Ford F150 Lightning Impressions: Better Than I Thought!

[Music] hey what's up mkbhd here and i've got you an early look at what i'm just going to say is the most important electric vehicle we're going to see all this year more than the cyber truck or or the rivien or the plaid model s or anything else that may or may not come out in 2021 it's the electric ford f-150 because here's the thing a lot of people buy sedans and sports cars and minivans and all sorts of other types of vehicles but the most popular best-selling vehicle in the u.s for the last 40 years straight is the ford f-150 i didn't say the most popular truck i said the most popular vehicle in this entire country is a ford truck so a new electric version of this flagship it's a big deal especially if ford actually takes it seriously and makes the electric benefits known so enter ford f-150 lightning so i spent a few hours with it here actually at our studio and not only has it really impressed me but i also learned a few things about this truck just from my hands-on that i haven't seen anywhere else in any articles or anywhere else on the internet so drop a like on this video if you like exclusives so first of all on the outside it looks just like any other ford truck literally if you weren't looking for hints you might not know it's the electric one and that's actually great because the f-150s design is tried-and-true but they did add some nice details on this trim with the lights so the front lights have this nice angular shape and there's a daytime running light across the whole front that adds this nice symmetry and the back lights are also a bar light as well turns out i'm a huge sucker for full length brake lights i love this and then there's also a front grille that's not really a grill since electric cars don't actually need a huge air intake like that so it's just a plastic insert but in my opinion it still looks pretty decent with those headlights then you got the badging so the blue and black lightning text badge on either side the little blue lightning electric bolt on the bottom right side of the lift gate so you can kind of read it from left to right ford f-150 lightning and the charge port so it's behind this door that says f-150 platinum on the driver's side there's another identical looking panel actually on the other side of the car that doesn't do anything it's purely aesthetic it's just for symmetry not functional so let me hit you with the basic specs right now all right so there's two versions there's a baseline version most people probably won't get but it exists it's just under 40 000 and it'll have a 230 mile rated range then there's the extended battery option that'll start at just under 50 000 and that has a 300 mile range right off the bat i'd say that's pretty competitive if you did go with the cheaper version that would i mean if you consider cyber truck and rivien f-150 is the most affordable electric truck option that we've seen come out so far and so now i've learned a lot about trucks and the ford f series in preparation for this experience and for my hands-on and so if you're a truck person some of this may be a little bit redundant but i was very impressed with a lot of the utility into the design of these vehicles and this electric version is the best of all of it so it's obviously a pretty big vehicle already four doors with five and a half foot bed so plenty of space and this platinum badge you keep seeing is a name of a trim level so it's the highest trim level it's got leather seats and a sunroof and all this stuff that gets packed in together and it's called the platinum trim which can go up north of like ninety thousand dollars but truck people i'm telling you this electric version is the best of the best version yet so the inside is it's still pretty industrial it's got the upgraded interior that has the same 15 inch touchscreen as the mustang machi with the volume knob at the bottom and everything which i do like and then underneath that screen is a little covered storage for a horizontal wireless phone charger and some more plugs and then you see that gear selector here so in a work truck you might just want to drop a laptop there and get some work done so this button here folds the gear selector down into the center console and then the elbow rest unfolds into a huge flat working surface like a counter for your computer or whatever you want to do plus there's a plug next to the display for a full 120 volt power outlet so sick there's a normal glove box but also a second glove box up top for smaller things the car will get software updates and improve over time and for your convenience it pulls in various compatible charging stations across several networks through the fordpass app it can route you actually through the correct chargers and account for your shorter range using the onboard scales in the bed of the truck to measure how heavy your cargo is and adjust accordingly that is really cool and then the onboard power this vehicle puts out is super clutch lots of people work out of their trucks as you probably know whether it's for landscaping or construction whatever they're doing and there's 240 volt power and 420s in the bed of this truck so for power tools air compressors etc you don't need to carry a separate generator for things like table saws and drills and big lights that don't run on battery power because this truck is basically a massive portable power bank also i think it's hilarious that they still have the sticker saying don't leave the engine running to keep the outlets on if you're indoors because obviously that's not a concern anymore this truck is electric they probably just made a habit of putting the sticker on everyone now again truck people might not be impressed with any of the things i just said because they've seen it before on other trucks but there are two huge new features in this lightning that i kind of guarantee will impress you because you don't see it in any gas trucks and they are the front trunk and bi-directional power so the f-150 lightning since it doesn't have an engine instead has room for an absolutely massive power liftgate front trunk so not only is it pretty sweet for a pickup truck now to have this covered locked weather sealed storage for things you don't want to store in the bed or in the back seat but it's also about the biggest front trunk i have ever seen it's huge so you can easily fit several pieces of luggage and bags in here like a regular car trunk it has lights that you can turn on that shine down from the top of the hood when it's dark so you can see inside if you look carefully at the inside of the hood that is a diagram of two golf bags just as a reminder that you can fit two full-size golf bags in this trunk yes i did happen to have my