It's great to see the best selling vehicle in the US be zero emissions. It's wonderful.
But this truck will be very heavy, very tall, and very fast. Drivers are already the leading killers of children, and more and more people are being killed while walking and cycling.
I'm very worried about the effect of making this vehicle even faster and heavier. Hopefully reduced deaths from pollution offset this.
Electric vehicles often have much better safety credentials than their ICE powered counterparts for a few reasons:
* All of the weight is in the bottom of the vehicle, giving a lower centre of gravity. I'd bet this will kill the old F150 in a moose (or child!) test.
* The lack of engine means the entire front part of the car is a huge crumple zone. This gives designers more wriggle room for pedestrian protection too. This is an increasingly important requirement in road safety standards.
* The electric motors are able to respond with torque far faster (in ms) than an ICE engine, so traction and stability control are more effective. Again good for things like the moose test.
* Switching our road transport to electric will probably save more children, and the adults they will become, from a lifetime of lung problems and premature death from pollution than better pedestrian safety features ever will.
> The lack of engine means the entire front part of the car is a huge crumple zone.
Crumple zones don't help pedestrians.
The new F-150 will be bigger and heavier than the absurdly huge early-00s Hummers. The hood is so tall and long that they're talking about putting forward-facing cameras inside the cab because you can't see anything in front of you shorter than 6" tall out the windshield.
If Ford was interested in safety, they would reduce the outrageous length and height of the front end which is now no longer even pretending to be necessary housing for an engine. Vehicles made to work prioritize visibility, Ford trucks are made to intimidate and kill.
That’s completely untrue - The design of crumple and impact zones like the hood, bumpers and headlights absolutely do help pedestrians. There is a suite of Road safety tests designed to specifically evaluate exactly that: https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...
The F150 is only really sold in the US/Canada market, at least as a passenger car. You might be able to import one as a commercial vehicle in Europe but I've certainly never seen one.
F-150 isn't sold in the european market, and neither are any other American flat-top high front trucks precisely because they are too deadly to pedestrians.
But the top half of the bulbous front end that basically every modern car has is mostly empty space and flimsy plastic to create what's basically a crumple zone for pedestrians.
> The lack of engine means ... This gives designers more wriggle room for pedestrian protection too.
this is important. It is an option they DID IGNORE! for marketing.
The thing that kills pedestrians (both physically and preventing vision) is the high trunk. They could have lowered it since there is no 9L engine or whatever inside. But they decided to keep it for "frunk" marketing.
> Switching our road transport to electric will probably save more children, and the adults they will become, from a lifetime of lung problems and premature death from pollution
The sizable majority of modern car pollution comes from particulates that come off asphalt, not emissions from engines. It's still important to go EV to reduce carbon, but that doesn't improve local air quality. Modern internal combustion engines have pretty minimal pollutants in their emissions.
Getting older cars off the road is the major way to improve emission pollutants. Beyond that, improving air quality to any significant degree requires either fewer cars on the road, or less heavy cars on the road. Asphalt particulates scales quadratically with the weight of the car.
I agree with the rest, but I'm pretty skeptical of this claim:
> Switching our road transport to electric will probably save more children, and the adults they will become, from a lifetime of lung problems and premature death from pollution than better pedestrian safety features ever will.
Do you (or anyone) have order-of-magnitude estimates for either/both of these figures? I mean, electrification in general is great, but the F150 cannot take credit for all of it. I am interested in reduced pollution deaths/QALYs that can be attributed to F150 electrification specifically -- that's the topic of this article and thread.
On average in the US, the CO2 output required to power an electric vehicle is 1/3 of an ICE vehicle. So theoretically this would translate to less deaths as bb123 suggests, but hard to compare to direct pedestrian deaths. (Yes there are some logical gaps as ICE C02 output is a very low percentage of total fossil fuel output).
They are maybe 40-50% lower. Does this move the needle for climate change? No. And it’s not just lifetime car emissions. It’s the car dependent life that cars require
It's only 50% lower because most electricity grids emit a lot of carbon. Once the grid switches to 100% carbon-free, the number becomes a lot lower. And most of the embodied carbon in the car comes from industrial electricity or transport, so as the grid & transport goes green the embodied carbon goes down, eventually to zero.
Electricity only accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, but it also enables industry (20%) and transportation (15%) to decarbonize too, by allowing them to replace their fuel with electricity.
A 50% reduction is already massive, but electrification of both vehicles and the industrial processes creating the vehicle will eventually let that number go to zero which should be our goal.
> * All of the weight is in the bottom of the vehicle, giving a lower centre of gravity. I'd bet this will kill the old F150 in a moose (or child!) test.
The important thing to note about the moose test is that it doesn't specify that the moose has to survive. It's simply a test of whether the occupants will survive hitting a moose. I would wager anything that is designed to pass the moose test will kill anything that it hits that is below the moose's center of gravity. So actually the vehicle is way less safe for pedestrians than a vehicle that would fail the moose test.
But if all that matters is the safety of the occupant I guess this is okay.
> * The lack of engine means the entire front part of the car is a huge crumple zone. This gives designers more wriggle room for pedestrian protection too. This is an increasingly important requirement in road safety standards.
The kind of "crumple zone" that enhances pedestrian and cyclist safety is more like a beer can. Again, the crumple zones in this vehicle are designed to keep the occupants safe but not designed to keep any other road user safe.
> The important thing to note about the moose test is that it doesn't specify that the moose has to survive.
The moose test is about safely dodging around a moose that wanders out onto the road without wrecking the vehicle.
Why did you write this long comment as if you were an expert on the moose test if you don't even know what the moose test is? That's an incredibly disingenuous thing to do.
I assume because they want to see less vehicle traffic on the road. Arguments along these lines are thrown out by people that hate cars on the road to help change the argument from facts to 'what about the children'.
Your second point is also untrue. The shape and structure of traditional car crumple zones and impact areas like the hood and headlights have a significant impact on pedestrian survivability: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257775117_Crumple_z...
> The important thing to note about the moose test is that it doesn't specify that the moose has to survive. It's simply a test of whether the occupants will survive hitting a moose.
Ideally in the moose test the moose and car never make contact. It is a test of the car's ability to safely support extreme evasive manoeuvres, rather than its crash survivability.
Tall SUVs typically fare worse at this because of their higher centre of gravity causing instability:
>Drivers are already the leading killers of children, and more and more people are being killed while walking and cycling.
I think more worrisome is the center console - pedestrian deaths had been going down for 20 years until smartphones became widespread and we've had increases every year since.
