Ford swamped by orders for all-electric ute, the F-150 Lightning

Ford is raking in pre-orders for its first-ever pure electric ute, the F-150 Lightning, that was launched on Wednesday (US time), countering both Tesla’s Cybertruck and busting notions that electric vehicles will deprive tradespeople of suitable transport.

Within 48 hours of its launch, Ford CEO Jim Farley said on Twitter that almost 50,000 $US100 ($A130) reservations had been received for the F-150 Lightning.

Ford is offering the F-150 in four variants in total, with deliveries due to start in early 2021. The mid-range version starts at $US52,974 ($A68,615 converted) for a fully-equipped mid-range XLT variant and will offer around 370km driving range, while the “extended range” Lariat variant offers up to 480km driving range. A fourth Platinum variant tops the range starting at up to US90,474 ($A117,187 converted).

Deliveries for these three variants start as soon as early 2022, and a fourth commercial, stripped down variant starting at below $US40,000 ($A51,810 converted) will be available from 2024.

All four variants offer varying levels of features that transform the ute (pickup) from the standard utility vehicle to a powerful “battery on wheels” workhorse, replete with numerous outlets to power devices (known as “vehicle-to-load which is also coming to Australia in the Hyundai Ioniq 5, and Kia EV6) and bidirectional “vehicle-to-home” charging (which is also available with the new Nissan Leaf).

Farley’s announcement of the 44,500 reservation numbers on Friday was met with a “Congrats” from Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk, but it can’t be ignored that the F-150 Lightning has not attracted quite as many reservations in its initial days as Tesla’s Cybertruck.

After the Cybertruck was unveiled in late 2019, it garnered around triple that number within the same amount of time.

Two days later, a solid 250,000 reservations had been received. It is believed that around 650,000 reservations had been taken for the Tesla Cybertruck as of July 2020.

All well and good but they are completely different beasts. While the Cybertruck – which drew varying responses after its November 2019 unveiling – break the mould of the traditional utility truck with its angular exoskeleton design, the F-150 Lightning no doubt will appeal to those after something more conventional.

So how do the two weigh up?

CarForce was good enough to make a comparison chart which suggests that as far as driving range and price go, the Cybertruck might be the better bet.