[brian_]

The 230-300 mile range advertised is with a 1000 lb payload or tow I believe.

That seems exceptionally unlikely to me. Auto manufacturers never publish range or fuel consumption with a load, and especially not with a trailer, regardless of the fuel. Manufacturers are not legally required to publish fuel consumption information for heavier vehicles (such as Ford's SuperDuty pickups)... so they don't. The key to selling stuff with poor performance is to never mention the performance.

 

[brian_]

For me, it introduces a new opportunity to pursue my dream of building an electric Ford Expedition/Lincoln Navigator.

Or you could just buy a Rivian SUV or GMC Hummer EV SUV; Rivian has early production trucks built so the SUV should follow soon, the Hummer pickup is ahead of the Ford pickup so the Hummer SUV should be ahead of any Ford SUV on the same platform.

 

[brian_]

You may be right Brian, but I must say there have been numerous reports about the 1000 lb payload and Ford's underestimated range quote. Here's one from InsideEvs:

Ford F-150 Lightning Impresses In Our Factory Tour And Test Ride

We take a ride in the Ford F-150 Lightning and get to tour Ford's Rough Electric Vehicle Center and get a close look at the Mega Power Frunk.

insideevs.com

Maybe it's all marketing hype, but I hope it's not.

The claim about the range being in loaded condition in that article refers to another article, in which there is no such claim in the text. It appears to come from the video in the second article, but I didn't even watch that because the 14 minutes of talking head won't likely have any authoritative reference - it's not an interview from anyone with Ford or a report of anything published by Ford. It's probably Ford marketing, by the current method of feeding nonsense to internet "influencers", whose common characteristic is that they are easily influenced themselves by rumours, favours, and outright payments rather than facts. "Numerous reports" often just means a bunch of people repeating the same nonsense that they want to believe, all based on the same single bit of fiction.

The first article mentions the range estimate from the dashboard screen. That's meaningless, since it could be based on any driving conditions, and isn't even from the production version of the software.

 

[brian_]

Rivian has delayed the first R1S deliveries; that's the SUV. In the recent (last couple of days) news coverage I see no mention of further delays to the R1T (the pickup truck), which is the only Rivian model in production. The R1T is relevant to the Ford F-150 Lightning because it overlaps in market and has preceded the Lightning in (limited) production (although not yet substantial deliveries).

As for the plan to put a large SUV body on a "full size" battery-electric pickup... the R1S remains ahead of a potential Ford production vehicle of this style (although there are several SUV EVs in production now), and will still likely beat any DIY project requiring a Lightning donor.

 

[brian_]

The only major body difference between a Lightning and an F-150 is the front clip, so an SUV on the Lightning platform is easy... except that the Expedition body is not quite the same as an F-150 body (there isn't a single external body panel in common), and the longest Expedition wheelbase (3,343 mm or 131.6") is much shorter than the only Lightning wheelbase (3696 mm or 145.5") and the extra length can't be cut out of the Lightning without losing battery capacity.

As a DIY project, I think that it would likely be easier to do a limousine stretch on an Expedition Max body to fit an unmodified Lightning donor than to shorten the Lightning chassis.

Yes, Ford could build a Lightning SUV quickly if they wanted to, but I have not seen any indication that they are interested in doing so... so it will be years.

 

[brian_]

I didn't say Expedition. Expedition is on the Superduty chassis, not the F-150.

You said "the F-150 SUV", and the Expedition is the SUV which has always been on the same platform as the F-150 (although sometimes lagging in generation, and in recent generations with IRS). The Expedition was never SuperDuty - the SuperDuty-based SUV was the Excursion. The "E" names can make it difficult to keep the Ford SUVs (including the Explorer, Escape, and Edge) all straight, and "Expedition" and "Excursion" are particularly close.

Yes, it would probably be technically easy for Ford (or even a DIY builder) to put an SUV body (which is the Expedition) on the Lightning chassis... if that chassis were short enough, and it's not. Unlike an ICE pickup, the frame cannot be easily made shorter, because the battery fills the available length, instead of having relatively empty space.

The old Expedition SVT Thunder using some parts usually available only the F-150 was a minor variation of the regular Expedition, as the Expedition was then (as always) on the F-150 platform.

 

[brian_]

Ford F-150 Lightning customer deliveries pushed back to Q3 2022

Ford representatives and DriveElectricTN recently held a webinar where several of the automaker’s key upcoming all-electric vehicles were discussed. While the event was primarily focused on fleets and fleet managers, Ford representatives James Morgan and Nathan Gyori provided some key updates...

www.teslarati.com

The article seems to have been removed - the link now just gets a 404 error and a search in Teslarati for "Ford F-150 Lightning customer deliveries pushed back to Q3" finds nothing. Search the web for the same title on other sites and there are a few, apparently re-posts of the Telsarati content, such as the copy in Autobody News.