With the introduction of smart phones and social media we've seen lots of negative effects increase. For example, teen suicide was decreasing until they were introduced and then started to increase again. Girls especially.
I wish there was more discussion and acknowledgement of the dangers here.
When I’m on a long trip with friends or family we play a game trying to spot people on their phones by how poorly they are driving. Police are extra points. You would be shocked at how many cops you see looking down at their lap while driving.
I would rather drive next to people with .09 blood alcohol than someone on their phone.
Social media and cell phones are very convenient, but come with major drawbacks that must be addressed. Phones, for many young people, are just mental disorders with a touch screen.
You have a point, but I also think we should be thinking beyond smartphones and try to act on what they are used for.
Not in a "guns don't kill people way", but because I think smarphone helped spread society's worse effects on girls, but they were already in a very shitty position, and we can't just get back to the status quo before the smarphones and social networks.
We can of course also work on reducing sns negative impacts, but I think it will also be a bad, long and thorny way before seeing improvements.
I take extra caution around pickup trucks and young men in muscle cars. The former are more likely to not see you, or be on their phones. The muscle cars are likely to rapidly and erratically change directions into me at a high rate of speed.
I try to give a "friendly" honk followed by a "hang up" hand gesture. Results range from them putting the phone down and giving a thumbsup to angrily cutting me off and speeding down the freeway.
Yes, it will be heavier, and yes it will have more acceleration...
But newer vehicles also have AEB with pedestrian detection. If these vehicles displace older existing vehicles without those safety systems we will see fewer fatalities overall. Most kids and pedestrians are hit at low speed, not at 60+ mph due to the driver not paying attention or not being able to see the pedestrian. While AEB can’t save all pedestrians that would otherwise be hit, we know that these systems lead to big reductions in preventable accidents [1].
> “If your F-150 Lightning is plugged in when your outage occurs, Intelligent Backup Power will automatically kick in to power your home,” said Ryan O’Gorman, Ford’s energy services lead, in a video briefing prior to the reveal. “When power is restored, the truck automatically reverts to charging its battery.”
Well, There's speed, and then there's acceleration.
This new Lightning (putting it that way because F150 Lightning once corresponded to a gas-guzzling Supercharged V8 trim) has 775ft/lb of Torque. For reference, the existing models are between 265 and 510 ft/lb.
Additionally, one of the benefits of an electric motor, is that torque is essentially instantly available, compared to an ICE where there's only a slim power bad where that max torque range is hit.
Unless Ford 'governs' acceleration in software, I can see some lead-foots getting themselves into trouble quickly. They probably -will-, but I'd expect them to offer some sort of switch for that, lest the Ford zealots grab their pitchforks. Let us not forget that a lot of 'Car guys' are arguably insane. When Ford considered switching the Mustang to a Front Wheel Drive Mazda design, they had to deal with death threats!
> Let us not forget that a lot of 'Car guys' are arguably insane.
You might want to look in the mirror. Car threads bring out really destructive attitudes, and mostly not from the 'car guys'. The stuff that gets said here is astounding...
I provided a very real world example of car enthusiasts doing something that a sane human being would not do. Can you help me understand what I should be looking for?
This is like pointing to a single self-identified Democrat or Republican and then claiming they speak for everyone else who also identifies as such. This is extremely pervasive and is one of the fundamental breaks in our political dialog these days.
And yeah, a lot of people on HN are also car enthusiasts. How many of us sent death threats in response to the Ford Probe? I was even a Mustang enthusiast at that time. I never sent any death threats, nobody I know did either. You are describing a sociopath, who may also be a car enthusiast, and then claiming that this means all car enthusiasts are sociopaths.
And I've never sent anyone a death threat. I don't hate people for their choice in cars, or non-choice as the case may be. I enjoy interesting cars of all kinds. I'm not especially into trucks from an enthusiast perspective, though as a homeowner and RV owner I do happen to own a Ford F250. And I don't mind people that are into them. You have to be a bit of an enthusiast, IMO, to daily drive a super duty if you don't need it :). I'd own a Taco if I didn't need to tow anything, as it would be far more livable for daily use.
first of all, despite its prominence in marketing materials, engine torque doesn't tell you much about a vehicle's performance characteristics. torque is meaningless without knowing the overall gear reduction. a 911 gt3 is about as fast in a straight line as a tesla, despite having way less torque.
> compared to an ICE where there's only a slim power bad where that max torque range is hit.
second, this is only true of naturally aspirated engines, which are pretty rare these days. engines with turbos or superchargers are usually tuned to make (roughly) peak torque all the way from 2000 rpm to redline.
this is a lot of fretting over the peak acceleration of a truck. I believe the thing does 0-60 in something like 4.5 seconds. that's really quick for a truck, but only above average compared to performance sedans. in any case, most people (even the crazy ones) do not often hit peak acceleration from a red light, especially in an EV.
>this is a lot of fretting over the peak acceleration of a truck. I believe the thing does 0-60 in something like 4.5 seconds. that's really quick for a truck, but only above average compared to performance sedans
Seems like the people in this thread arguing about a fast truck don't know about the original Lightning, nor are they familiar with modern sport trucks like the Ram TRX or Shelby F-150 Super Snake, both of which will give proper high end sports cars a run for the money in a drag race.
This. The crazy acceleration rates make speeding easier (you get to high speeds in no time) and more dangerous (you surprise other people) while offering no tangible benefit except maybe for killing the sports car market.
One of the things I've seen in the Powerboost (their hybrid model) reviews is that even when people disable traction control to launch it, there is something happening that keeps it from spinning out. I think the electric engine might have a mandatory control mechanism in it that cannot be bypassed.
this is my biggest concern. my dad has a tesla, and you put your foot on that thing it feels like a jet on the runway. electric motors are allowing everyday, consumer level cars that can do 0-60 faster than a Ferrari, and silently as well. it leads to doing more aggressive turns and stuff like that which you can only pull off with maximum acceleration, which means scenarios like the left turn where you're whipping out like silent lightning to beat the oncoming cars, and some kid on a bike suddenly entering the road to your left where you're going, and in the opposite way in which you are looking (at the oncoming cars to the right) is toast.
to all the idiot downmodders, I am not advocating against electric cars, I am advocating against their software allowing unfettered acceleration as well as the lack of audible cues to pedestrians (some hybrid cars are now adding artifical sounds for this issue).
Yes, compared to cars even a decade ago modern cars are very bloated. Have you seen an original 500 from the 50's/60's or 70's? They weighed around 1100 lbs. A modern base trim Fiat 500 weighs around 2400 lbs.
