2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Full Review: Electric Truck For the Masses

This is the new 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning, and it's finally here, the electric F-150. Ford announced this truck a year ago. I did a full walk-around video tour about six months ago, but now it's ready to go into production and it's ready to be driven. And today, I'm gonna do just that, a full review of the new F-150 Lightning. Before I get started, be sure to check out cars and bids, which is my enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era with free listings. You can sell your car and list it for free and auction it on cars and bids. And we've had some great sales recently, including this GMC Hummer EV pickup, which sold for over $260,000, this Rivian R1T, which sold for $138,000, and this Tesla Model X Plaid, which sold for over $142,000. If you're looking to buy or sell a cool enthusiast car from the modern era, the 1980s and up, cars and bids is the place to do it with daily auctions and great selection at carsandbids.com. So let's talk F-150 Lightning. The electric pickup truck is huge right now with the GMC Hummer EV and the Rivian R1T, the Tesla Cybertruck, the Chevy Silverado EV, and this is Ford's entrant. Unlike all those others though, Ford decided to take a more utilitarian and affordable approach to the electric pickup truck, and this is basically just a mainstream truck except electric. Of course, that is a massive oversimplification of the details, and today I'm gonna show you all of them. First, I'll take you on a thorough tour of the new F-150 Lightning and show you all of its many quirks and features. Then I'll get it out on the road and drive it, and then I'll give it a Doug's score. All right, I'm gonna start the quirks and features, the new F-150 Lightning with probably its quirkiest quirk, and that would be the front trunk. There's no engine up here, obviously, so instead you have a massive storage area and you can use it just like a trunk in a normal car. There are many different ways to access the front trunk. There's this little button on the screen. You can press this, then it'll pop open. There's this little button to the left of the steering wheel. Press that and it will pop open. There's a little button on the key fob. You can tap that twice and it will pop open, or there's a little button hidden under the grill here, a little rubber popper. You push that and then the front trunk beeps a few times as a warning and it pops right open, revealing its storage compartment. Now, as you can see, this is a pretty sizable compartment. In fact, Ford says about 14 cubic feet of space, which is roughly the same size as the trunk on a standard sedan. So pretty good. It can hold multiple sets of golf clubs at once, and it removes one of the primary drawbacks that a lot of people have with a truck, which is there's nowhere to store stuff out of the way. You stick it in the bed, it might get damaged or wet or stolen. Now you have a trunk in addition to the bed for extra cargo storage, which is amazing. Now, Ford says that this front trunk can hold up to 400 pounds. You can see a little warning here letting you know that maximum figure, and you can pull off this panel on the bottom of the front trunk for even more storage. Pull it out, and then you can see a small storage compartment under the panel where you can store smaller items like your charging cables and keep them out of the way, which is pretty cool. This panel that you pull off in the front trunk, by the way, also has a ruler on it. So you will never be without a measuring device if you have one of these pickups. Now, there's a lot of cool stuff in this front trunk besides the storage and the more storage under the floor. For example, you have a light. Tap on this button here and these lights turn on, which illuminate your front trunk, obviously very useful at night, or you can turn them off if you wanna be in front trunk stealth mode. You also have this little button here, which is an escape button. You press that and it'll pop open so that you can't kidnap anybody in the front trunk of your F-150 Lightning. And on the sides of the front trunk, you have hooks. You can see right here, this pops down and becomes a hook. Same deal over on the other side. I guess this would be for like grocery bags or anything you don't want rolling around. You can put them on a hook just like you might find it in normal car's trunk, which is pretty cool to have. Also worth pointing out under here, you have a battery jump point. You can see a little diagram here letting you know this is where you attach jumper cables. To access it, you just twist off these fasteners, pop open this panel, and then you have a jump point. Then you can use this truck to jump other vehicles if you're out in the field at a construction site and someone needs a jump, or you can use that same point to jump this truck's standard battery if you have to. Now this is all important because obviously the battery has been relocated from this front trunk area, so it's not immediately accessible. So it's smart that Ford thought about having a jump point since you can't really reach the battery to jump it in a traditional way. But probably the most important item in the front trunk is over on the left side, the passenger side. Lift up this panel and you can see a lot of different charge points. You have four different