That’s one heck of a tow truck
In video stunt, electric F-150 pulls 1M pounds.
The Ford F-150, America’s best-selling pickup, is going electric.
On Tuesday, Ford released a video demonstration that featured the body of the automaker’s 2019 F-150 with guts from its future all-electric vehicle. During the presentation, the mashup EV managed to pull 10 railcars a total distance of 1,000 feet.
The double-decker trains housed 42 full-scale F-150s for a total combined weight of well over a million pounds, Ford says.
“What we’re trying to show is the benefits of that instant torque from that electric motor,” said Linda Zhang, chief engineer of the F-150. “The electrified F-150 will be able to add new possibilities that are only possible with an electric motor.”
The current F-150 can tow 13,200 pounds. At this point, the automaker hasn’t released any specs for its future EV, which was first announced earlier this year by the company’s president, Jim Farley.
Pricing and the date the EV pickup will start being sold to the public have not been announced; a hybrid version of the truck is arriving in 2020.
Farley said during a presentation in January that a move toward all-electric and hybrid would “futureproof” the billion-dollar F-Series franchise.
Ford’s electric truck could be the first of its kind to hit the U.S. market if the American automaker can turn the vehicle around fast enough. Tesla and Rivian are both on its heels with their own electric pickups in the works.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the company “might” unveil its prototype by the end of 2019, while Rivian teased pre-production manufacturing of its EV on Twitter as recently as July, saying that the company was “busy making metal.”
Ford’s latest video stunt follows in the footsteps of other automakers whose trucks have pulled off astonishing towing feats.
In 2012, an unmodified 2012 Toyota Tundra pulled the 292,000-pound Endeavor space shuttle over a bridge across I-405 in Los Angeles.
The Tundra, with its 5.7-liter V8, was rated to tow only 10,000 pounds.