Two truck posts in two days? Sure why not.
When Joe Biden talked to folks at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, yesterday, he introduced himselfby saying, "My name is Joe Biden, and I'm a car guy." He's also the president , allegedly . But he really is a car guy.
And during that visit, he got to test-drive the new Ford F-150 Lightning, which is all electric, which will be officially unveiled tonight, and is set to go on sale next year.
We are also somewhat of a car guy, but we didn't realize what a big fuckin' deal this new electric F-150 was until Rachel Maddow, who is a Biden-grade car person, decided to devote her entire A-block last night to TRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!
Things we [by "we," Evan means Evan; I knew all this, OBVS — Editrix] did not realize that Maddow told us last night, about why it's such a big fuckin' deal that they're officially debuting a fully electric F-150 tonight:
The F-150 and the other F-series trucks are the top-selling vehicle in all of America for 39 straight years running . More than the Camry, more than the Civic, more than all the other trucks.
The F-150 and its relatives bring in more American Dollar Bucks than Coca-Cola or McDonald's or Nike or any of 'em. $42 billion in revenue in just 2019 alone!
Maddow said she's personally on her second F-150, her fourth Ford truck in all. So she was able to explain this as a truck owner. And quite frankly, we ourselves being a southern person who is friends with a lot of truck people, what Maddow said about the possibilities for this fully electric F-150 — to be surely followed by Chevy Silverado and Dodge Ram! — struck us in a "wow" kind of way, to the point that we actually personally bought a few shares of Ford Motor Company this morning because it just seemed like a good idea. (That is not stock advice, we are not a stock adviser, DO WE LOOK LIKE SUZE ORMAN TO YOU?)
Here's part of what she said:
MADDOW: If the Ford F-150 becomes an electric vehicle, if Ford can transitionthat particular vehicle to electric, because as an electric vehicle it's better , goodbye gas cars in America! There isn't a single thing that could be done in this country to move us further and faster toward a no-gas automotive future and everything that means for infrastructure, climate and all the rest of it, there's nothing else that could move us further and faster toward that than this one vehicle, this specific vehicle , not only having an electric option, but actually being better as an electric vehicle than it as a gas one. Being more capable as an electric vehicle than it is as a gas one.
Because pickup truck owners in America — and there are gazillions of them — want their vehicles to be better and more productive, and they want them to look cool .
It's that part at the end. Truck owners are all kinds of people and there are indeed gabillions of 'em. And every single truck person we've ever known — whether they personally gave a shit about "efficient" or "environment" or "Green New Deal" — has really given a damn about whether the trucks work, first of all, and whether they're really cool .
If this truck ends up being the most reliable, Ford Toughest damn thing out there, and if its bells and whistles are the coolest fucking thing in the entire world, they won't be able to build them fast enough. And that will indeed change the entire country's relationship with that quaint old thing called "gas."
Ford is making its official announcement in a live event tonight, but from what we can tell so far, it does sound like this thing is going to be pretty damn cool. Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, told shareholders last week that this thing will be equipped "to power your home during an outage, it's even quicker than the original F-150 Lightning performance truck; and it will constantly improve through over-the-air updates." Joe Biden did say fucker's really fast. Apparently it does zero to 60 in 4.4 seconds, or at least that's what Biden blurted out yesterday like he made up the number out of thin air.
It's also going to have insaaaaaane towing capabilities, which is a thing lots of truck people kinda care about. Maddow played a video last night of a video of an early prototype from 2019 pulling a one million pound series of freight cars . Then they filled the freight cars with 42 F-150s, which brought the weight up to 1.25 million pounds, and the prototype pulled that too.
For comparison, a 2021 F-150 with a stinky old gas engine maxes out at 11,300 pounds of towing capacity.
If you watch that video, you see a very cool woman driving the F-150 prototype, and she is Linda Zhang, the head engineer who created this new electrified pick-em-up truck that's being unveiled tonight. That's right, BIG BADASS ELECTRO-TRUCK was created by a woman who also happens to be an immigrant from China who came here when she was in the third grade.
Maddow interviewed Zhang last night, and it was really fun watching them have Truck Talk. Zhang said her cool-ass truck will be able to "power [...] your home as a backup generator [and] light up an entire campsite or work site." Video of the interview doesn't appear to be online, but the transcript is here.
Zhang also reportedly had a lot of fun with President Biden yesterday. Apparently the Ford folks had literally no idea the president was really going to drive the truck.
"Linda did a great job of taking the president through the engineering of the vehicle," [Ford CEO Jim] Farley said. "We first had just the frame and the batteries and electric motors. We showed him that and he had lots of questions. I didn't know this but he had just been down to Atlanta to the SKI plant that actually makes the batteries for the truck he was standing next to. He was like, 'I was just at that plant making these batteries.'"
"Linda took him through the truck," Farley said. "The Secret Service said, 'We prefer him to just stay on the outside.' He was like, 'I want to get inside the truck.' He was in there for, like, 10 minutes. I have no idea what he and Linda were talking about but it must have been pretty interesting. He would not leave that truck."
HE WANTED IN THE TRUCK.
So anyway yeah, this truck could be a really big fuckin' deal, both for truck people, and for liberal commie rags that are like "environment environment environment global warming Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is sooooooooo cool."
If you would like to watch "truck" tonight at 9: 30 p.m. Eastern, here is a video for you to watch "truck."
And until then, OPEN THREAD!
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Biden wasn't driving that truck. That sucker had two steering wheels (I saw a picture of it). it was a stunt.
Can you get a 4' by 8' sheet of plywood in your sedan? No didn't think so. This is why I have a truck. It also fits in my standard issue garage. So please try not to generalize too much. Most truck drivers that I know are in construction and they need that truck bed daily to pick up supplies. Jesus why are people do disparaging of others?