At the beginning of the year, Ford confirmed plans to build an electric version of the F-150, and six months later, they demonstrated the sheer force of a prototype that towed over 1 million pounds.
In spite the highly acclaimed achievement, the Blue Oval chose to keep its cards close to its chest, so we didn’t even know when it might premiere – until now.
A report published by AutoNews, who spoke to the company’s global director for electrification, Ted Cannis, has revealed that the zero-emission F-150 could arrive as early as 2021, around one year after the launch of the Mustang-inspired electric crossover.
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Speaking about Ford’s electrification strategy, Cannis said: “We’re coming in at the right time. We could do all sorts of different things, but we’re going to play to what we’re good at: commercial vehicles, vans, pickups, performance vehicles and SUVs. We have loyal customers, we know our base and the margins are better. It’s just the right business. […] There are people out there looking for electric vehicles. Let’s say of the 800,000 F-Series that we sell a year, just 10 percent are interested. That’s still 80,000 vehicles. These are huge numbers.”
Paving the road for the electric F-150 will be a hybrid version that will launch in 2020. Aimed at the Middle East and North America, it will offer powerful towing and payload capacities, according to the official announcement made by the automaker in 2017, and will also be able to operate as a mobile generator.
The electrified F-150 range won’t be icing on the cake, as Ford has other battery-electric vehicles in the pipeline and will launch six of them in North America by 2022, and a total of 16 on the other side of the pond during the same time period.
“We’re in a very good shape. I think we’re going to surprise and shock a lot of people”, Cannis added.