golf clubs today so i did test one bag definitely fits in here with plenty of room to spare so i believe too it has this removable cover at the bottom that pops up to reveal even more storage and it can reposition in several ways to slot in and act as a divider to keep smaller stuff from rolling around and at the bottom underneath everything here you can see that's a drain hole because like i said the trunk is weather sealed so the figure if you want to just fill it with ice and use it as a cooler you might want a drain hole for the water when it melts so you got that right there oh and there's even more outlets of course there's four more wall plugs to be exact plus usbc and usba i feel like you can tailgate out of the front trunk now entirely although you probably have to you probably have to rename that uh front gating there's probably a better name out there for that either way it's about the most impressive front trunk i've ever seen in any ev and then there's bi-directional power so you know how you can already charge up every day at your house it's great you can plug in in your garage start every day with a full tank or a full battery and that's fantastic but there is an optional accessory that actually comes with the long range version it's power inverter and that lets you power your entire home from your truck battery in the event of a power outage it'll keep your entire home powered for up to several days so now you've got a pickup truck a portable generator and basically a tesla power wall all in one vehicle seriously impressive stuff like i said i'm not a truck person but this is looking pretty complete to me now my number one concern when i'm looking at like new electric cars was just the range again it was it was pretty good but i actually learned something from the people at ford who are walking me through the car that i haven't seen anywhere else that is definitely worth sharing so that 300 mile range that i talked about for the long range version i was like ah okay that's it's pretty good it's it's good for their first generation but it's not amazing or anything like that for coming out next year but that 300 mile range is the epa estimated rating with a thousand pounds of cargo in the trunk so this truck at our studio with no weight in the trunk was quoting me 367 miles and from the indicator on the dashboard the battery was about 80-ish full which if if i'm doing my math right that's extrapolates out to about 460 miles at a hundred percent which right off the bat is a lot less concerning than 300 would have been um now ford's not going to tell me 460 miles but that's what i found so ford's not saying the size of the battery officially but for context usually i mean a tesla model s is 100 kilowatt hours if i'm guessing with context it feels like this battery is probably in the size of a truck around about 140 to 200 kilowatt hours if i'm guessing so the reason for doing this this epa rating with a thousand pounds in the trunk is they just want to make it as easy as possible for people to switch from the gas version of the truck to the electric version and make it a no-brainer just make it better at everything and so they've understood that people don't really want to have to think too hard about the fact that evs get 300 miles but then they get a little bit less if it's cold outside because the battery has to heat up and then a little bit less if you're towing stuff and a little bit less if you have to power things while you're out the work site and they just want to give you a safe a safe 300 miles so you might end up under promising and over delivering but at least you'll always have 300 miles so to me it's clear ford is taking this seriously like they they understand that electric cars are a big deal and that the electric f-150 has got to be straight up better than the gas one and it's got to be able to do stuff that the gas one can't well mission accomplished and of course on top of all that there's the towing and hauling performance i didn't even mention yet so on paper i didn't even it's funny how far i got into the video without actually saying this uh it's the fastest truck they've ever made it's faster than the ford raptor the 0-60 in 4.5 seconds at 6 000 pounds that's crazy it's not even that important it's a truck but it just it's a byproduct of having that much electrical power but you're looking at 430 or 563 horsepower depending on which battery version you get but both versions will put out 775 pound-feet of instant torque and it's that instant torque from a one-speed gearbox that you know doesn't make as many headlines but it's huge so let me just let me just jump into a little torque band mini explainer so gas engines have a power band which is in a sort of an arc shape so if you can imagine there's a highest point where they produce the most torque at a certain rpm so let's say 5000 rpm for this example so the amount of torque you get actually drops off at higher or lower than 5000 rpm so trucks like the previous f-150 the gas versions would have a bunch of gears they'd use a 10-speed gearbox to try to mitigate the issue and keep you near maximum torque as often as possible but you know now this means the automatic transmission is shifting through gears often trying to stay around the same rpm which is of course much more complicated and a bit less efficient as you can imagine with an electric motor i'm simplifying but the power band is basically flat and so max torque is actually delivered from zero rpm all the way through this really wide power band that's just a huge inherent advantage to driving electric vehicles so this f-150 lightning is going to be smoother than the gas one it's obviously already faster than the gas one and towing should in theory be a bit more efficient because you have max torque more often i don't know i guess what i'm trying to say is they thought of pretty much everything i'm not a truck person but it seems pretty complete from every angle i can see it they've made a more powerful more responsive more functional version of the original f-150 that everybody loves that now doubles as a portable electric generator and has brand new features with a covered locked storage and it just happens to be electric i think they're up to like 70 000 reservations now or something like that and counting you know so not quite cyber truck hype but i think most of these will be somewhere around that 50 to 55 000 price range in the middle there pretty competitive and i'm very curious how this goes let me know what you would rather have cyber truck or f-150 lightning i think it's two different types of buyers but i'm curious what you guys think in the comments section below either way that's been it thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace you

