them slickly integrated into the truck and others costing thousands in expenditure to implement. Let’s dig in.

The words ‘all-new’ and ‘seismic shift’ are too frequently hurled around by those who peck their way around a keyboard between visits to shrimp-laden buffet tables. Still, when the country’s best-selling vehicle – the image of which is so closely tied to America that it might as well have a baseball hat and an apple pie in its glovebox – is fitted with an entirely new method of powering its way down the freeway and around job sites, even the j-j-jaded TTAC team will sit up and take interest.

Compared to other efforts in the electric pickup truck space, such as ridiculously angular examples loudly and annoyingly defended by fanbois jihads groups of rabid admirers, the Ford F-150 Lightning actually exists in vast numbers and is actively being cranked out of a factory near Detroit. There’s no shortage of vaporware in the EV truck segment, with numerous Barnum-like companies making grandiose promises amounting to naught, taking the hopes and cash of others down along with them.

With the F-150 Lightning, Ford is definitely *not* peddling vaporware. It’s here, it’s real, and we drove several examples last week in – where else? – Texas.

The same forum that told us to anticipate the order bank opening for the 2022 Ford Lightning next week is now saying “not so fast, my friend” (apologies to Lee Corso).

A report from one of our corporate parent’s forums suggests that orders for the Ford Lightning may open up next week, on October 26.

That’s based on a message left to a forum user by a Ford salesperson.

The Ford F-150 Lightning has been the hot topic of the day in the auto world since its unveiling last night, and we here at TTAC HQ are no exception.

Just this morning, our Slack discussion was about the truck’s sales potential. We came to the not-at-all surprising conclusion that yes, it will sell.

Lightning does strike twice, apparently, but perhaps not in quite the same way each time.

The Ford F-150 Lightning was once a hi-po street rod with power coming from a V8 engine. Now, however, the truck is all-electric.

The Ford Lightning is back. And it’s electric.

We’re sure that last bit will piss a few of you off.

Today’s Rare Ride is a first-generation SVT Lightning from the first year of production. Let’s find out what happened when Ford decided to turn its F-150 into a sport truck.