household style outlets up here, plus a USB-C and a USB-A port as well, so you can charge stuff when you're on the go. This is a huge deal because you can basically use the truck as a power bank to power tools. Power tools, jackhammers, whatever you might need out in the field at a construction site. You don't have access to an outlet. Well, you do now. Four of them, in fact, and that's just up front. More to come later. But anyway, once you're done with the front trunk, you can close it in all of the ways I showed you before. The screen, the button, the key, or you just press the little rubber button and the front trunk comes right on down and closes just like a tailgate or a trunk would in a car with a power operated one. Pretty simple and pretty cool. And by the way, one other front trunk related item you'll find interesting. You might be wondering what happened to the normal front trunk latch that's in the driver's footwell in an F-150 and in every other vehicle. Well, in the Lightning, that latch still controls the front trunk. You can see it here. And if you peel back this plastic piece, there's a manual release for the front trunk. You pull on that and it manually pops open the front trunk so you can open it in case the battery is dead or the electronics aren't working. And there is your manual front trunk release. So you still have a trunk release in that spot. But anyway, next up, usually when I'm at the front of vehicles, I talk power and performance with the engine. So let's do that here too. There are two different batteries you can get with the F-150 Lightning. The base model or standard range version has a 230 mile range and around 450 horsepower, which is obviously a pretty healthy figure. Also 775 pound feet of torque. But you can then step up to the extended range battery and that brings power to 580 horses, which is obviously pretty good. And it increases range to around 320 miles per charge, depending on exactly which version you get. And that's an excellent figure. As for pricing, the base model, which they're calling the F-150 Lightning Pro, that starts around $40,000. And it's only offered with that base level battery pack. Or you can step up to an XLT model or a Lariat model, and you can choose between the base battery pack and the larger one. Or you can step up to the Platinum, the top dog, the luxury version. That's this truck. It has a sticker price of around $90,000 and it's only offered with that top range battery pack. So these trucks can get very expensive, over $90,000, but they also start pretty affordably at around $40,000. And Ford tells me that a good chunk of the orders, kind of the sweet spot in the bell curve, has been a well-equipped Lariat model at around $65,000 to $70,000. That's where a good amount of the orders seem to be falling for the Lightning. By the way, one other interesting thing Ford told me about this truck, fully half of the people who have placed a reservation are new to trucks. They've never owned a truck before. And 75% of people placing a reservation are new to Ford. They've never owned a Ford before. So this has really given Ford a chance to go pull in some people that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And indeed, Ford told me they believe this is one of the best chances ever in the entire auto industry to pull people in to electric vehicles. A relatively affordable, highly capable pickup truck, this one. But anyway, next let's talk through some other interesting exterior quirks and features on this truck, starting with the charge port, which is right here behind this panel. On a normal F-150, you have kind of a vent here, as you can see, but in the Lightning, it's a charge port door. In order to open it, you just tap on it, it pops open, and that's where you charge it. Now, the interesting thing about this charge port door is there's another one over on the other side, but it isn't a charge port door. It's just a dummy. It's there for symmetry to make the truck not look weird. One side is something different from the other. So only a charge port here on the driver's side. But anyway, aside from the charge port door, probably the biggest giveaway that you're looking at a Lightning instead of a regular F-150 is the front light bar. You can see it here going from headlight to headlight, and it's very dim. It doesn't have the bright light bar look that a lot of them do. Now, you also have another distinctive light bar in back, spanning from taillight to taillight, and again, distinctive to the Lightning, but not incredibly bright. You probably won't notice the light bar is illuminated when you're driving around and seeing these, unless it's at night. Otherwise, they're pretty dim. They don't show up that well, but they are distinctive to the Lightning. Now, aside from those giveaways on the outside of the Lightning, some other changes are, well, for one, badging, of course. On the side of the bed, you can see it says Lightning, with a little lightning bolt integrated. And the side of this badge, all the letters is blue, I guess to give it sort of a different look from standard badging. You also have a Lightning badge on the tailgate. You can see it here, a little lightning bolt with an American flag, and then the inside of the lightning bolt is actually hollow. Ford told me they did this intentionally so that you can see the paint color of the truck through the Lightning logo, which I have to say