Ford debuted its all-electric F-150 Lightning to appreciable fanfare a number of years in the past, and it is offered fairly properly since then. The automaker billed it as a correct full-size truck that might do truck issues, together with towing large trailers. Technically, that is appropriate. However it’s no secret that a number of elements work in opposition to EVs as tow automobiles.
Chatting with the media throughout Ford’s 2024 monetary convention name, CEO Jim Farley conceded that full-size battery-electric or range-extended electrical automobiles should not nice platforms for towing.
“It’s not good,” he mentioned. “Should you tow, it’s not know-how. The batteries need to be too large.”
Merely being large is not the issue. Whereas battery prices are coming down, Farley believes the large batteries required for giant automobiles are nonetheless cost-prohibitive at this level.
“For bigger retail electrical (automobiles), the economics are unresolvable,” he mentioned. “These clients have very demanding use instances for an electrical automobile. They tow, they go off-road, they take lengthy street journeys. These automobiles have worse aerodynamics they usually’re very heavy, which implies very massive and costly batteries. Retail clients have proven that they won’t pay any premium for these massive EVs.”
To that finish, Ford has already canceled plans for a big, three-row electrical SUV. On the planet of pickup vehicles, the corporate teased a full-size electrical truck that was “one thing completely different” from the F-150 Lightning again in 2022. Little has been heard of this next-gen EV since, and at this level, it is unclear whether or not it’ll attain manufacturing. Nonetheless, Ford is transferring forward with plans for extended-range EVs (EREVs) that make the most of a combustion engine to cost smaller battery packs.
“Ford will probably be growing versatile, body-on-frame and unibody platforms that will probably be designed for these multi-energy powertrains which can be wanted, given the realities of buyer affordability and vary necessities,” mentioned Farley. “We’ve discovered, really, when it wasn’t common to put money into hybrids, it seems it was transfer. And due to this fact, we need to lean into EREVS and different powertrains to guarantee that we waft of the shoppers.”
