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Comment by ActorNightly | Hacker News Reader

>A pickup truck should just be max utility,

The problem is as soon as you go EV, you use a lot of utility from the get go. With a truck specifically, because its a brick aerodynamically. There is no reason to buy a Cybertruck or Lightning when you can get a gas or hybrid F150 (or a Raptor) for a little bit more, and be able to sit at 80 mph on highways without worrying about range.

The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender. They have 3 cylinder ecoboost engines that would have been perfect for that.

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My brother has one, it is an amazing vehicle with better range performance than Tesla. It's dramatically better in the snow. Towing of large loads is a valid downside, but reality is that most people don't tow, and people who do are probably fine with 80% of the use cases (construction trailers, lawn trailers, etc).

The business problem Tesla solved at Ford cannot is the dealer network. He pre-ordered his, and the dealer he was stuck with tried to rip him off like 4 different ways.

The other issue is that car guys are afraid of electric, as the entire supporting industry is essentially obsolete. It's hard to get excited about something that will take away your ability to pay your mortgage. Every car dealer employee and mechanic knows that.

Electric cars still need maintenance. They don't get regular oil changes, but they wear out tires sooner. They have more recalls in general than ICE (this will likely change, but manufactures are still learning how to make EVs reliable). The parts of a car that are not common with EVs don't break for the first 100k miles, and almost nobody is using the dealer for cars that old. There is plenty of other work that is common that dealers will still need to do.

Your argument hinges on any level of maintenance being enough to maintain our current level of investment. The truth is always more complicated.

Take for example DVD rental. The market completely evaporated, while there is still a small lingering community that could be serviced by rentals. My local library is proof that there is a market. But there are, bar some weird exceptions, no remaining DVD rental stores.

If an EV needs 50% of the maintenance, then it stands to reason that you need 50% of the staff. That's the easy part. But what about all the other staff? Can you afford as many staff in front of house when your main profit centre shrank massively? Can you keep the same amount of cars in the lot if you don't have the cash to pay the manufacturer fees?

I'm sure that some mechanics will need to go. However a lot of them will still remain because there are a lot of cars and a lot that can go wrong that is common. There are also potential new failure modes, though only time will tell.

> they wear out tires sooner.

This is dependent on how you drive them. EVs are fun, so you get a disproportionate number of people driving them aggressively. That's hard on tires. If you drive normal, you get normal tire life.

They wear out tires because they weigh a shit ton, not because their drivers like to go below the limit trying to draft off a rig.

They weigh slightly more than a similar ICE vehicle. And why would drafting a big rig increase tire wear? The problem I mentioned was that EV drivers frequently drive more aggressively because it's intoxicating to be able to silently dust basically every other car on the road that isn't another EV. Those people do have tire wear issues :). And they're not drafting a big rig...

EVs are typically heavier than ICE cars so will cause more tyre wear.

Yes, but typically by a small margin. Close enough that tire wear is dominated by driving style. The problem is that instant torque is simultaneously addictive and also maximally damaging to tire tread.

The F-150 lightning weighs about 25-35% more than the ICE version. That's a significant margin.

It displaces well paid mechanic jobs with greasemonkey stuff.

It's not bad for consumers, but a significant amount of the economy is maintaining cars. It's the same thing that happened when emissions standards made cars more reliable. The corner repair shop was displaced by convenience stores, and repair consolidated.

Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.

That's probably more relevant to fleet vehicles for construction and maintenance firms than to individuals towing boats. But just to offer an example of how the F150 Lightning is a great fit for certain uses.

You can also get a standard hybrid F150 with the "Pro Power(?)" package, and the hybrid drive-train turns into a 7.2kW generator.

I just read about the hybrid F150. I didn't know about it until recently I guess because of all the press the Lightning received. The hybrid works the best for me. My state also charges a lot less yearly registration for a hybrid compared to an EV.

7.2kW could run most of my house for days, and it wouldn't be very loud I guess.

It's great for rural folks or others with power issues. For a few thousand bucks, you have a backup generator in your garage.