is kind of a cool touch. Also, another Lightning change, an obvious giveaway on the outside of this truck, is the grill, namely, there isn't one. Now, it kind of looks from afar like there is, but as you get closer, you can see there's no, like, open bars to allow for airflow. Instead, you just have little triangles arranged in kind of a cool pattern to sort of mimic what a grill would look like, but it's just a panel like basically any other one on the outside of the car. Also changed for the Lightning are the wheel designs. This one here, you can see, and most others are similar to this in that they're flat. They don't have as much, like, muscle to them. Instead, a lot more flatness on their face for better aerodynamics and improved range. Aside from the little design and styling details I've just showed you, looking at this truck from the outside, you'd be right to say it's basically just a normal F-150, except electric. It certainly doesn't have the completely different look of a Rivian or a Hummer EV or a Cybertruck. It does largely just look like a mostly the same F-150. And indeed, from an exterior perspective, Ford tells me that this truck is pretty much the same as a regular F-150 from the front doors back. It's pretty much all shared, at least from the outside. And that, Ford says, is what has allowed them to deliver this truck so cheaply compared to other electric truck rivals. Around $40,000 starting is half the price of a Rivian, far under a Hummer EV or a Cybertruck. Ford has taken advantage of the fact that they basically already build this vehicle, they made it electric, and that was able to get the prices down to a more attainable place where more EV shoppers might be able to buy it. Now, with that said, there are a lot of changes to this truck beyond just took an F-150 and made it electric, but a lot of them are under the skin. For instance, independent rear suspension will improve ride quality in this truck dramatically. You also have a completely new chassis for the F-150 Lightning, not shared with the regular F-150. And of course, you have to just reposition a lot of things to make them all fit. With a front trunk, a lot of batteries underneath, you gotta switch everything around. Despite that, Ford told me they're very proud of the fact that this truck has a full-size spare tire. You can see it here in kind of the normal location. They said a lot of engineering went to make sure that stuck around because truck shoppers want one. But anyway, next step, we move on to the bed in the F-150 Lightning. And to drop the tailgate, you can push a button on the tailgate itself, or you can tap a little button on the key fob, which I will do. And then of course, it drops down automatically like you'd expect from a truck at this price point. Now, a couple of interesting items in the bed and tailgate. For one thing, on the surface of the tailgate, you have another ruler, another measuring stick, and you also have a centimeter measuring ruler, so you can do all kinds of measuring on your tailgate. You also have this little hole cut out at the top of the tailgate where you can stick like a clamp or a vice. So if you wanna cut wood and you're out in the field, well, here's a spot where you can secure your clamp so you can do the cutting right on your truck. Also cool integrated into this tailgate is a step to get into the bed. It's behind this plastic panel. You press this little square button and a step pops out as you can see, making it easier to get in. And you can even lift up this rail, which is sturdy, so you don't fall over while you're trying to access your bed. Pretty cool and nice to see. But by far the coolest item in the back of this truck is more power outlets. You can see over on the side, two more household outlets under this cover and another two more under this cover. And the last cover contains a 240 volt outlet, the big boy, that you can use to power like a washing machine if you want to. You can take your truck out to the middle of nowhere and use this outlet and its onboard power to do a cycle of laundry, which sounds funny, but actually with this truck, it's not as funny as you might think because this truck can power your house. If you buy an optional system that's available with this truck for about $4,000 extra, you can set up your house so the truck will power it in the event of a power outage. This is completely true. You get your fully charged truck and then the power goes out, well, hook the truck up to your system and then you can power your house for three days, Ford says, without conserving at all. Or up to 10 days being very cautious, all running off the power of your pickup truck. That's pretty cool. But anyway, next we move inside the new F-150 Lightning and undoubtedly the biggest deal in this interior is the massive screen in the center. You can see it here, absolutely huge. Now, up until this point, one of the very few advantages that General Motors full-size trucks had over Ford full-size trucks was always thought they had a little bit of a better infotainment system. Well, that is completely gone. We first saw this new screen in the Ford Mustang Mach-E, but now it's here in the Lightning and I assume it will make it into other F-150 models as well, relatively soon. It is massive and it's tremendously easy to use. Just from this home screen, you can tell that with several different displays here, you got a map, you got your