Ford has stated in the past that it knows from its research that what buyers most worried about when going to an EV was giving up performance. That is why the Lincoln brand is pushing its hybrid tech for performance rather than the economy. Ford has been clear that it is working on a fully electric F-150 truck and we have seen some pictures of the Ford electric F-150 in testing.
Ford is now teasing its electric F-150 pickup, and it’s taking the same tact that Lincoln did and touting the performance of the truck rather than economy and green numbers. Many truck buyers don’t care at all about the economy; they want a truck that can tow and haul.
To show that the electric F-150 is all about performance, Ford engineers hooked the prototype electric F-150 up to a string of ten double-decker car carrying train cars that were filled with 42 F-150 trucks. The total weight of the train cars and the F-150 trucks was about 1.25 million pounds.
Ford backed the electric F-150 up to the train car and hooked it to the first car using an orange tow-rope. The row of F-150 trucks seen parked alongside the train tracks spans 1,000 feet. To watch the feat go down, Ford invited truck guys who were all driving various year model Ford trucks to watch the EV tow.
Ford offers no insight at all into how much horsepower or torque the electric F-150 makes, but the truck tows the 1.25 million pound train cars with ease at 4.5 mph. There was no squealing of tires and appeared to be no strain on the Ford truck. Towing capacity is important, but any buyer of the electric F-150 will want lots of driving range. Ford is mum on any specs for the prototype electric F-150 at this time.
Subscribe to Ford Authority for more F-150 news and around-the-clock Ford news coverage.
Comments
I hate these kind of tests because it really doesn’t tell you much, same with those stupid Tundra commercials towing the space shuttle. This isn’t like a normal trailer you would tow where the truck is carrying weight, this is strictly tractive effort of the truck overcoming rolling resistance of the rail cars. And these cars are steel wheels on steel rails so rolling resistance is an absolute minimum. That’s why trains are so efficient. SO, since Ford doesn’t give numbers let’s analyze shall we? I have no idea what gearing they use on the electric motors but we’ll calculate it based on standard stock gearing for the ICE engines to calculate flywheel torque, just as a reference point to compare the electric to gas.
Rail cars weigh 1.25 million lbs
Rolling resistance coefficient is 0.001-0.002 per Engineering Toolbox, I’ll split it and use 0.0015
I’m using 245/70R15 tires, outer diameter is 30.5″, we’ll assume an effective rolling diameter of 30″
I’m assuming heavy tow package with 3.73 axles and 10 speed transmission for a total gear reduction of 17.49 in 1st gear
Plugging in the numbers, that gives me 134 ft-lbs of flywheel torque. Not really all that big of a feat. And that’s not even putting the transfer case in 4 low, or considering any help from the torque converter.
So, this isn’t to say the electric sucks necessarily, but this really doesn’t show us anything.
The breaking rating on that tow strap must be wrong or your test is dodgy
LOL! Just like Paul stated with the tow strap. Regardless of how much that load weighs, they’re pulling it with a 5000 lb strap! Anyone get the message here? Come on Ford stop with the stupid Chevy “like” commercials with all the Oohhhs and Aahhs and “surprises”. This just goes to show you how stupid executives and advertisers think the American people are. Bad thing is it’ll probably work.