The (Bloomberg) Take an entire afternoon driving around in the Ford F-150 Lightning around the redwood-shaded back roads and vineyards in California wine country, and the pickup’s power is evident. The thing that is it that makes the electric version the most popular vehicle in America and a game-changer, however, isn’t its speed (zero sixty miles in 4.3 seconds) or the capacity (up to 320 miles with charges). It’s more about its technology which taps Lightning’s batteries to supply power to your home or the electricity grid during the increasingly frequent blackouts due to climate.
The Lightning’s 131-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery has more than 10-times the power of the Tesla Powerwall, an $11,000 home battery that cannot be transported to the nearest supermarket. This Lightning can be described as “a mini powerplant for your home,” claims Jason Glickman, executive vice engineer planning, strategy, and planning at California utility PG&E Corporation. “It can support the grid on a hot summer day when we have demand spiking.”
“At scale, when these vehicles are enabled to send energy back to the grid, flex alerts and notices of grid emergencies will be complete of the past,” says Glickman, whose utility is currently evaluating how it can integrate the trucks into its management of the grid.
He’s talking from the rear of the Lightning, which is one of three vehicles parked on a hill with views of the vineyards of Dutton Ranch in Sebastopol, alongside an important Ford Executive and President of Sonoma County Winegrowers, an organization of 1 800 farmers that advocates for sustainable agriculture. Ford held the event earlier in March to present a trial program that supplies Dutton Ranch and two other local farms with electric pickups and Vans in a program known as Ford Pro that assists businesses in managing their fleet of vehicles.
Lightning was the very first EV sold in the US equipped with bi-directional charging, which allows the supply of electricity to the grid and homes. At the time of this writing, Ford had not yet delivered electric vehicles to grape farmers -there was an inventory of around 200 000 orders. (A week later, Ford gave its first Lightning to one of its customers located in Michigan.) However, the family-owned farms’ support of this modern rural electrification project demonstrates the potential for turning batteries-powered pickups into vehicles that help reduce carbon emissions in the economy and build resilience to climate change.
Sonoma County Winegrowers president Karissa Kruse, who is speaking on an audio system that is connected to the Lightning, claims that at first, “growers were skeptical, and there wasn’t much enthusiasm to go electric, particularly within their truck. They’re thinking, “Can I be a part of the pilot program? This pilot project? I heard that you could procure us trucks. ‘”
A brief time spent playing with the Lightning shows the reasons. While electric vehicles are commonly called batteries on wheels, Lightning may be best described as a mobile power source. Its extended range Lightning I test drove featured one 240-volt outlet inside the truck’s bed. It can provide power to heavy-duty equipment using 9.6 Kilowatts of carbon-free power produced in the vehicle. There are two outlets with 120-volts in the truck’s cab. There are four outlets in the bed and four outlets in the front trunk. Ford refers to it as”Mega Power Frunk. “Mega Power Frunk.”
“The real value right off the bat is the gas savings, as California gas prices are out-of-sight,” says Steve Dutton, a fifth-generation farmer, and co-owner of Dutton Ranch, which is partially powered by the solar array. “As we get the trucks and put them into service, we’re going to see more opportunities to use that electric power for equipment out in the field.”
The truck’s capacity to keep the employee’s lighting on is beautiful in an area such as California. Heatwaves and wildfires caused blackouts during the summer in the past. “If there’s a power outage and the truck is parked at one of my boys’ houses, and he can run the house off the battery, that’s awesome,” Dutton says. Dutton, who is tied to Kruse.
The transformation of the Lightning to a generator for your home is a matter of Ford’s charging station and a $3895 home integration system by Sunrun Inc. The installation cost to install the Sunrun system is based on the property and the house. The charging station is an extended-range version of Lightning and is a $1,310 alternative for those who purchase the standard 230-mile range that comes with the pickup.
When the Lightning is connected to the Lightning during a blackout in the home, it will automatically begin drawing power through the battery. After power is restored, the system is shut off and begins to charge the car. Ford claims that the Lightning will provide power to a typical home for about three days.
“That’s a house like my house with AC, Xbox, kids going crazy leaving lights on everywhere,” Linda Zhang, chief engineer of the F-150 Lightning, informs Bloomberg Green. If you use it more sparingly and with less energy consumption, the Lightning could keep a house running for as long as ten days, she claims.
Zhang, who is the owner of the backup system at her home, claims that most reservations made for the Lightning are made by those who have never owned a vehicle. “That new customer to trucks is being brought in, in my mind, by the Mega Power Frunk and by the Pro Power Onboard,” Zhang claims. “And some people are truly interested in this product as a backup generator.”
She did not say if the future Ford electric automobiles will have bi-directional capabilities.
Electrification is contingent on its performance in everyday life if the technology speeds up, as per Debapriya Chakraborty, a researcher at the University of California at Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.
“If you need to travel during a power outage, there are some limitations,” says Chakraborty, who studies the public’s attitudes towards EVs. “If you’re charging on solar, you can use the battery power to probably run any machine in the evening when electricity rates are higher.”
The pickup version targeted at commercial fleets known as”the Lightning Pro, has a starting price of $39,974 excluding rebates from federal and state government and tax credits. With these incentives, it’s priced in line with the standard F-150 gasoline version. Then the Lightning can be a step towards “cowboy Cadillac” territory, with more luxurious models, which can reach the Platinum edition at $90,874.
Ford provided more than twelve trucks to Sonoma to test drive for journalists, and I spent an hour driving the 77,000-dollar “iced blue silver” Lightning Lariat through Russia’s tight twisting roads, wrapped in a quiet cabin. The pickup weighed 6,600 pounds and was handled as if it were a smaller car, and I’m able to affirm that Joe Biden wasn’t exaggerating when Biden said, “this sucker’s quick,” after the lap last year.
Being not a trucker, I needed to do a reality check. So I sent my thoughts about my impressions of the Lightning with my friend John, a skilled craftsman who owns a 1989 F-150 which is also the kind of person that Ford must electrify. “I want one!” John wrote back. “$40K — however, I’ve filled the old car with $140. I want to be listed.”