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You don’t must be a very astute observer to note that we reside in a time of nice change. Take the electrical Ford F-150 Lightning pickup. Which I did, a couple of weeks again, driving a ruby pink instance of this monumental (in measurement and, one assumes, significance) change agent from New York Metropolis to Boston, a burgh by which I as soon as handed three surprisingly cheerful years attending legislation faculty. Cheerful, in giant measure, as a result of I managed to squeeze in a median of 25 baseball video games every of these years, visiting the pleasant confines of Fenway Park — a venerable outdated hang-out filled with educated if deeply partisan and generally boisterously impolite followers.
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Quick ahead a few years and the Sox had been again house for a heated three-game sequence towards their everlasting arch nemeses, the New York Yankees, a matchup that highlighted much more change. What higher vacation spot for me to go to with my youngest son Milo and my outdated school pal Richard Hart? Within the Lightning, to see the way it works as a household road-tripper.
As each red-blooded American now is aware of, the Lightning could appear to be different F-150s, but it surely has two transverse-mounted electrical motors, one for every axle, doing the work of the V6 or V8 fuel engine in typical fashions. Consumers can select considered one of two battery packs: the usual providing with 230 miles of promised vary, or an extended-range various, an eye-watering $10,000 choice stated to be good for 320 miles. That feels like an terrible lot of cash, as a result of it’s. However within the context of the $94,004 sticker worth on the automobile I examined — a top-of-the-line XLT SuperCrew Platinum Lightning that included Fast Purple paint, spray-in bedliner and Max Recline entrance seats, however didn’t embrace a dealership “market adjustment” on that worth — possibly it’s a bit extra palatable. (For these with extra Spartan tastes, a shorter-range Professional mannequin begins at beneath $42,000. And in case you’re keen to forego the Platinum’s further gizmos and niceties, an extended-range XLT will be yours at a tick beneath a $75,000.)
Like most trendy pickups, the Lightning — as of right now, solely obtainable with 4 doorways, a 5-foot-5-inch mattress and a 145-inch wheelbase — is gigantic. Its ICE F-150 brethren’s huge, bluff, macho hood continues to be hanging round, surviving the electrification course of. A spacey LED accent mild — de rigeur for contemporary EVs, evidently — outlines the storage door-sized, totally beauty grille, serving as a delicate tip-off for what lurks inside. The hood that in any other case hides a fuel engine right here shields from view a entrance storage compartment the advertising and marketing professionals prefer to name a “frunk.” Although not fairly as giant as you would possibly suppose, it supplies helpful space for storing for conserving your baggage away from prying eyes. The capacious cabin, giant sufficient for 5 of the biggest folks you’ve ever met, is living-room snug and decked out with all of the cupholders and USB ports an individual might need. Not your grandfather’s truck, not even your father’s truck, it’s completely acceptable for traversing the Interstates at extra-legal pace in quiet consolation, with air-conditioning nicely as much as the duty regardless of temperatures throughout our journey hovering within the excessive 90s.
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Pull away from the curb and your initial impressions congregate around the smooth and striking silence that comes standard in EVs, with effortless power and locomotive-like torque, not surprising with this extended-range machine’s total of 580 hp and 775 lb-ft of torque. Acceleration is vivid when you stomp on it: Zero to 60 takes around 4 seconds, making it the fastest pickup I’ve ever driven – with power always there, and then some, when you need it. Regenerative braking helps slow the 6,855-pound giant without much need for the friction brakes, though these seem up to the task when called on. There are moments when the Lightning doesn’t seem so big and heavy.
But then, too, there are moments when it seems extremely big and heavy. Navigating tighter bends on the highway at speed, for instance. Body roll is held in check, in part, by the batteries — which are mounted between the frame rails underneath the truck’s floor — but still remains pronounced. And because it’s such a heavy mother, the feeling of extreme weight transfer comes along for the ride. Hit a bump mid-corner and the optional 22-inch wheels, which do nothing for ride quality, help underscore your awareness that you’re guiding close to 7,000 pounds of metal and electrochemistry around. This much weight comes with great responsibility. Make no mistake, should cruel fate intervene, you won’t merely tap lighter vehicles or other things you’re not supposed to hit. If you don’t flatten them first, you’ll drop-kick them into the next county.
The Lightning’s sheer mass makes itself known in other equally frustrating ways. Making your way through tight city streets can be a nerve-wracking exercise. Navigating strange parking garages and charging stations, you feel like a novice tugboat captain. Speaking of charging, which under ideal circumstances is easy and quick enough — Electrify America, for one, has been improving steadily — the process uncorked a whole new set of issues for this veteran EV user. For instance, if I was forced to back into a charging spot, the plug didn’t always reach the almost-20-foot-long Lightning’s single charging port, located on the front passenger fender. For owners of non-Tesla EVs, charging is already the most significant hassle of EV life. Confronted with charging challenges like these, I couldn’t help but look longingly at the ID4s, i3s, Bolts, Polestars and XC40s parked alongside me at charging stations, reasonably-sized machines that presented no such headaches.
Worse still, at six feet, seven inches high, the Lightning couldn’t fit in many Boston parking garages where EV chargers were located under six-foot-five ceilings. When people talk about infrastructure investments to accommodate the nation’s growing EV fleet, they better throw in another trillion or so for raising the ceilings of indoor parking structures. Report from the field: We need 7-foot clearance in parking garages now. In fact, with the way things are headed, maybe we should just get out in front of this thing and raise them to 10 feet.
Three night games at Fenway made the hometown fans happy as the Sox beat the first-place but suddenly sagging Yankees two out of three. As always, in moments of high anxiety or low excitement, Sox fans entertained themselves by chanting thoughtful epithets like “Yankees suck.” And the many Yankees fans in attendance responded in kind. But unlike years past, when such displays evoked feelings of violence, they now scanned as performative art, a give and take, call-and-response kind of thing. Generally friendly overtones suggested a cooling of tensions and the faintest hint of mutual respect. Perhaps the fact that the Red Sox have finally broken free of the Curse of the Bambino, winning the World Series four times since 2004, has made the difference.
Likewise, not having been at the park in a while, I was surprised as well to see a big “Black Lives Matter” sign officially adorning a left-field mezzanine wall for all to see. Racial tolerance was sorely absent at the Fenway of my memory — I remember the great Smokey Robinson getting booed, and hearing the N-word shouted in this very ballpark when he sang the Star-Spangled Banner at the 1986 World Series. Sox management, and rump elements of their fanbase, were known at the time for racial intolerance. So even if today’s BLM sign feels a bit cynical, it beats the “Whites Only” signs that adorned some of the hotels and dining establishment the Sox organization frequented during the team’s spring training visits to Florida during my lifetime.
So change has come to Fenway and we’re all for it. Same with the great American pickup, which has a ways to go, but has moved squarely towards a better future. Much about the Lightning marks improvement: At 70 MPGe, it uses decidedly less energy than its gas-powered compatriots, and is clearly cheaper to run. Our roughly 500-mile round trip cost about $55 in charging fees, versus what might’ve been closer to $250 in gasoline.
Yes, we look forward to the full electrification of more sensibly-sized pickups that weigh less. We look forward to EV pickups with two-door cabs, and ones that can tow without killing their range so completely. And we look forward to cheaper electric cars and trucks generally. The Lightning represents change, while also appeasing a certain reluctance to change. But as a baseball luminary once sagely remarked, it ain’t over till it’s over.
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