Ford Has the Most Talked-About Electric Vehicle, But It Can’t Break Up With Combustion
What, should it just give up a $42-billion-a-year golden goose?
America is the country of the pickup truck, and for decades the zenith of American pickup ownership has been the Ford F-150, the most popular vehicle on the road. Whether they have needed one to haul a trailer filled with construction equipment, or to just make a personal statement in the neighborhood, Americans have bought more or less 800,000 F-150s every year. For Ford, this has been a godsend — in 2019, the company earned about $42 billion from its F-series pickups, by far its most reliable revenue center.
So it was that Ford, along with President Biden, Jimmy Fallon, analysts and some journalists kicked up a fuss the last couple of days over the company’s unveiling of its long-promised electric F-150, called the Lightning. Biden floored the vehicle on a spin in Michigan, leading Fallon to plead with the company to send him one of the pickups so he could try it out, too. CEO Jim Farley said 20,000 orders had poured in during the course of just 12 hours, requiring a $100 deposit from each buyer. The New York Times suggested that the Lightning could become a best-selling new Model T for Ford, and Barclays analyst Brian Johnson, in a note to his clients, gushed, “F-150…
