Ford's marketing department knows what they're doing, they're marketing this truck as tough and powerful. I like it.
My concern with the Lightning (and EVs in general) is range anxiety. I can fill up my F150 in what 3-4 minutes. How long before I can go 400 miles on a charge? What happens during an extended power outage, can I carry 100 miles worth of range in a portable container that's as easy to handle as 5 gallons of gas?
None of these concerns have anything to do with this vehicle making me feel more manly ;)
For those infrequent long trips I stop every 3 hours/350km and charge for 30 mins. Watch some Netflix, use laptop, or have a short nap and move on. Works out ok.
Those are weasel words unless you can back them up with data. Ford sells over a million pickups a year, and they're just a third of that market. There's no way to get an audience this large by going for machismo, pickups sell because they have broad appeal.
At any rate, what exactly would objective supporting data look like here?
I don't know, which is why I wouldn't stereotype such a large group of the population. To a reasonable approximation, everyone in America is a truck customer. It's way too broad to have a common defining characteristic.
I agree that there is a subgroup (think of them perhaps as the 'brodozer' crowd, I guess) that seem to be who you're thinking of. They mostly don't drive F150s, they're more likely to go for a diesel HD pickup. And even then they are just a niche of that market. I know lots of superduty owners that want nothing to do with those folks.
If the world turns Mad Max, someone with an electric truck and a few solar panels won't have to worry about the gasoline gangs.
In the case of societal collapse you're probably not going far with your truck so taking a week to charge is probably OK.
But of course it's not about what you really need, it's all about perception. In that race, trucks and guns are the most important.
I give them six months of survival.
So while there might be pushback from the "salt of the earth"-type, I suspect a lot of urban truck owners are very far removed from that. The gas/long bed/bench seat base model may continue to sell for the rest of my life to farmers and construction crews, but most people buying a truck likely don't need a truck: It is just a utilitarian general vehicle that may haul gardening supplies, camping gear, and dump runs every so often.
So you likely are correct, it just may not matter for the more common demography for trucks in 2021+.
There's a couple classes of 'Truck guys'. The Truck guys that just want power, yeah they'll probably go for this.
The Truck guys that like throwing turbodiesels in to get HP/Torque numbers like what we see in the lightning, I would say it depends on whether Ford makes it 'Moddable' or not.
That helps with the overcompensation buyer.
Which sounds like some city-slicker talking down to the cheap seats, except, I grew up in a town named Farmington. (Go Farmers.) I know pickups. I know the people who drive pickups. My dad sneers at fancy new pickups because he used to shove a good 700 pounds of mink pelts in a pickup, and he thinks all that leather would get stained by the blood nowadays. And pickup truck buyers love their macho trucks. They like the burble of the engines and the swagger and that it’s not some little penalty box of a green car.
An electric pickup? Sure, sounds rational, especially with that torque. But does it trigger the libs enough?
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Something that might help, though: that price.
“but rather its price because the 2022 F-150 Lightning will start at just $39,974 before any government rebates.”
Given the just eye-watering prices of pickups these days: that’s cheap, relatively.