We all realize it's due to safety, but a lot of sports cars have gotten progressively less fun as a result. The M3 is no longer a small nimble sedan. It's larger than the 5 series was from only 2 generations ago. That's all he's pointing out.
Well then I have to disagree. A motorcycle helmet is not bloat compared to wearing a sock on your head. Sure an old car might be more fun but safety isn't bloat. AC units are.
I already acknowledged the size increase is due to safety. It's not an opinion that modern cars are physically larger and heavier than they were only a few generations ago. There's nothing to disagree with. The M3 (now called M4) has become an entirely different class of vehicle.
The 3/4 series grew in size so much that they introduced the 1/2 series to fill the void of a small coupe. They didn't have to increase the physical dimensions by over a foot in length and nearly half a foot in width. It completely changed the driving dynamics. So, yes, it was absolutely is not worthwhile considering they decided to make a replacement for it after realizing that they alienated a lot of enthusiasts.
A great case study. The Fiat looks respectably small until you see the original which looks like one of those cozy coupes that they sell for toddlers. The comparison is sobering. Not only that, but in the interior too, the controls and dials are beautifully neat and thin in contrast to the modern version.
And 500% higher risk of death. You might call that bloat but to me that is like saying a good quality motorcycle helmet is just a bloated hoodie or cap.
Fuel efficiency standards killed the small truck. In the turn of the century EV era, Ford had an electric Ranger which was built on the much smaller (at the time) Ranger platform. But you can't make an ICE small truck that meets the 200x updated CAFE standards, so the small trucks either disapeared (S10) or got bigger (toyota small trucks), or got bigger then disappeared and later reappeared still big (Ranger).
An EV truck presumably can be any size, but there's no current small truck platform to build on.
I have a few friends that are engineers in the auto companies. Its kind of amazing how many negative impacts the CAFE standards had--not on purpose (hopefully), but through unintended consequences. Apparently the Nissan Leaf for example was strictly manufactured to generate credits/offset the environmental impact of the Nissan truck and van line that could not be adjusted to meet the CAFE standards.
My dad had a Ranger in 97 that was just about the perfect truck for day-to-day use. It fit 2 adults comfortably, had a tiny 4 cylinder engine, got great gas milage, and could be used to pull a small trailer. He was crushed when Ford got rid of the Ranger. And what they've released now is basically the size of the old F-150 from the 90s
The "negative" impacts of CAFE standards were entirely by design. They were written that way to benefit the domestic auto industry, which is very uncompetitive in the small and midsized vehicle segments. By making smaller vehicles uncompetitive (or simply unavailable), it eliminated some serious competition.
I think a lot of people don't realize how many regulations are designed by incumbent domestic companies explicitly for the purposes of making foreign companies and upstarts noncompetitive.
You're right that CAFE is literally designed to favor trucks. And the definition is so vague that even vehicles like the PT Cruiser are considered Light Trucks for the purposes of CAFE. It is also designed to hurt small cars, because vehicles with footprints (wheelbase * wheel wide) smaller than a Mustang (literally, to the square inch) have to face ever-more-strict CAFE standards.
As a result, cars like the Fit are might face a CAFE penalty while a base F150 does a-okay despite getting like half the fuel economy. And that's not even getting into BS like flex fuel credits (basically, being flex fuel capable is like adding ~5mpg to the vehicle CAFE score).
This is exactly why every small vehicle is a crossover anymore (they are light trucks for CAFE purposes), and why cars like the Civic get are today, the size an Accord was in 2005 (CAFE is less strict the larger the vehicle is).
>Apparently the Nissan Leaf for example was strictly manufactured to generate credits/offset the environmental impact of the Nissan truck and van line that could not be adjusted to meet the CAFE standards.
Which seems pretty crazy if the net effect is that any car manufacturer has to produce a full line if they want to build any inefficient cars.
"The tariff affected any country (such as Japan) seeking to bring light trucks into the U.S. and effectively "squeezed smaller Asian truck companies out of the American pickup market."[16] Over the intervening years, Detroit lobbied to protect the light-truck tariff, thereby reducing pressure on Detroit to introduce vehicles that polluted less and that offered increased fuel economy.[15]"
How effective was this at anything other than making loopholes big enough to drive a truck through, and eventually getting assembly moved to NAFTA countries?
Having a 40 mpg target for a small truck and a 25 mpg target for a big truck makes it pretty hard to build and sell a small truck.
Hmm, that's interesting. If manufacturers have been basically locked out of making small pickup trucks due to unattainable fuel efficiency requirements [1, 2], an implication of that is that as EVs become easier to make at reasonable cost, there's a potentially huge untapped market that could be filled by whoever is the first company to make a small, simple, and cheap electric pickup truck.
A modern version of, say, a Datsun 620 [3] or an 80's Ford Ranger [4] could be pretty popular. One might even be able to circumvent the chicken tax by importing the body/frame of a foreign-made truck and building an electric drive train in the U.S. or NAFTA country.
> there's a potentially huge untapped market that could be filled by whoever is the first company to make a small, simple, and cheap electric pickup truck.
Well, the third really; Ford made 1500 1998-2001 Ford Ranger EVs, and Chevrolet made a few hundred 1997-1998 S10 EVs. But yeah, one with modern batteries and drive trains and (therefore) decent capacity and range could sell a bunch.
I've owned and driven a handful of trucks. Ranger sized trucks feel the least useful. Can't tow much. Can't haul much. Can't get into muck. Can't hold many people. Aerodynamics of a brick. An electric F150 is compelling. We just upgraded to a new one because we need the tow capacity and the F150 beat out the F250s we were looking at. It's a great size and checks all the boxes.
Small trucks may be the least useful, but they often provide(d) the right amount of utility. Lots of truck owners never go off the pavement and never tow, but make good use of the bed. With a 4-cylinder engine, fuel efficiency was not terrible, but it's a lot easier to put a pinball machine in the back of a truck than the back of a Honda Accord.
That's a strong statement. Heavier vehicles do better in snow because they fit in better. Trucks with more ground clearance can get up and over things that smaller trucks can't. If we're just talking about rock crawling, sure. If we're talking about practical use cases and messy conditions, I'll keep torque and weight on my side.
Motorcycles and busses are more dangerous for pedestrians than trucks.
"Compared with cars, buses were 11.85 times and motorcycles were 3.77 times more likely per mile to kill children 0–14 years old. Buses were 16.70 times more likely to kill adults age 85 or older than were cars."
That's probably because buses have more interaction with pedestrians, both due to people getting in and out, but also, operation in urban areas where there's a lot of pedestrian traffic.
