If you love tire-shredding, torque-laden pickup trucks that accelerate like a bat out of hell, you’re probably familiar with the F-150 Lightning. Well, good news: it seems Ford is reviving the F-150 Lightning name…though perhaps, not how most of us anticipated.
As Car and Driver originally reported and Ford soon confirmed, the F-150 Lightning name is returning to the Ford lineup — not as a sporty, street-focused edition of the F-150 pickup, but rather as the name for Ford’s upcoming electric F-150.
While the official reveal is planned for 9:30pm EDT on May 19 (you can watch it here), Ford offered the world a sneak peek of the new electric F-150 on Tuesday, when it just so happened to be positioned behind President Joe Biden in a way that it would be visible over his shoulder to the myriad cameras there.
Lightning, of course, is made of electricity, so the name certainly makes sense in an obvious way. But the Lightning name is a great fit for the new EV even beyond that.
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What sort of power will the F-150 Lightning make?
We won’t know specific details until tonight, but Ford has said it’ll be more powerful than any F-150 in the present lineup — which means more than 450 horsepower. The electric F-150 should also be quicker than other F-Series models, which should mean a sub-5.0-second 0-60 mph acceleration time. The primary driving difference between the electric F-150 and the standard model, besides emissions, should be how ludicrously quick the electric vehicle feels on the street.
That said, as of now, the best testimony we have comes from President Biden, a noted car guy in addition to a watch enthusiast, who took a camouflaged prototype of the F-150 Lightning out for a spin on Tuesday. The president — who, in 2014, described his desire to drive the C7-generation Corvette Z06 as a reason not to run for president, saying, “You tach that sucker up to six grand and this comes out of the hole like a bullet, man” — told the media of Ford’s electric pickup, “This sucker’s quick.”
