Eager to remind everyone that it is serious about electrification, Ford recently orchestrated quite the PR stunt with a prototype F-150 the company says is 100 percent battery-powered.
Though the truck in the video below looks like a current-generation F-150, the truck sits atop a fully-electrified platform that is still in the prototype stage. For the video, Ford hooks this electric F-150 up to 10 double-decker rail cars, weighing 1 million pounds and pulls the entire load for 1,000 feet.
Ford then loaded up 42 more F-150 trucks into those rail cars and performed the stunt with the electrified pickup again—this time with a load well in excess of 1 million pounds.
Of course, how this relates to how well these trucks will perform any real world work is anybody’s guess. It’s a fun display of torque, which an electric drivetrain will provide in spades, but because Ford’s stunt is really just a new spin on an old trick, we know that pulling a lot of weight is not a great indicator for true capability. For instance, Toyota pulled the Space Shuttle with a Tundra. Earlier this year, an electric Mini Cooper towed an airplane.
In January, Ford confirmed after years of speculation that the F-150 would indeed be offered in hybrid- and fully-electric models in the future. As we noted at the time, there are several advantages in using an all-electric powertrain: vast reduction in maintenance, much more powerful torque, fuel savings, zero emissions, lower center of gravity and increased traction thanks to chassis-mounted battery packs, quieter performance in noise-sensitive areas and, according to at least one EV pickup builder, improved braking.