A truck in this discussion is a car, not a real truck. A bus is not comparable to a car. Compare a bus to a real truck. A motorcycle will in every single statistics drive faster on average than a car. I'm not saying your point is wrong but it is at a minimum like a click bait title.
"Passenger cars and light trucks (vans, pickups, and sport utility vehicles) accounted for 46.1% and 39.1%, respectively, of the 4875 deaths, with the remainder split among motorcycles, buses, and heavy trucks."
If you count crossovers as cars, trucks make up like 35% of auto sales and account for 39% of pedestrian deaths.
I’m very passionate about pedestrian deaths in cities (SF specifically), but based on all the incidents I can remember I don’t think pickup trucks are causing a disproportionate number. Pedestrian deaths are mostly caused by normal cars going at high speeds through red lights or crosswalks. A truck sold with automatic braking would likely be much safer than a car from the past in terms of pedestrian safety.
SF just has fewer trucks, which is why you probably don't recall too many incidents. Nationwide, increasing number of SUV/trucks is a major problem in ped safety.
EVs are heavier by nature (this vehicle’s battery pack alone is ~1800 lbs). Your average driver is not good at driving. The F150 sells very well. Ergo, more risk of more property damage and human harm.
You can’t get around physics. More mass with more force carries more risk.
Basically light duty trucks take an extra 10-30 feet stopping from 60 MPH. This is dwarfed by distance travelled during reaction time. In the 1960's sedans were in the ~150 ft range for 60-0, about what modern pickups achieve.
Heavier vehicles have more kinetic energy at the same speed but the braking force for all vehicles is proportional to mass and friction with the road surface which depends on tire quality and road material, and since acceleration is proportional to mass from a given force the deceleration from braking is basically the same at any mass with equivalent tires and road surface.
The location of the battery also means lower center of gravity and probably better control over the vehicle, and the curb weight is about the same. These will probably be net safer than ICE F-150s
Is there any actual data that shows there is correlation between the mass of vehicles and number of people killed?
Obviously heavier cars are more deadly when hitting people with all the other variables fixed, but not all these variables are independent. They could also depend on the weight of the cars. For example, maybe the car becomes easier to control/steer when it's heavier (totally made up point), which counters the inherent risk introduced by the weight.
Without real-world data I won't be too quick to say heavier car is more dangerous.
There are millions of F150s. If you get into an accident what is the probability it is with an F150? Or an SUV or something bigger that requires a commercial driving license.
We also know that speed kills and people are driving faster today than ever before.
I'll post the conclusion for the light trucks weight reduction part (fatalities part, there is also non-serious injuries part in the paper) here as TL;DR for other people.
Reducing the mass of light trucks would significantly increase the fatality risk of their occupants in
collisions with objects and big trucks. But downsizing of light trucks would significantly reduce risk
to pedestrians, motorcyclists and, above all, passenger car occupants. There would be little effect
on rollovers because, historically, there has been little correlation between the mass of light trucks
and their rollover stability (width relative to center-of-gravity height). There would also be little
change in collisions between two light trucks, if both trucks are reduced in mass.
Even though the effect of mass reductions is statistically significant in four of the six types of
crashes, the net effect for all types of crashes combined is small, because some of the individual
effects are positive and others are negative. The benefits of truck downsizing for pedestrians and
car occupants could more than offset the fatality increase for light truck occupants. It is estimated
that a 100-pound reduction could result in a modest net savings of 40 lives, (0.26 percent of baseline
fatalities). However, this estimate is not statistically significant, the 2-sigma confidence bounds
range from a savings of 100 to an increase of 20 fatalities; the 3-sigma bounds range from a savings
of 130 to an increase of 50 fatalities. It is concluded that a reduction in the weight of light trucks
would have a negligible overall effect, but if there is an effect, it is most likely a modest reduction
of fatalities
Completely aside from the point you're trying to make: it's a pet peeve of mine when people try to describe collisions in terms of kinetic energy. It's the wrong metric--the important conserved quantity in collisions is momentum, which is simply linear mass*velocity (not quadratic velocity). After that, it becomes a matter of calculating the rate of momentum transfer, or impulse.
That's why crumple zones are important for vehicle-vehicle collisions--not because they turn kinetic energy into a stored form of potential energy in deformation, but because they drastically decrease the rate at which momentum changes.
The curb weight of the Lightning seems to be approximately the same as the ICE F150s. 4600-5000lbs. Batteries are heavy, but so are engines and transmissions.
The battery being low should dramatically improve the safety of the vehicle by improving stability.
It's still a huge vehicle, though. It would be nice if we trended smaller, and left vehicles like this to people who actually need it.
My mistake then. I read a response post to the new vehicle that claimed it would come in at 5000lbs. Can't find anything authoritative, but everyone seems to be speculating more around 6500 as you said.
Yeah, but it's not like the drivetrain of an F150 is light. A fully dressed Coyote V8, 10R80, driveshaft, differentials, subframes, exhaust, gas tank (with fuel), radiator & supports, fuel lines, etc, etc add up. So the batteries weight 1800 lbs, but your also removing like 1400lbs of stuff. It's pretty likely that the Lightning will weight in at barely more than a hybrid F150, and the lower range F150s, when introduced, will probably weight the same as the ICE versions.
A little appreciated fact is that a Model 3 and a Mustang have the exact same weight ranges: the SR RWD Model 3 weights about what a ecoboost Mustang does, and a GT500 Mustang is actually about 200lbs heavier than a Model 3 AWD LR Performance.
Does being hit by a 6500 lb vehicle as a cyclist or pedestrian really differ materially from being hit by a 7500 lb vehicle...?
Constantly telling people that existing on earth as a human is bad for x, y, z is a good strategy if you want people to tune out and stop paying attention to what you're saying.
Automatic breaking systems are getting even better and have been pretty good for awhile. You can expect preventable fatalities of pedestrians and other drivers from cars and trucks to decline as this technology becomes better.
I feel like this same criticism should apply for the Model S Plaid then too since it accelerates faster than almost every car and is heavier than most cars as well.
I’m not sure how much the weight really matters if you’re colliding with a cyclist or pedestrian anyway though.
Valid point about the height, but it’s no different than any other modern truck on the road today (all of which are too high if you ask me).
It makes a big difference where one is hit. Being hit in the head by a head-height truck grille is a lot different from being hit in the shins by a 1964 Datsun. There's also the small matter that nobody driving this truck can see anything at all for ten feet to the front.
You are contending that there is no difference in pedestrian fatalities between vehicles? And also that it isn’t harder to see children in an unnecessarily tall vehicle?
Is a truck an unnecessarily tall vehicle or is replacing sedans with taller hatchbacks we pretend are SUVs an unnecessarily tall vehicle? Because one is tall for a reason and the other is tall purely due to consumer preference.
