At a Ford Lightning F-150 event, watch the new EV truck roll off the line for the first time.
So please welcome ford motor company chief executive officer jim farley mike was telling me a joke that was a good joke mike uh thank you how about these trucks that awesome or what bill as you said this is really history in the making and it’s your vision that’s now come to life i want to echo something that bill said right off the bat
This day would not be possible if not for the men and women at the rouge our uaw partners all of our suppliers everyone in the ford family who worked together and did whatever it took to get the range a little longer the payload a little higher the software smarter the front a little bigger we have team members from the rouge here like brian palmer and
Ken had a shell who believe in this truck so much that they’re going to purchase one themselves and they’re going to be able to build their own truck pretty cool we have engineers like linda zhang and darren palmer are you guys here just raise your hand somewhere here all right no exaggeration they have dedicated their life to this project for the last
Several years we have bernie ricky laura dickerson and nick cortelis from the uaw representing all of our workers here on the site at the rouge who are going to build this truck thank you so much you did whatever it took you met us at this moment that’s when ford is at its best it began with the model t and the moving assembly line to put our country
On wheels then the b-24 liberators when we went to war and the ventilators when the pandemic hit the united states and so many more instances whenever the world needed us we met the moment with american ingenuity and american muscle and right now the world needs zero emissions vehicles and more importantly it needs us to bring them to the many not just
The few and that’s why we built these trucks specifically they are not a vanity project there are no gimmicks this is not for pr or for wall street we built a truck so people can use it in their daily lives the f-150 as bill said is the best-selling truck in the united states for 45 years straight and the best selling vehicle in this country for a damn
Good reason and every one of those reasons is in the dna of every one of these lightnings but i’ll tell you what electrification gives you features you’ve never seen in a truck before instant torque incredible acceleration i’ve driven on the track and the president said it best this sucker is quick 0 to 60 in 4 seconds i mean that is super car category
And it toes with ease like there’s nothing behind you and the ride is so smooth you’d swear you were in a lincoln you won’t believe this is a truck and you want power for your hobbies and your life lightning is a 10 kilowatt power plant but on wheels you can move it wherever you want and to get that power to your life yeah we put two outlets in the cab
But we put four in the front and five in the bed more than that though it’s an open platform for our customers and the innovation and creativity that they’ll apply and use this truck for listen to this how about a ripping 20 000 sheets of plywood with your circular saw with one charge 20 000 sheets or an off-grid wedding in yosemite or a block party that
Lasts the weekend and the next week you can even charge other evs for your friends that own teslas that wasn’t fair was it but so what we’re gonna go find out we’re gonna find out all sorts of crazy usages for that 10 kilowatts that we never imagined i can’t wait to see all of that and plug it in overnight and you got a full charge every morning unlike
Your ice f-150 300 320 mile range every morning it can power your home in an outage and we know that’s a real thing at ford and because lightning offers this bi-directional power with solar energy integration you can actually power not only your house zero emissions but your truck too it’s got a mega power frunk that’s tough enough to carry 400 pounds of
Concrete but is waterproof enough for your dirtiest gear and hell you tell me how many beers you’d be able to fit in that front during your tailgate we even gave it a cabin like a hotel suite it’s got more shoulder room and more leg room than any ev on the market it is so much larger than any ev you’ve ever sat in but lightning is so much more than just
Space and power and payload and propulsion our customers are going to love the digital experience in fact the one thing that we heard from customers is they’re just blown away at the information the way it’s displayed and you know this truck is going to evolve every night over there with over their updates in the morning when you get in you’re going to
Get new features maybe it’s more range new driving modes there’s an endless ways that we will take advantage of all the embedded cameras the lights at night the scales are on board just wait to see what those otas do for features as you own the truck every morning something’s different it’s like a smartphone that can tow ten thousand pounds and with
Blue crews lightning drivers can go hands-free in many highway conditions in fact now at ford our customers have done more than 2.5 million miles hands-free you know there’s a lot of misconceptions about truck owners but we know it ford they love their technology and they’re going to love this truck as bill said and if you’ve never bought a ford before
Welcome to our family you our customers are going to get capability no other ev truck can ever offer but for thousands of dollars less than our competitors trucks whenever they actually go on sale our truck is here today because we rolled up our sleeves we’ve rediscovered our roots around innovation we work together and now we’re busting our butts to
Make more of these demand for lightning has literally pushed out the walls of this building where we are twice right in the middle of the first expansion we went right to the team and said that’s great but can you make the factory a little bigger we’ve expanded this plant to produce 150 000 lightnings a year that’s a lot of jobs here in america and
We’re not going to stop with this beautiful truck we will produce 600 000 evs a year by the end of next year i wish we could bring you all down there but we’re already pushing dirt down in blue oval city in tennessee for another electric pickup truck that’s different than this one so we’re going to be ready for two million electric vehicles four years
From now we have every intention of being the number one electric pickup maker and then with the huge investments 50 billion dollars in evs battery manufacturing our expanded lineup which you have not seen yet we plan to challenge tesla and all comers to become the top ev maker in the world that someone know something that no one would have believed just
Two years ago from us take a look at this truck and believe it a truck that’s made in america a truck that’s made in detroit
Transcribed from video
Watch the Ford F-150 Lightning Launch Party! By CNET Highlights