Ford gigantic 'Blue Oval City' to build next-gen electric F-Series trucks

[CB750F]

The points being made in several of these posts is why a PHEV makes a lot of sense during this transition period. You can drive with electricity for most of your city commuting but you also have the ICE for longer trips. It is also a dual fuel vehicle that gives you flexibility if/when one of those fuels becomes unavailable. I can't wait to see the PHEV Ranger which should also be able to power my house during an electrical power outage.

I'm all for this. Lets see the specs of the PHEV.
For EVs , if the price is right, it will take off on it's own.
If there are too many issues, it will go the way of the Edsel.
The consumer will make it work, or not.

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[BladeRanger]

Glad to see Ford investing here in the US! ??

https://www.autoblog.com/2021/09/27/ford-blue-oval-city-battery-park-investment/

$11.4 billion is being invested in Tennessee and Kentucky, creating 11,000 jobs

Yeah definitely nice to see Ford investing in the USA, just wondering when all this electric vehicles becomes the norm, which country are we getting the raw materials for the batteries, cause they will have to dig a hole all the way through the other side. I hope those cities (Kentucky and Tennessee) have good nuclear power plant to be able to provide electricity to the battery power plant, I think Ford mentioned that on the report it requires lots of electricity to make batteries.

 

[DeathRanger]

Ford and SKI will be using a Nickel 9 battery for the new F150 Lightning which is 90% nickel and they continue to work on R&D for batteries with no precious metals.

Ford has also signed agreement with Redwood materials to recycle the batteries when end of life recovering 95% of elements like nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper.

 

[wanted33]

Yes I posted about this yesterday. It’s a very exciting time for our area to have something like this coming. Plus we’re getting a Great Wolf Lodge here in Jackson so life will be compete!! Lol.

Adam, we just drove through Jackson. We were both surprised at the growth in that area. I hope Ford can make this work as we certainly need to keep jobs in America. Now, if only we could get Americans to get off their asses, and actually take the jobs that are out there now.

 

[wanted33]

I know there's 2 large chip factories opening up here in AZ within the next couple years so that should help. As far as charging stations there better be a whole lot of them thought the country for this to work out. Plus the whole electrical grid needs a major overhaul to support all these new EV vehicles but that's another discussion in its own. lol

That's a huge problem in my mind brother. I live in the Historic District of my town. Our power will go out, as my Dad used to say, if a rat pees on cotton. The old grid won't even be able to handle every other household owning an EV. I'm sure it will get there someday, but it seems once again we are getting the cart before the horse.

 

[2020FRL]

I'm not at all against electric vehicles. Quiet, Clean, Excellent acceleration and torque, all positives. All I'm saying is I can't afford to have two vehicles. One I charge at home and one I drive on trips.

I thought the hybrids where a great idea, especially for my area of the world. From my town west or north, it's 100 miles to the next fuel, no charging stations. I never owned one, because frankly, paying $10-15K extra for the same vehicle just wasn't in the cards.

As city computer cars I think the electrics are great. Kind of hard for me to see something like the Lightning in a Big City environment. Just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I'm curious as to how much it costs for a charge when you plug it in every night. I know that would depend on daily driving costs.

I vaguely remember an article about the "Volt" that it cost around $8-10 a day to charge for a 20 mile commute. At $9 average, that's $270 a month to drive 600 miles? Even at $4 a gallon at the time that's like $120 a month. I can't speak to the accuracy of the article, and that was years ago.

I'd be curious if someone with an electric car would do some rough calculations on annual cost. Include things like cost to purchase, recharge costs, battery replacements every 2 years (I read that somewhere), loss when you trade at 18 months - 24 months (assuming you don't want to replace batteries), thinking the resale will be horrible if the first thing a dealer or new owner will need to do is spend $5-10K for new batteries. Maintenance (I have no idea what maintenance is needed on an electric vehicle. I can cypher the cost of any fossil fueled dinosaur (pun intended), so it would be interesting to compare.

I'm really excited about these new fangled things ... LOL. Not at all averse to the tech, I just don't think it's a good fit for a rural area or a guy like me that has traveled the world and would now like to see the areas of this country I haven't yet. On the other hand, I think it's a great fit for city life. Less noise, less pollution, etc.

I also agree with another poster, increase charging speeds would make it a lot more palatable for me. I watched the video that was posted on here about the guy that went from Fort Collins to Long Beach in an electric car. He made it to Grand Junction and it was dark. I've made that trip several times to purchase motorcycles. I generally leave my house at 6am and am back home having purchased a new to me bike and brought it home by 4pm. Kind of nuts that he had all that trouble with the charging. I'll quote my dad, sorta, "We can put a man on the moon and we can't make a charging station that works without "errors".

I have long suspected the problem with emerging tech is we don't make it universal. I always use this example.

Apple and the Mac.

So my theory is the reason Macs work so well is the operating system is written for a machine made by Apple. Because of that, they only have to make drivers for a handful of hard drives, monitors, etc. The software writers just write programs for a handful of drivers.

PC products.

Windows writes their operating system, sells it to manufacturers and then they write their drivers for their devices. Then the software guys write their programs trying to accommodate all the drivers.

I'm probably way off the mark here, but, it's my theory. I have been on Mac's for 26 years, you know how many "Blue Screens of Death" or similar error's I've had ..... 0. I still have an old laptop that's over 20 years old that will run the same programs this Mac does. It's really slow, but, they run ... Heck, I still have a Newton ... LOL.

I know how the government loves to get involved in everything. I think they should get involved in standardizing the charging stations and charging systems on the cars or this may never work well. Every manufacturer is gonna have a "better idea" and it will never work for every car.