music, you got a phone, you got your trip, and you have climate controls at the bottom, all integrated into the same screen. So you don't have to switch between different things to see like what you're listening to or what your directions say. Plus the screen's just so easy to use, incredibly responsive to the touch. As you can see, I move around, go anywhere, and it does exactly what I'd expect like a smartphone. And it's just intuitive. You have all these items on the main screen, you tap to bring them up larger, which makes sense. Or if you want more apps, you tap this section at the top, it brings up all your apps. If you wanna control vehicle settings, you tap the truck in the other corner and it brings up all of your vehicle settings and you can change everything. This screen is great, makes great sense, and it's a new industry leader. Now, there are quite a few cool quirks and features in this infotainment screen. I'm only gonna go over the coolest, including the onboard scale system. This truck has a built-in weight measuring system in the bed. And so when you put stuff in there, you can see in the infotainment screen exactly how much it weighs and exactly how close you are to your payload capacity, which is pretty cool to be able to see that in real time as you add more weight to the bed. And by the way, Ford says the max payload capacity for this truck is now around 2200 pounds, which is reasonably good. And Ford also tells me the range doesn't diminish all that much with stuff in the bed, with extra weight. You lose a little bit of range at 1000 pounds payload and a little bit more at 2000, but nothing huge, no crazy losses like you might expect, which is good to hear. But anyway, other items in this center screen, for one, you have a billion camera angles in here. You can see all sorts of different angles that show you all around the truck in good resolution, basically everything you might wanna see to line up a trailer, to fit into a parking spot, to climb over a rock off-roading. It's all here, which is pretty nice to have. You also have a very advanced trailering system in this truck, which is quite impressive. You can hook up your trailer and then teach the car the like weight and size of your trailer. And then it will make estimates to your driving range based on your trailer specs. So it will actually lower your driving range to compensate for your trailer size, which is a pretty cool feature. Now, as for trailer towing and how that will affect the truck's range, Ford says it affects it about as much as a gas truck's gas mileage is affected by range. Of course, the drawback is charging the truck as opposed to just filling it up with gas. A lot of chargers aren't set up for a vehicle with a trailer. Although Ford says some of the charging station companies are starting to make drive-through chargers to make this problem easier. When you wanna charge the vehicle, but you're towing a trailer. But anyway, other quirks and features this infotainment system, some of them are kind of fun. For example, in this truck, you can turn on a propulsion sound that will play as you're accelerating to compensate for the fact that there's no noise otherwise. Take a listen to the propulsion sound. Also another very cool thing in this infotainment system, there are games. Just like Tesla offers you the ability to play games in your center screen, this truck does too. And there are some cool ones like this lane change game where you have to try to avoid hitting anything, which is kind of fun. And there's even a puzzle game where you kind of arrange the tiles to make a picture, which is kind of neat. It's cool to see these games in here. Something you can do to kill time if you're waiting for somebody in your center screen. Very neat. Now, another important screen in this truck is the gauge cluster screen where you have a screen instead of traditional dials. And it's pretty good. There are some nice benefits. Like you have this great range display instead of a traditional tachometer and the center panel can be adjusted to show various different things. I personally like the power usage chart, which shows exactly which wheels are using power right now or which ones are using regen. It's cool to be able to see that in real time when you're driving. The drawback of this screen though is it's just not all that configurable. For example, if you want to see your audio settings, like what song is playing right now, you can do that in the center screen, which is nice, but then you can't see your like off-road settings or that energy usage I showed you before. If you want to have the energy usage on, you can't see what song is playing and vice versa. A lot of other cars let you configure various parts of the screen to see multiple things at your discretion, but not here. You can really only configure that center panel, which is a shame considering it's a full screen, should be more configurable. But anyway, next up, other quirks in this interior. Maybe the quirkiest is the gear selector. You look at it, it looks like a traditional gear selector. You just move it into drive, move it into park, whatever. But if you're in park and you press this little button next to the gear selector, it automatically retracts into the center console, as you can see. Folds away electronically, which is strange. But then you can unfold the center console lid, fold it down where the gear lever was, and it becomes