What reason are pickup trucks tall for, other than assuaging the drivers doubts about their own masculinity? You can get just as much construction work done with a Toyota Tacoma or even a Mercedes utility van.
Gaming EPA fuel efficiency regulations. Making them taller/wider essentially saves the manufacturers money because those regulations aren’t very well designed.
Once you're above 10mph or 15mph the road noise from the tires makes more noise than the quiet gas engines we have these days anyways.
This electric F-150 will not be "almost silent" in any way that matters to a pedestrian. It will certainly be less obnoxious to everyone than those grating diesel engine trucks, and I hope no one complains about the loss of that noise pollution.
Yeah, EVs emit a really annoying sound. You don't really notice as a driver rolling around with the windows up, but when you pull one into a garage with the windows down, you hear that "WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOWOWOOWEEEEEEERRRRR" echoing all over.
I don't know if 2020+ EVs are louder, but at least our Fiat 500e does make this tiny whirring sound at parking lot speeds, supposedly so pedestrians can hear it. But it is so quiet that it doesn't accomplish much. Even the quietest ICE car is substantially more audible in parking lots.
> Once you're above 10mph or 15mph the road noise from the tires makes more noise than the quiet gas engines we have these days anyways.
Are you mental? I live on a residential street, not even too busy, and every single day, I hear these idiot gunning their motors to be cool. With electric its a non issue.
Tires are an issue but diesels engine trucks and semis are audible. Also some times regular gas customers have modified exhausts. Tire noise is higher frequency though.
Have you ever lived next to a road in a city? I can tell you that the most noise comes from revving engines.
There is a also a massive difference between noise a normally driven ICE vehicle makes compared to an electric one at city speeds. The electric ones are very silent and barely audible if they don't make that humming sound. Even at 20-30mph.
I can't hear a single engine, but I can hear the hum of tires a long way away. Sure, I can sometimes hear a loud exhaust but those come and go in seconds. Tire noise is a 24x7 sound until winter (snow attenuates sound really well).
Source: typing this in a city with lots of roads and traffic.
Don't know about in the USA, but in the EU electric cars are required to emit some noise when going slowly. Most make an eerie electric hum, but Fiat has chosen to make their new Fiat 500 play a jaunty Italian tune: https://www.motortrend.com/news/new-fiat-500-pedestrian-aler...
I work with a window facing the street, and I can hear electric cars coming well before they pass. Electric cars are near-silent only when they're moving very slowly. The noise from tyres-on-tarmac is still fairly loud when they are moving at typical city-driving speed.
What is this noisemaker? Is it sort of an electronic whine? I thought that was just the motors. Otherwise I've never heard any kind of artificial noise from a slow-moving EV.
Are most pedestrian and cyclist deaths on the highways?
I would have though it would be in the city, if only for the fact that I practically never see pedestrians on country roads where I live. There can be cyclists, though.
In the city, though, most car noise is clearly the engine. Source: traffic outside my window. I clearly hear the engine noise or the exhaust if it's a scooter or motorcycle.
It needn't have been this tall. With the internal combustion engine out, Ford could have designed a lower, more curved, less deadly front end.
Instead, they kept the high nose and used the space as a trunk. After all, injuring fewer pedestrians sells no cars. Indeed, the market prefers an enormous, deliberately threatening-looking chariot that makes you feel big and virile.
Ford are behind this game in that they haven't given their truck an explicitly hostile name like “People Mulcher”.
Their thinking is literally 'I don't understand why anyone needs a truck when the Google employee car park is so well surfaced and my laptop fits on the front seat'.
I live on a sheep farm (though the sheep are gone these days). I recognize how incredibly useful tractors and high-clearance pickup trucks are. I also think helicopters are useful too. Neither are safe in the city.
The problem is not that the truck is off the ground, the problem is that the top of the hood is higher than a pedestrian's head.
Trucks designed for work have low frontends for maximum visibility. I drove a 1999 Silverado for 10 years, went offroading often, it had just as much horsepower as last year's F-150, but with a front-end that was basically indistinguishable from a sedan's, instead of the new ones that are so tall they have to put cameras in the cab so that you can see what's in front of you.
The frontends of modern trucks are for intimidation, not work.
As someone who doesn't own a truck, I always find it funny when people bring up "big and virile" type lines about truck owners. "They're compensating for something..." These people need to get their minds out of the gutter, stop thinking everything is about penis. Trucks are functional vehicles, like a giant tool for transporting bulky stuff, and I remember this every time I think about asking a friend if I can use his truck for anything.
No insult intended here: I assume people who have never had this thought have also never done things like replacing their kitchen cabinets or some other simple home improvement project. That's fine, but it's also quite relatable to many people, and it has nothing to do with penis.
I bought a truck for two reasons. Hauling the occasional thing around (having a home makes this happen more than I had initially thought) and it fits 6 (we just had our last child in January).
I WFH so it's lower fuel economy is a non-issue to us.
It has literally _nothing_ to do with "feeling big" or any compensation thing. I had no idea how much I'd use the utility until I bit the bullet and purchased one.
I'm incredibly excited for the F-150 Lightning because I am a perfect candidate for it.
I picture a gardener turning up to work on a tech person's yard, unpacking his mower and tools and soil and plants, and the tech person shaking their head from their window and saying to themselves 'wow he's clearly just got that truck as a substitute penis...'
> I always find it funny when people bring up "big and virile" type lines about truck owners. "They're compensating for something..." These people need to get their minds out of the gutter, stop thinking everything is about penis.
I used to work at a horse racing track and every single jockey (really small dudes) had the hugest truck you have ever seen. We're talking Ford F-350 with a lift kit and bigger tires. The works. You needed to use a ladder to get in them.
There is definitely a thing that some people want bigger, taller vehicles because it makes them feel bigger and stronger. And there is definitely a thing that truck size becomes a pissing contest for some men where it's not just enough to have a big truck, you need to have the biggest one among your peers.
(And if you think nerds are immune to this phenomenon, perhaps take a more critical look at your gaming PC, boardgame collection, etc. We're a tribal species competing for mates using status symbols. Few of us are totally immune to this effect.)
At the same time, many truck owners are not motivated by that and painting them all with the same brush is uncharitable and unkind. I drive a pick-up. I absolutely love it. I have yet to kill any children, destroy the ozone layer, crush another car in a parking lot, or any of the other many moral crimes this thread seems to accuse most truck owners of.
Paraphrasing Freud, sometimes a truck is just a truck.
