Elon Musk ensures that Tesla is always in the news and as a result, he has made sure that Tesla dominates the minds of many when it comes to the electric vehicle market. With the announcement of the new Ford F150 Lightning Pro, however, it seems that the tide may be changing.
The Lightning Pro is not a standard F150. It’s not even the hybrid edition that has become popular for reduced emissions and greatly improved fuel standards. This new truck will be 100 percent electric. Can an electric Ford Ranger be very far behind?
Ford vs Tesla
A 2019 award-winning movie starring Matt Damon brought back memories of a great competition between an American wannabe racing team and an established, winning European racing team. In Ford v Ferrari, the staid Ford company hired a maverick racecar developer. This led to a now-historic win by the Ford racing team over the Ferrari team at the 24 Hours of LeMans in 1966.
Fast forward to today. You will see Ford positioning itself to knock Tesla down a few pegs in a very different way than it took on Ferrari. Like the upstart Tesla, Ford’s electric truck will have a long driving range, good payload ratings, even better tow ratings, and an affordable price.
This new all-electric truck is set to do everything Tesla does, but it will do it with the name F150 on its broad shoulders. Despite all of the hype behind Tesla products, Ford can probably count on the F150 nameplate to sell its electric truck in record numbers.
Then there’s the fact that the Tesla truck looks so odd. Called the Cybertruck, it doesn’t look like what you’d expect a pickup truck to look like. The Ford F150 Lightning Pro will look familiar, and it’s affordable pricing should be enough to get people to start trading in their gas-powered models for something much more friendly to the environment and to their wallets. How this will affect trade in values is another question for current F150 owners.
Ford vs Ford
Like Tesla, there’s a lot of science and engineering behind the project. Those who have been focused on the upstart brand may not have noticed how the established Ford brand was moving into the electric market with such things as the Ford E-Transit van and the Mustang Mach-E, a performance SUV.
Unlike Tesla, however, Ford will be competing with its own products to establish the all-electric F150. This could lead to some interesting sales battles as the Lightning Pro comes to market. There are currently six engine types and a hybrid to contend with.
The brand is accustomed to this sort of balancing act, however. You can look at how the Ford Ranger entered the market, but it took a share without cutting into F150 profits. Or, you can look at how Ford’s wide range of F150 models are big sellers.
