The more the world asks for affordable, small electric vehicles, the more electric SUV’s are pushed out to market. Now, we’re excited to announce that there’s another option: an electric bakkie. Ford recently announced its first all-electric F150 ‘truck’ – the ‘truck of the future’ as Ford would have it – and we’re inclined to want one, along with almost all Americans.
The F150 hippie version
It’s a smart move, considering the F150 is the most popular vehicle in the US, from a car manufacturer that’s vowed to incrementally increase the production of sustainable vehicles. The F-150 Lightning is one such vehicle. It’s slated for 2022 at the moment, but Ford plans to make it slightly more accessible with lower prices.
Of course, there’s no indication that it’ll come to South Africa at all, but the planned $39,974 price tag would mean you could get your hands on the F150 Lightning for under R600,000. That’s for the lower-range model, that’ll do up to 370km, while the extended 480km range model will cost upwards of $50,000.
Drilling down to the specs of the indistinguishable ‘green’ F150, all variations are fitted with two electric motors, featuring 318kW of power in the smaller version and 420kW of total power and 1050 Nm of torque in the larger one. That’s… quite a lot of torque for such a large body, but we’ll take it! According to The Verge, that means the bakkie should be able to do 0-100km/h in about 4 seconds. All the Hilux drivers will think twice before challenging you to a dice.
While we have approximate pricing and a short list of actual specs, it’s exciting to see the electric vehicle market expand to something other than an EV SUV valued at over R1 million.