a table in the center of your truck. This is a big deal if you want to like write notes or use a laptop at a job site, you don't have anywhere to do it. Well, in this truck, you have a table where you can do it, which is very useful actually. Now, another nice benefit of this truck is it's a platinum model. Like I said, the top of the line luxury version, and that means it has a lot of very nice luxury features. You can see the two-tone seats look great. They have some Alcantara inlays, same deal in the center console, nice stitching, platinum badge, Alcantara, and the door panel, more Alcantara, nice stitching, and even some beautiful wood trim in here. It all looks quite nice, like a luxury vehicle, which is what you expect when you pay this much for a truck. You also have another nice benefit on the seat. The backrest kind of folds forward and you can get it to stop in different places to provide a little bit more back support if that's how you feel comfortable sitting. You also have another cool seat benefit, and that would be in the headrest where you have a speaker. This truck has a Bang & Olufsen sound system, many speakers everywhere, including the headrest, the front seats, to give you a full listening experience. Kind of nice. And one other thing that's pretty nice in this front seat area, chargers everywhere, all types. And I mean all types. You push back this little lid and you have USB-C, USB-A, and a wireless charger for phones. But you also have under these panels a household charger and a cigarette lighter style charger. So all types of chargers in the front seats of this vehicle so you can charge whatever you want, whenever you want, which is pretty good. But anyway, next up, you move on to the backseat of the F-150 Lightning. And the first thing you notice back here, no different from our regular crew cab F-150, it is huge, a lot of space back there. People are using these full-size trucks as family vehicles, and this one really can be used that way. Big adult human people can sit in the back with no problems. But anyway, another nice benefit of the back of this truck, just like the front, there are a lot of chargers back here. You have a cigarette lighter style charge port, you can see, and USB-C and USB-A, and a household style charge port in back. So even rear passengers have access to charge whatever they might want to, which is pretty nice for a truck that might be shuttling people around to a job site. And next up, another benefit of the backseat in this truck, once again, it is pretty nice back here. Like I said, the platinum model, the top luxury trim, and it shows it in back. Not quite as nice as up front, you don't have speakers in the headrests or those fold-out seat backrests, but you do have two-tone seats, which look good. You have some Alcantara inlays on the door panels, which look nice, and this little wood trim, it's very nice and luxurious in the back, which again, you'd expect given the price point. You also have heated rear seats back here, these little buttons, turn them on, that's also a nice luxurious touch back here. And you have a cool panoramic sunroof, which obviously is over the front too, but it's especially visible in back, gives the whole interior kind of a nice airy feel, and not all trucks offer that, but this one does. One other nice benefit of the back seats, you can lift up the seat bottom and reveal sort of an under seat storage area, which is nice to have. Again, gets things out of the bed inside the truck, so they're not gonna get rained on or stolen or whatever. Not as big of a deal to have that now that you have the frunk, but it's nice to see it's still here, especially considering all the battery stuff below hasn't encroached on that space. And so that's a full tour of the quirks and features of the new Ford F-150 Lightning. Now it's time finally to get behind the wheel, get it out on the road and see how it drives. All right, finally driving the F-150 Lightning. Ford first showed this vehicle a year ago, and there's been so much speculation and excitement and interest, I feel like they've been dangling in front of me for the last year, and now I am finally behind the wheel. Now I am in a unique position, I've driven all of the electric trucks that exist. I drove the Rivian, I drove now this, and I drove the Hummer EV. But I don't really think it's reasonable to compare them. Ultimately Rivian is now starting in the 90 some thousand dollar range, and it's kind of more of a lifestyle truck. It's more of like a fun off-road weekend truck, kind of city person truck. The Hummer EV is amazingly cool, but it's $200,000. Mark up 250, 260 people are paying on the open market. It's incredibly expensive. This vehicle is 40 to 90 grand, that's about the range of a normal pickup truck. Like this is the first electric truck that has really penetrated the actual kind of normal space, if you will. And Ford told me that they truly believe that in their minds, this vehicle will have the same impact on the market as the Model 3 did, in terms of expanding availability of electric vehicles. This will do for trucks what Model 3 did for like EVs becoming popular in the car world, we'll see. So how does it drive? Well, the first thing you should know, this one obviously platinum model, so it has the long range battery and the extra power and is fast. And I mean, it's really fast. I'm in sport mode right now. It really, really