Ford ends F-150 Lightning production, starts battery storage business

It looks like battery electric vehicles are out of fashion at the Blue Oval.

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[kltye]

I don't understand companies that put out a compromised product (the F150 Lightning is definitely a gas truck with batteries and electric motors shoehorned into the chassis), then cry about people not wanting their product and then going back to doing things the old way.

I drive the Mach-E - and yes, it has its shortcomings, but what they need to do is fix the shortcomings, not throw out the entire product line. God, why is iterating on new tech so hard for companies to understand??

 

[kltye]

I guess you don't really understand that they're not in the business of pleasing somebody like you, but they're in the business of making money.

Huh, I didn't know making money involves making a shittier product over time. Must be why I'm not in the top tax bracket!

 

[kltye]

On the spectrum of compliance car to bespoke ground-up redesign, calling the Lightning a gas truck with batteries shoehorned is very misleading. Ford also isn't going back to the old way, they're adding towing as a realistic use case.

Because even though nobody ever tows anything, everyone wants to cosplay that they do, and towing is not a thing that pure EV trucks can do at remotely competitive price points, especially without incentives.

This isn't a Ford problem, this is a physics+customer+government problem.

It's not a "compliance car" of the old days because that'd actually be quite difficult to build today since batteries are vastly cheaper than before.

If it's a physics problem, they could, I dunno... Offer the EREV as an option? I guess nobody is buying Rivian trucks, or perhaps they've somehow gotten a waiver for the laws of physics?

(Yes, I know it's a fucking physics problem, but that doesn't mean everything has to go)