*Ford:* Makes giant, electric pickup truck that you can't purchase for less than $85,000 and your normal, weekend warrior has no need for to make their Home Depot runs.
*Also Ford:* WhERe aRe all tHe cUstOmerS?!
I don't understand what's so hard to understand about selling EVs like hotcakes. Make a reasonably sized vehicle, with a reasonable range, at a reasonable price point. They already have the Maverick. An excellent truck for day-to-day driving and weekend tasks. Make a Maverick, but put an electric motor in it instead of the gas-hybrid engine. Sell it for $10k more than the gas model (~$40k). That truck would sell gangbusters.
Instead they think they are Rivian and can sell trucks at Rivian prices, but they aren't Rivian. They aren't a sexy new EV startup who makes something truly new and bespoke. And who can, as a result, charge bespoke prices. They are Ford. They are a known entity. Dare I say, they are boring. Their strength is in volume, not bespokeness. They need to sell a boring truck with an electric motor at volume.
MSRP is a red herring. Their King Ranch sells just fine at $95k. The problem was and is buyers being gun shy about EVs. The EREV takes away all the excuses. As in the only practical reason to buy an ICE F-150 will be noise.
If you were gunshy about trying out VR. You'd never even worn a pair before and you wanted to give it a shot. Would you be more willing to spend $300 on a Quest or would you rather spend $3500 on an Apple Vision Pro? Now let's pretend we're in an alternate timeline and the $300 Quest never existed. The only option available to you was the $3500 option. Are you still interested in trying out VR?
MSRP might not be the only factor, but it's pretty damn important. Not a lot of people can "risk" $85,000.
>s in the only practical reason to buy an ICE F-150 will be noise.
And the ability to keep the truck at 80 mph without ever worrying about range. Which is why a pure EV truck designed for actual hauling will never work.
Hauling capability is being able to tow safely. Thats the bare minimum. The other big thing is how often do you have to stop for gas. If you are towing a car trailer for example, you have quite a bit of drag. No matter what the power train is, your mileage goes down. Then you introduce things like mountain passes into the mix, and your mileage goes down.
With EV you have to stop and wait to recharge, and at the mercy of the chargers being available.
If battery cells and interfaces were standardized every single gas station had ability to swap cells, then it would work. But we are far, far away from that.
Live in Texas, where there are plenty of people with top level F150s, Raptors, 250s, 350s and so on. Ive seen maybe like 5 Lightnings total since they came out, despite them being the same price. Full size trucks is a different market.
Car frame Trucks like Rivian or Maveric make sense because they are trucks for car people that like the idea of a truck. People don't really carry much in those trucks, and don't really drive that much.
With full size trucks, outside the negligible market that buys them for the size factor, people buy them because the utility value goes through the roof. Quite a lot of people who use the trucks end up putting a lot of miles on them, or using them for carrying lots of stuff (and there is a difference between full size truck bed size and even mid size like Tacoma, namely with what you can carry with tailgate up a and also the depth of bed to prevent things from falling out).
EV in fullsize truck doesn't work that well because a) aero drag is insane, so you are limited in how fast you can go for any real range, and b) any extra battery weight takes away from total payload capacity.
So long as XLT is available (which makes up for 33% of the sales) and gas stations are a thing, you are never going to compete with any equivalent EV.
The easiest thing for Ford to do is make a good plug in hybrid. They already have the hybrid F150 (although reliability issues are still there), but the thing can power your house in power outage, and go like 600+ miles on a tank of gas. Just give it a bigger battery and make it plugin, and pair it with the tried and true 3.5 ecoboost, and you have a winning combo, and people will pay $70k for that thing.
Ok, well Texas ain't the entire country. The vast majority of the population of this country do not live in the rural Midwest. As of the 2020 census, 80% of the population live in areas considered "urban" and 20% live in areas considered "rural". I'd also hazard a guess that most people who drive trucks, are not people who buy them because they need truck "utility". They drive them because twice a year they need to carry a load of garden dirt and maybe on the weekends they carry tools to their buddy's house. If putting a lot of miles on your truck is what you need it to do, the hybrid Maverick gets ~35-40 mpg, 3-4x what any full sized pickup will get.
> EV in fullsize truck doesn't work that well
Yes, you are making my argument for me. Fullsize EV pickup trucks don't work well, so Ford should stop making them...
You have not made that argument or given any details on why you think that might be the case. I know a lot of people interested in an EV pickup, but who aren't going to spend Rivian money on a vehicle. There are zero options for a $40k EV pickup truck. It's literally never been offered to any buyer in this country. So, we're both arguing with anecdata, but I'd argue for trying it before we say it can't work.
*Also Ford:* WhERe aRe all tHe cUstOmerS?!
I don't understand what's so hard to understand about selling EVs like hotcakes. Make a reasonably sized vehicle, with a reasonable range, at a reasonable price point. They already have the Maverick. An excellent truck for day-to-day driving and weekend tasks. Make a Maverick, but put an electric motor in it instead of the gas-hybrid engine. Sell it for $10k more than the gas model (~$40k). That truck would sell gangbusters.
Instead they think they are Rivian and can sell trucks at Rivian prices, but they aren't Rivian. They aren't a sexy new EV startup who makes something truly new and bespoke. And who can, as a result, charge bespoke prices. They are Ford. They are a known entity. Dare I say, they are boring. Their strength is in volume, not bespokeness. They need to sell a boring truck with an electric motor at volume.