hauls. I've been getting the tires loose a little bit, which is crazy because obviously this is a four wheel drive vehicle. That is a pretty cool part of this truck is just how quick it is. But that's kind of the story of all electric vehicles. And the insanity of floor it and be pushed back in your seat, is starting to wear off when you're driving EVs. And if you've been in any of them, they're all like this, Ticons and Teslas and Rivians, and they're all fast. You know, that's no longer something to write home about. If you're not fast, that's when it's like, oh, what's going on with these people? This is a lot of power in an F-150. And it feels a little ponderous going around corners. If you push it really hard and you're kind of flooring it and you're going around a corner, I mean, at the end of the day, yeah, it's a fast electric vehicle like a Tesla, whatever, but you're still driving an F-150 and it can feel a little bit like the, I don't want to say it feels unsettled or any, it doesn't really, but you got to stay on top of it because you can get going really quickly and then you're in a high profile, tall vehicle and it doesn't handle like it accelerates. Let's put it that way. It accelerates like a sports car, doesn't handle like one. Now, from a driving perspective, I mean, I don't really see any drawbacks compared to F-150. There's actually some interesting benefits too. It feels exceptionally comfortable, like exceptionally comfortable. It's the Hummer EV is the most comfortable truck I've ever driven. This is not that far behind. I'm not exactly sure what it is that makes these electric trucks more comfortable. The Rivian didn't quite feel like that as much, but this truck really does have a level of comfort that I think goes beyond the regular F-150, a regular Silverado. Those things are still pretty harsh riding. This doesn't feel like that. And I don't, again, I don't know what it is. I wonder if it's all the batteries down low, all the weight down low helps smooth it out, but the ride is smooth. The seating is nice. It's a platinum truck. It's a high-end leather interior. Everything's good. But the ride, the feel of this truck going over bumps, it just doesn't have that old school body-on-frame vehicle feel where it kind of slides around and it's always rough. And it's nicer than that. It feels more car-like. Now, one interesting thing about driving this truck, it's gotten a lot more attention than I expected. Driving around, I was filming this video in a park for like four hours. Everybody keeps walking up to me. Wow, is that the electric truck? Whoa, there's no engine under the hood. Every, every, everybody. I'm driving this truck in Texas, in San Antonio, where there's a lot of trucks. And so truck people tend to pay notice, pay attention to other trucks, and that's what's going on here. Really, from a driving perspective, I really only have generally positive things to say about this truck, which actually, it doesn't surprise me, but it's interesting. I think this drives better than most pickup trucks. It obviously accelerates faster than most pickup trucks. Very nice in here. You have the benefit of this tremendously great technology and this fantastic screen that they've put in this truck. It's really good, really easy to use. Kind of dominates the interior, but in a good way. Everything about this is great. You're insulated, you're up high. You have all the great truck benefits and none of the drawbacks. You got a trunk so you can keep your stuff out of getting wet or getting stolen. You have, you know, you don't have to put up with horrible truck fuel economy. There's a lot of good things about this truck without a lot of the bad stuff that you can sometimes have with trucks. And I don't know, I generally am pretty impressed with this and I think there's a lot, a lot, a lot that's good here. And I'm not surprised Ford has a zillion reservations. I don't know how many of those people are gonna convert, but I think a lot of people will start to realize the benefit of electric trucks when they start to see what this one can do. I just think Ford's big problem with this truck has nothing to do with the truck itself. It's gonna be getting these in the hands of people, actually building these and selling these. That's gonna be the hard part and I'm curious to see how they do. But for now, from a driving perspective, if you can get your hands on one, you got yourself a great truck. And so that's the new Ford F-150 Lightning. This isn't as clever as the Rivian R1T or as cool as the Hummer EV pickup, but it's more affordable and more accessible than both of those. And it actually exists unlike the Tesla Cybertruck. This is a very special entrant to the electric vehicle world and I'm thrilled that I finally had the chance to give it a full review. And now it's time to give the F-150 Lightning a Doug's score. And the Doug's score is here, 65 out of 100, which ties the Lightning with the Raptor. Though the Raptor gets a higher weekend score and the Lightning gets a higher daily score. That makes sense. The Raptor is more fun, the Lightning is more for utility and both do an excellent job with their mission. The Lightning's Doug's score does fall well short of the Hummer EV and the Rivian, but those vehicles have a different purpose and a different price point. And the Lightning's Doug's score gives it a big win over traditional legacy pickup trucks, as you can see.