The only question is range when those rural folks go to the big city (if less than an hour they do this once a week because groceries in the suburbs of a big city are so much cheaper. If farther than that they still go once a month because of things they can't get. Though I don't know anyone who lives so far out that they can't get to a city and back in a long day.

Otherwise rural folks often have something to fix on the other side of their property that needs tools. Cordless tools do a lot but sometimes are not enough.

I'm surprised it didn't sell based on that. 20 years ago when I was in construction the truck drove at most 130 miles per day (we made sure to work 14 hour days when we were going to spend an hour on the road - the crew hated those jobs), but typically more like 30. The the first thing we did was pull the generator out of the truck and started it. If would could just plug into the truck that would have saved a lot of space/weight in the truck, it seems like a no-brainer.

Then again, all the construction sites I see these days have mains power on a post, which we never had back then (I don't live in the same state so I don't know if this is universal or just this area has always been different).

> Here's a different aspect of utility: The F150 Lightning includes 120V and optionally 240V outlets, so it replaces the need to carry a separate gas-powered generator.

A small generator costs few hundred bucks and fits comfortably in any truck actually used for work. It's a small perk that some pro users would probably pay for, but it's not a selling point for a radically different car design.

Easily stolen.

it's a few hundred bucks, an extra thing to remember, takes up bed space, requires bringing gas, and is loud and annoying to use. It's not the biggest thing, but it's a pretty nice value add.

I mean, if you bought a Cybertruck, you've already given up on a ton of bed space. I'm not saying that a built-in power source isn't nice, but I doubt it swayed any minds.

The thing is, charging an EV in todays age is something that takes planning. Its not as easy as getting gas. For most people that end up at their house every night. For people that use their vehicles more, it becomes more of a problem. If you are going somewhere overnight, you have to make sure that place has charging.

For fleet vehicles this is the same story. You have no idea what kinda bullshit circumstances you are going to run into, and investing in EVs is just not worth it at this point when a F150 XLT or XL + Honda generator suffices.

Until that trend flips where fast charging takes the same time as gas station stop (or automakers start putting small gas engines in their vehicles) EVs are always going to lag behind gas vehicles.

Next generation of lightning is doing exactly that with a smaller battery, they're claiming 700+ miles of range: https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/next-ge...

> "The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender."

From a manufacturing perspective, adding a range extender does add a lot of cost and complexity. And from an ownership perspective it adds a lot of service, maintenance and reliability considerations that you don't have with a pure EV.

But in any case, this is exactly what they're doing: replacing the Lightning with a range extender ("EREV") plug-in hybrid. But a new all-electric truck based on Ford's upcoming, cheaper "Universal EV platform" is also due in 2027.

You have one reason listed, which is going 80mph (which is illegal in most states). They also can't tow long distances easily, but are superior in nearly every other way.

Most of the places where you would realistically use a truck have highways that are at least 75 mph. And its not the 80 mph thats important, its the fact that the faster you try to get to the destination, the more the range drains, which conversely takes you longer to get to the destination if you consider charging time.

Pickup trucks are great for suburbia and suburban projects, and they do not have 75mph highways. Perhaps you are talking about long-haul 18 wheeler type trucks?

You also burn gasoline faster when going faster, since it all comes down to wind resistance. You don't really notice more or longer stops when going 80 vs 60, maybe an extra 3-5 min for every 4hrs of driving which just means you don't have to rush eating your meal or going to the bathroom. What you do notice is not having to pay nearly as much attention while FSD is running, and the smoothness of the ride.

I do own a cybertruck so I'm a bit biased, but I use the bed pretty much every weekend, don't live in a place with 75mph highways, and I've driven many gas cars before this- pickups, sedans, and SUVs. I'm not sure why you're trying to explain to me how my car works, or how it compares to other ones I've driven.

> The biggest suprise about the lightning is that Ford didn't put in a gas engine in it as a range extender.

They announced that along with the EV Lightning cancellation: https://www.fromtheroad.ford.com/us/en/articles/2025/next-ge...

You also gain some utility. Infinite torque at idle, cheaper 4wd, better traction control, fewer mechanical problems, etc.

They tow way better aside from reduced range. And the near perfect 50/50 weight distribution means they handle better than a truck should.

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