Incorrect based on 50% of trucks on the road today being absolutely pristine, and simply looking at commercials and their wording ("commanding the road")
Have you been around people who actually use trucks for work or leisure? They aren't just hitting the side of their trucks with 2x4's or dropping gravel from ten feet in the air like commercials. Lots of people use their trucks for pulling trailers that carry thousands of pounds of their stuff. They use the bed of their truck for carrying things that are long, heavy, grain, sawdust, smaller animals, there is a wide variety of use cases for a truck and a lot of them don't affect the aesthetic of the truck.
Advertising/marketing/PR persuades people to want buy certain things, not by telling them these things exist at a certain price, but by influencing them psychologically in deeper ways. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
This in turn has actual effects on their behavior, including but not limited to making certain purchases more likely. Obsessing about power and speed and commanding the road definitely has an impact on how people drive - especially younger folks.
Commercials for my tax software tells me it makes people using it feel ecstatic. It doesn't really - it's used by people just trying to get their taxes done and they don't feel anything about it.
These couldn't be more different. Tax software choice is a private choice with no effect on the public space. Tax commercials happen for a couple months.
Car choice influence an incredible array of things up to how cities are built. Car commercial are omnipresent and include product placement in movies as well as, apparently, US presidents gunning it in a new truck, which is the topic of this whole thread.
Blame for killing falls on the driver of the vehicle, not on the company designing it or the shape of the front of the vehicle.
Don't hit anyone with your vehicle and you won't kill anyone. I've been hit by a truck bicycling, thankfully not too hard. But I don't really think it would have been better to have been hit by a low slung sleek car. It would have put all the force through my legs.
Vehicle safety regulations aren't about "blame", ever. They're designed to save lives. If you can do that with better driver behavior, great. If you can do it with assistive technology, great. If you can do it with different vehicle designs, great. You do what you can, based on the techniques available and the costs involved.
To wit: if you start your safety analysis with "fuck the pedestrians, that's the driver's fault, not Ford's", then you're doing it wrong.
Ever heard of crosswalks? They're these things that people use to travel in front of cars while they're standing still.
Ford trucks are the #1 killer of children and adults at crosswalks because drivers can't see what they're about to run over, vehicles of that front-end design account for 40% of all pedestrian traffic deaths.
So, you're trying to tell me, it's the truck's fault that a driver doesn't know they're at a crosswalk?
Do you own a truck? I do. I've owned a truck for 15 years. Some of them lifted, and unless you are pretty much parked on top of a crosswalk, there is no problem seeing the crosswalk. Especially 3-4 foot objects in said crosswalk.
Edit: F150 is the most popular vehicle in the US. So, yeah, it stands to reason it will kill more people than any other vehicle, too
I'm telling you it's the truck's fault that the driver can't see the crosswalk.
There is a such thing as good and bad design. If I sell a hammer that shoots a bullet whenever you swing it for no good reason, I'm responsible for people getting shot.
That analogy doesn't hold water. A hammer isn't meant to shoot bullets. So shooting bullets would be something the hammer was never intended to do.
What I'm telling you is that you have an opinion that is different from mine and also probably an ignorant one since you didn't answer my question about whether you have ever owned a truck.
And obscuring driver's visibility to the point where they can't see objects less than 6 feet tall that they are about to hit all for the sake of aggressive and intimidating presentation to other road users isn't something pickup trucks were intended to do.
That's why professional models typically have cabover or sharply-sloped hood designs, not the enormous flattops that are marketed at suburbanites.
I have owned a truck, I drove a 1999 Chevy Silverado for ten years, it could haul just as much stuff as a 2020 F-150 but it also let me see the road.
"objects less than 6 feet tall" That is utter nonsense. You're honestly saying you can't see something five feet off the ground in front of an F-150?
"1999 Chevy Silverado for ten years, it could haul just as much stuff as a 2020 F-150 but it also let me see the road" - this is also utter nonsense. A 1999 Silverado 1500 is a 1/4 ton truck with a TC of about 4,000 pounds. A 2020 F-150 is a 1/2 ton truck with a TC of about 7,000 pounds.
So the more apt comparison would be with a Ford Ranger, which obviously sits lower to the ground than an F-150, but having owned both a 2500 Silverado and several F-250, the front visibility isn't much different.
My lexus has a 360 camera that turns on when the car is moving at low speeds (e.g. when stopped at a crosswalk). I assume new ford trucks at even a few trim levels up will have this feature. You can prevent these kind of fuck-ups with cameras easily.
You shouldn't need to take your eyes off the road to look at a camera screen just to see what's on the road in front of you. It's a car, not an armored fighting vehicle.
You get into your parked vehicle, check your phone for directions, find a route, confirm your arrival time, then put the key in the ignition and immediately run over a kid who stepped in front of your truck to grab their ball.
And so that's the vehicle's responsibility? Like, you're complaining that a truck/suv has a 9-foot blind spot.
What's an acceptable blind spot - where if someone hits a laying down/sitting kid in front of their car, it's the driver's fault and not the vehicle's?
That’s why I wish car manufacturers would affix big metal spikes to the front of cars for the aesthetic value. After all, they’d be blameless for any casualties.
Judging the appearance of some late model vehicles, I'll joke that we might as well skip a few small steps and go straight to mounting Hellfire missiles on the front. :-)
Blame for killing almost never falls on drivers. Look at news headlines--"Car runs over person" and not "Driver runs over person" and you can see how this is viewed. There is a term to describe this--"windshield bias." Auto safety takes multiple approaches and not just saying the drivers are responsible because they are currently not, at least in the US. Does the person that hit you with a truck still have their driving license?
Even HN cannot see past the perverse dangers and flaws of modern auto design responsible for the current vulnerable road user epidemic in America. [1] When it comes to cars - it's "personal responsibility". When it comes to treadmills - it's a "manufacturing flaw" [2]
I'm sure there's some societal tradeoff between global electrification and pedestrian deaths. Until the government adds pedestrian safety to US crash standards, Ford will make what the image conscious truck market wants.
Just because you live in a city, does not mean the city was "made for" you. Cities are a side effect of many people clustering around key resource points. Resources are almost always much more valuable in trade than they are remaining at a stationary point, which requires transport infrastructure and vehicles. The fact that you don't want to live in a city in which people drive vehicles is your problem, not society's.
Cities are no longer resource points as most economic activity in cities is generated by services and knowledge work. Even if you go by your logic of economic supremacy, society would want to protect the most valued economic assets in its cities: the people. The death machines are also noisy as fuck and generate pollution, take up valuable and scarce urban space … there is absolutely no need to have huge roads with unrestricted traffic going right up to dense urban centers.
