There are several tie downs and cargo nets are available to hold smaller items or grocery bags in place. Since the grille panel goes up with the hood, it leaves an opening all the way down to bumper height making for much easier loading. Like the Bronco Sport tailgate, Ford has also incorporated a pair of LED lights on the inside of the frunk lid to illuminate the area as well. During our demo, it opened to reveal two golf bags, but this space can hold all manner of gear or luggage in a very useful shape. What would have been the hood and grille on a gas or diesel F-150 can now be opened up with a push of a button the key fob, revealing a 14.1 cubic foot cavity. The Mach-E frunk is 4.7 cubic feet, but the Lightning takes this to a whole new level. Most of the legacy automakers building EVs to date have not packaged their systems in such a way that this space is actually available for storage, but Ford is the exception. But in place of the internal combustion engine is an electric motor with a single speed transaxle in a cast aluminum sub-frame. At the front corners, the Lightning retains the same upper and lower control arm suspension layout. Since trucks are already body-on-frame designs, they have sort of always been skateboard chassis, but the Lightning chassis goes even further in that direction. It has been designed completely in-house. While the Lightning retains the basic dimensions of a 2021 F-150 crew cab with 5.5-inch bed, the frame is said to be all new and exclusive to the electric truck.Ĭontrary to some speculation, Ford has not incorporated any technology from Rivian into this truck. Whenever a maker of these machines launches a new model, they always talk about how they have made the frame stronger and tougher with more high-strength steel and all sorts of other buzzwords. While Lightning will be easily recognizable by anyone that has seen a modern F-150, this is far more than just a quickie conversion job on an internal combustion vehicle like that Ranger was so many years ago.Ģ023 Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup Sam AbuelsamidĪ full-size pickup truck starts from its foundation, the frame. It turns out that the F-150 Lightning is a very different beast from the E-Transit. While many of those customers would probably be fine with a shorter range, Ford would likely cede almost all consumers to the competition. But Ford has long been saying that they saw commercial customers as a prime market for the F-150 as well (at least half of big truck sales fall into this category). Ford explained at the time that they had studied the usage pattern of Transit owners who are primarily commercial customers and found that most of the vans accumulate less than 75 miles per day. When Ford launched the e-Transit van last November, there was some concern that the F-150 might follow a similar path with a relatively short range of just 127 miles.

Ford f 150 lightning unveiling