QOTD: Who Got It Right, Ford’s Straight-Laced F-150 Lightning Or Tesla’s Cocky Cybertruck?

Ford’s reveal of the F-150 Lightning is probably the biggest car news we’ll hear all year. Any major development in the F150 space is a big deal because the F-150 is a big deal. Part of the American landscape for fourteen generations, the F-series has been the biggest selling vehicle in the US for 39 straight years, finding almost 800,000 homes in 2020, despite Covid-related complications.

And now this totem for old school, traditional American family values and a simpler way of life is going electric, grabbing the future with two hands. Or maybe it’s just one hand. Because although a switch to EV power is a seismic moment in the F-150’s history, park the Lighting next to Tesla’s Cybertruck and the Ford looks about as cutting edge as a hammer.

We could dig through the specs and give you a blow by blow account of how each fares, but the headlines are these: the Tesla is more expensive, more powerful, accelerates faster and goes further on a charge.

But to our minds, what’s an even more interesting talking point is the radically different ideas the two companies have about what American pick-up buyers want from their trucks and from their electric vehicles. And it raises the same question you could ask of any competing electric vehicles, be they cars, trucks, SUVs or motorcycles: do people want electric cars that look obviously electric?

Read More: 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Strikes EV Market With Sub-$40k Starting Price

There is no right or wrong answer, and many carmakers have very different opinions on the matter, as do their customers. You can bet that Ford clinic-ed the hell out of the Lightning before signing the project off, asking potential buyers what they needed and expected from an electric workhorse.

And judging from the finished Lightning, those buyers told Ford they wanted something that looked, felt and drove pretty much exactly like their ICE-powered F-150s. They wanted the benefits of electric power – the low running costs, the convenience of at-home charging, the torque and refinement of an EV – but they didn’t want the new power source to change the character, or dominate the driving experience of a familiar series of trucks they might have owned for decades.

Now compare the Lightning with the Tesla Cybertruck, whose design team seems to have gone out of its way to be as controversial as possible, like some mouth-for-hire TV pundit who’ll happily offend anyone on air if it keeps them in regular work.

The Tesla is certainly eye-catching and visually interesting, and plenty would argue that it brings a welcome dose of change to a staid truck market dominated by, well, vehicles like the F-150. Elon Musk claims Tesla did zero market research before deciding to build the Cybertruck and knows full well that as many people will be repulsed by it as love it. And he won’t care in the slightest that most Ford buyers will find it too radical, that hardcore truck people will rubbish it as being impractical, and that respected car stylists like Peter Stevens, the man responsible for the F1 simply think it’s a terrible bit of design.

But the fact that Tesla has gone so radical with the Cybertruck is interesting in itself. Because other than the Model X’s gullwing doors, there’s nothing remarkable about the styling of the company’s existing fleet. Each one is reasonably good looking, but in an inoffensively bland way. Years ago, a well known car designer told me he believed the smartest thing Tesla did when it first started was to make the Model S look just like any other gasoline-powered sedan. It even had a black mock grille in the early years.

That (along with the Supercharger network) made it easier for ordinary people to make the switch to electric power. And it’s the same philosophy Ford is employing with the Lightning today. But as more and more legacy car companies enter the EV market and electric power becomes fully mainstream, to the point where not having an electric vehicle is the left-field choice, Tesla could see its USP eroded. Not squashed entirely, because Tesla still seems to be able to make its EV go faster and further than the opposition, but definitely eroded.

And that means future Teslas might need to be more visually controversial, like the Cybertruck, to keep people talking about them. Because, let’s face it, Elon Musk is not a man content unless he’s being disruptive. Ford meanwhile, has done its sums. The Lightning might look dull, and it might not be the fastest EV truck on the building site, but you can bet it’ll be solid, dependable and sell by the bucket load. Let us know in the comments which approach you think is better.