Almost every major American city is also a shipping port, freight train depot, major freight airport hub, etc., etc., manufacturing is still a thing (in fact domestic manufacturing is on the rise in the last decade). Good luck feeding, clothing, sheltering, etc. the millions of inhabitants in American cities without roads that accommodate large trucks and people who do real work.
Trucks very much have a place in society. Farmers, construction workers, and some other areas definitely need them.
The trend that they need to be an everyday vehicle for anyone is something that should be looked at. What is the psychology and intentional planning that's caused this shift? What subtle population engineering has lead to this without people realizing it?
It’s a vehicle, not a mental disorder. Some people just want to be able to occasionally tow a boat or haul some furniture without needing to rent a truck.
I think the attitude of “you don’t need a truck unless you’re a blue collar worker” is pretty elitist and ignorant, honestly. As if the decision to buy a truck is somehow invalid because white collar workers don’t see the need for one.
It’s honestly a lot more practical than people seem to think. And if electric trucks hold their value anything like ICE trucks, getting one with a tax credit at about $40k for the base model is probably the best deal in a new vehicle you can find.
> want to be able to occasionally tow a boat or haul some furniture without needing to rent a truck.
The mystery to me is how very occasionally that seems to be, at least anecdotally. Perhaps >95% of pickup trucks I see are not hauling anything bigger than groceries. Yet, they’re hauling around their own ridiculously giant metal frame and emitting huge amounts of fossil fuels in the process. Those occasional boat trips are very net expensive in atmospheric carbon! Thankfully electric pickups will partially mitigate that problem although pickups will be hogging space in commuter parking garages for many decades hence I’m sure.
I’m pretty sure this is the kind of attitude that causes rural folks to be so skeptical of climate change. Some (I’m assuming) city-dweller talking down to them about how they don’t need what they feel to be a useful tool in their daily lives.
I mean, it sounds like your real reservation about trucks is not that they emit carbon, but that they are hogging up space and inconveniencing you, which is not a very persuasive argument.
> I’m pretty sure this is the kind of attitude that causes rural folks to be so skeptical of climate change
I didn't mention rural truck drivers and made no comment that could reasonably be interpreted as such. If you have to deal with corrugated dirt roads and hauling materials etc on a daily basis then it's perfectly understandable you won't exactly be driving a hatchback.
> I mean, it sounds like your real reservation about trucks is not that they emit carbon, but that they are hogging up space and inconveniencing you, which is not a very persuasive argument.
Or, numerous city and urban commuting giant truck drivers is an effective image of the ridiculous excess they represent in the vast majority of their uses whereas carbon is a less visible but extremely negative externality from that excess.
/s But yes, those that point out this are the real problem.
> I think the attitude of “you don’t need a truck unless you’re a blue collar worker” is pretty elitist and ignorant, honestly.
A sedan with the rear seats folded down will likely hold as much as you can get in a Costco run.
Or two bikes you throw in there.
I know because mine does both of these things.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of current truck owners 1) don't own boats 2) rarely, if ever, haul furniture 3) use the space in the rear on a regular basis.
Against this we have the known statistics of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities due to the obstructions to visibility provided by the very high front grille and very high ride height (plus wide A-pillars, etc.)
So it's therefore not only a waste of gas but a public health hazard, and making that claim is not "elitist", it's merely "rational" and "empirical" (and allow me to add, "humane")
"Recent research from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found the share of pedestrian deaths involving trucks, vans, and SUVs has increased from 22 to 44 percent since the mid-1980s. More SUVs and trucks in the fleet = more pedestrian injuries becoming deaths instead."
Most sedans have a max payload < 1000lbs including all passengers.
An F-150 has a payload over 3000lbs and can tow up to 14,000lbs.
Do you need that for your groceries? No, but if you don't live in the heart of the city the F-150 enables you do many many things that a sedan can't do around yard work, home ownership, agriculture, hauling gear, etc..
A sedan is about the worst car design anyway.. you'd have more of a leg to stand on if you had argued for a hatch or a minivan.
I've never owned a truck, but they have their uses.
I'm a big fan of small cars, but I'm also a big fan of having friends that own trucks. just off the top of my head, I've needed to borrow a friend's truck to move a couch (twice), buy a new bedframe, and buy a TV. this is all in the past year. none of those things fit in my hatchback with any combination of seats folded down, and they certainly wouldn't fit in a sedan. if I had to rent one from uhaul or home depot, that would have cost me hundreds of dollars in total. instead, it cost me a couple meals at chipotle.
it's also hard to find anything smaller than a truck with 4WD. if you live outside the city/suburbs, this can be a pretty important feature by itself.
I own an F150 I use primarily for commuting but it also has a comfortable ride, >20 highway mpg, good visibility, utility for when I need to move furniture etc, and it’s relatively affordable and holds its value. Trucks depreciate slower than any other category of vehicle. Literally the only downside is that it’s a pain to park sometimes.
If I drove it a lot yes but I typically only do 4000-6000 miles a year. Even with this vehicle I average less emissions than a typical commuter would. That being said I will probably replace it with an EV as a daily driver when it’s paid off & use it on an as needed basis.
You can't compare yourself to someone that drives more than you do and use it to say anything about how much you pollute. Comparing to a small European sedan (or maybe a VW Golf) driving the same amount of miles would be more telling. Apples to grocery carts.
First off, you can't compare the fuel economy values between countries just by doing a conversion. Europe has different testing procedures that give higher numbers than the American EPA test does (normally around 20-25%), and the only way you'll have an accurate number is if the car is sold in both countries.
The F150 has fuel economy close to that of wagons sold in the US. The F150 is less efficient, but it has way more than half the fuel economy of a wagon. Examples:
A base E-Class Wagon gets 24 mpg (22 city, 28 highway).
A 4WD V6 F150 (which I think is the most popular) gets 21 mpg (19 city, 24 highway). The most efficient F150 available (the 2WD Hybrid) gets 25 mpg (25 city, 26 highway).
It is the base E Class in the American market. Americans don't drive <150 HP manual cars and would never buy them. Those are the only versions of cars that get substantially better gas mileage then the versions of cars that Americans typically drive.
The fact that Mercedes (a luxury car manufacturer) choose not to import their smaller engines to the US doesn't mean you can't get smaller engines. Subaru outback, kia niro, even a volvo v60 or audi a4 come with efficient 2l engines if you absolutely want luxury
Did you not read the link I posted in my first comment in this chain? Two of the cars in the fuel economy comparison are the Subaru Outback and the Volvo V60. The most efficient Outback has 29 mpg (26/33) and the most efficient F150 has 25 mpg (25/26). Almost identical in city, and in the same ballpark for highway. Numbers are similar for the Audi A4 Allroad (though you'll have the same concern as the E-Class as only the higher worldwide trims are available) and for the V60.