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 7,196,260

Keywords: F150 Lightning, Ford F150 Lightning, electric F150, electric pickup, electric pickup truck, MKBHD, first drive, review, electric F150 review, F150 lightning vs, F150 lightning, Cybertruck vs, F150 Lightning vs Cybertruck, range, battery backup, F150, Ford F150, Ford lightning, Raptor, Lightning vs Raptor, frunk, front trunk, power frunk, mega frunk, mega power frunk

Id: J2npVg9ONFo

Length: 13min 34sec (814 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/constantlyanalyzing]

Nice - the front trunk does have a little extra storage compartment below: https://i.imgur.com/5qSV5TP.png

[u/xscape]

Interesting strategy to quote the EPA range with 1K payload. Most trucks I see are running around empty. Why not market the vehicle with both figures??

[u/Kpony]

Wow folding gear selector combo with folding desk and 120v outlet is sick.

But that front trunk is ridiculously big. So much room for activities!

[u/petard]

Slightly off topic, but does anyone know how the home backup power system is going to work with a J1772 plug? There is no dedicated neutral pin on there, Just L1, L2/N, and Ground. How will it export split phase power? Will it re-purpose the ground pin as neutral?

[u/Natural_Opposite5032]

Ford absolutely crushed this one. With the F150 lighting launch, and then the commercial EV ecosystem announcement soon after, wow. This is seriously incredible.

[u/UnitedMario]

Really sets a sky-high bar for EV trucks. The thoughtful usable features like the foldout console desk and wall outlets-a-plenty are awesome.

[u/Joshua--]

This is an easy conversion to the Expedition for Ford. Full size, three row SUV with 350+ miles of range would be amazing. Compelling.

[u/RP61391]

So wait, that 230/300mi range that Ford is quoting is when the truck is loaded and/or towing?

Sneaky

[u/PandaSlash2Face]

MKBHD Coming through for us!!! I had a thought that range number had a payload.

But now that I though about it…does payload include cabin load? So wouldn’t 1000 pound simply be 4-5 average size humans?