Ah sorry I’m on mobile, didn’t see the horizontal scrolling!
It’s crazy that the choice is so limited in the US. I can understand why the Prius was so popular with you guys, despite handling like a whale on wheels.. there are nearly no options in the big hatchback segment .
Most sedans get somewhere in the 30s on the highway unless they are hybrids, so it’s about a 50% difference. Not insignificant, but not as massive of a difference as you would think. From a purely economic point of view you’d have to drive a lot for the cost of gas to cost you more than you save from having less depreciation.
You're going to be really sad when you do the comparison for people who drive sports cars. Porsche 911's run at 19 mpg for the 2020 models and ~14mpg for the 2000 models, and the 2010 Cayenne (SUV) runs at 11 mpg. 11!
I actually had a Fiesta ST before my truck and because it required premium fuel (it would run on standard fuel but burned it quicker and had less power doing it so it was pointless) the actual $ cost per mile was similar to the truck I have now but with shorter range because of the much smaller fuel tank
Speaking personally, I've never owned a truck but began considering it during Covid. Why?
The cost premium of hiring someone for home improvement jobs vs. DIY seems to have gone up. And the difficulty of finding someone qualified, reputable and with available capacity seems to have become exponentially higher.
"So I guess I need a truck" is what I've recently been thinking.
A van is better in almost every dimension for construction. Effectively the only reason to own a pickup truck (vs some other better utility vehicle) is if you have trailer that needs it.
When you say "construction", are you referring to something like drywall/framing/roofing or electrical/trim work? I ask because fitting a stack of OSB sheets in a van can be anywhere from challenging to impossible (depending on the type of van of course). Certain trim levels of the F150 for example, are designed with the specific requirement of being able to accommodate standard sizes of construction materials, like a 4x8 sheet of OSB.
> A van is better in almost every dimension for construction.
Vans are nice and in the used market often cheaper. I used to rent/borrow a friends full size van before having a truck. Still, the roof creates limitations. Can't transport a fridge or water heater upright, for example.
And for towing as mentioned, a van is limited to a bumper pull trailer whereas a pickup can pull a fifth wheel or gooseneck.
In a similar vein covid changed my recreation habits enough to make me consider a truck/suv. With nowhere to go except outdoors I spent a lot more time camping/kayaking in Tahoe and national parks. Bringing an inflatable kayak, paddle board, and camping supplies for the weekend was doable in my hatchback but not exactly comfortable and wouldn’t work with more than two people. Something with more storage and 4WD drive started sounding very appealing. The F-150 is very competitive with a new 4-runner or Tacoma on cost and features. Just wish it wasn’t so gigantic.
There are a certain group of users that need the machines to be strong for towing, tall for required ground clearance, and with bed capacity to haul material, tools, and other everyday cargo.
There is another group that doesn't need any of things but is convinced that they might some day. They are aspirational requirements. Why are those people convinced they need these things? The same reason anyone is convinced they need anything in the modern world. Advertising. Truck ads tell you that the Ford F150 is a tough truck for men who are tough (or want to be) and don't take nothin' from nobody (once they get out of this crappy job) and are masters of nature (or surely would be if they didn't live in the suburbs).
They buy product placement in all the badass movies, their commercials look like b-roll from a transformers movie, and the trucks themselves get more comfortable and less utilitarian every year.
Ford is not in the business of selling (light) trucks - they are in the business of selling an aspirational lifestyle to a population that thinks they might one day become an action hero. The F150 is, and has been for a long time, a consumer toy and not a serious work vehicle.
I’m about as “casual” of a user as possible and it’s still much less that I might theoretically need these things someday and more that I do need them, occasionally. For myself or for friends + family.
This. Before I left the bay, I daily drove a motorcycle or a Jeep. Many of my weekends required truck. If you can only have one, the truck is the better tradeoff.
As a thought experiment: for the vast majority of this sorts of tasks a panel van is a superior choice- more secure, more protected from the elements, better milage, much less cool. I'm fact actual trades people are much more likely to use one than am f150.
Could you ever see yourself buying a panel van? Why or why not?
There’s a lot of times it’s more convenient to just throw something over the side of the bed so I would miss that but as a purely utilitarian vehicle vs a work truck absolutely yes.
However for my truck in particular I got a somewhat luxury trim with 50k miles for only $20k, so it was a good mix of things I would want in a vehicle generally as well as the utility. Panel vans aren’t really offered in that configuration, and I probably wouldn’t get one now because I plan on just keeping this truck as a secondary vehicle long after it’s paid off and I eventually get a smaller daily driver.
All that being said the one thing that could make me change my mind is an electric van with extensive usage of solar panels. That has a rather unique value proposition so if it existed in the future I’d be interested in it at least.
I got a good deal on something very well equipped with low mileage, and trucks tend to hold their value exceptionally well. It’s also just more convenient this way.
There are a good number of legitimate uses and legitimate users for these vehicles (I know a lot of legitimate users), but the vast majority of the giant vehicles on the road have only 1 visible occupant and no visible cargo.
And although I am doubtless projecting, I can't help but envision a fresh hot latte in their cupholder, which the driver is on their way back from procuring.
YMMV--but, in my experience, a single user multiple vehicles in the US can be pretty tough (at least, going from 1 to 2; it seems a lot easier when you go from 2 to 3). I am looking at a new, single vehicle, and this electric F-150 might be it--because I need to be able to carry plywood sheets and my Hyundai subcompact isn't gonna cut it.
I can't speak to the more general, aspirational subculture to which you refer, but the aggravation of multiple vehicles is in some ways the first stop on this tour.
Americans want it because everyone else has one. Down here in TX, the number of pristine trucks that have never seen a speck of dirt, never had anything in the bed, and that are parked on their 1/8 acre lots in the city is staggering.
The problem with trucks like the F-150 is all marketing. My impression after seeing a recent F-150 is that the goal is to feel big and luxurious. Even on the ICE version of the truck, the area under the hood is mostly empty.
The reason an entire car hide in front of the bumper, out of the driver's view is that it makes the truck look cooler. The window sills are also at a silly height, to make the truck feel bigger, but at least that doesn't create the same safety issues (for everyone outside the truck) with no real value.
But this truck will be very heavy, very tall, and very fast. Drivers are already the leading killers of children, and more and more people are being killed while walking and cycling.
I'm very worried about the effect of making this vehicle even faster and heavier. Hopefully reduced deaths from pollution offset this.