I owned a mobile pool repair service, and customers would tell me stuff like, "Why do you need to order the impeller for my pump, you should stock that." I would tell them that there is literally thousands of impellers out there. They would get made and tell me "They are all the same." Obviously they are not, much like I'm sure no two charging systems on cars or stations are the same.

I have a couple other questions about going electric. What do we do with the millions of people working in the fossil fuel industry? Yea I know, "Teach them to code." How do we deliver products like electric vehicles across the country, you know without diesel driven 18 wheelers? When do we start building electric airliners? Electric ships?

I use the same argument when talking about a fixed income tax. Imagine how fair a solid 18% income tax would be. We'd generate more income for the government, we wouldn't have rich folks not paying their share and individuals would never have to file income taxes. Employers would just withhold 18%. Of course the downside, millions of IRS workers, accountants and other such ilk would be "needing to learn to code" ... LOL.

Okay ... so off the soap box ... I'm kind of hoping I'll get some "feed back" on my views, and that I won't be flamed for them ... LOL ... I'm probably in left field, a position I'm in a lot.

 

[RedlandRanger]

I'm not at all against electric vehicles. Quiet, Clean, Excellent acceleration and torque, all positives. All I'm saying is I can't afford to have two vehicles. One I charge at home and one I drive on trips.

I thought the hybrids where a great idea, especially for my area of the world. From my town west or north, it's 100 miles to the next fuel, no charging stations. I never owned one, because frankly, paying $10-15K extra for the same vehicle just wasn't in the cards.

As city computer cars I think the electrics are great. Kind of hard for me to see something like the Lightning in a Big City environment. Just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I'm curious as to how much it costs for a charge when you plug it in every night. I know that would depend on daily driving costs.

I vaguely remember an article about the "Volt" that it cost around $8-10 a day to charge for a 20 mile commute. At $9 average, that's $270 a month to drive 600 miles? Even at $4 a gallon at the time that's like $120 a month. I can't speak to the accuracy of the article, and that was years ago.

I'd be curious if someone with an electric car would do some rough calculations on annual cost. Include things like cost to purchase, recharge costs, battery replacements every 2 years (I read that somewhere), loss when you trade at 18 months - 24 months (assuming you don't want to replace batteries), thinking the resale will be horrible if the first thing a dealer or new owner will need to do is spend $5-10K for new batteries. Maintenance (I have no idea what maintenance is needed on an electric vehicle. I can cypher the cost of any fossil fueled dinosaur (pun intended), so it would be interesting to compare.

I'm really excited about these new fangled things ... LOL. Not at all averse to the tech, I just don't think it's a good fit for a rural area or a guy like me that has traveled the world and would now like to see the areas of this country I haven't yet. On the other hand, I think it's a great fit for city life. Less noise, less pollution, etc.

I also agree with another poster, increase charging speeds would make it a lot more palatable for me. I watched the video that was posted on here about the guy that went from Fort Collins to Long Beach in an electric car. He made it to Grand Junction and it was dark. I've made that trip several times to purchase motorcycles. I generally leave my house at 6am and am back home having purchased a new to me bike and brought it home by 4pm. Kind of nuts that he had all that trouble with the charging. I'll quote my dad, sorta, "We can put a man on the moon and we can't make a charging station that works without "errors".

I have long suspected the problem with emerging tech is we don't make it universal. I always use this example.

Apple and the Mac.

So my theory is the reason Macs work so well is the operating system is written for a machine made by Apple. Because of that, they only have to make drivers for a handful of hard drives, monitors, etc. The software writers just write programs for a handful of drivers.

PC products.

Windows writes their operating system, sells it to manufacturers and then they write their drivers for their devices. Then the software guys write their programs trying to accommodate all the drivers.

I'm probably way off the mark here, but, it's my theory. I have been on Mac's for 26 years, you know how many "Blue Screens of Death" or similar error's I've had ..... 0. I still have an old laptop that's over 20 years old that will run the same programs this Mac does. It's really slow, but, they run ... Heck, I still have a Newton ... LOL.

I know how the government loves to get involved in everything. I think they should get involved in standardizing the charging stations and charging systems on the cars or this may never work well. Every manufacturer is gonna have a "better idea" and it will never work for every car.

I owned a mobile pool repair service, and customers would tell me stuff like, "Why do you need to order the impeller for my pump, you should stock that." I would tell them that there is literally thousands of impellers out there. They would get made and tell me "They are all the same." Obviously they are not, much like I'm sure no two charging systems on cars or stations are the same.

I have a couple other questions about going electric. What do we do with the millions of people working in the fossil fuel industry? Yea I know, "Teach them to code." How do we deliver products like electric vehicles across the country, you know without diesel driven 18 wheelers? When do we start building electric airliners? Electric ships?

I use the same argument when talking about a fixed income tax. Imagine how fair a solid 18% income tax would be. We'd generate more income for the government, we wouldn't have rich folks not paying their share and individuals would never have to file income taxes. Employers would just withhold 18%. Of course the downside, millions of IRS workers, accountants and other such ilk would be "needing to learn to code" ... LOL.

Okay ... so off the soap box ... I'm kind of hoping I'll get some "feed back" on my views, and that I won't be flamed for them ... LOL ... I'm probably in left field, a position I'm in a lot.

I think where your PC vs Mac analogy fails is the market share. PCs (Windows) have taken the bulk of the market for 2 reasons (I think):

1. Open to anyone to create hardware
2. Open to anyone to create software, with really good backwards compatibility - I know you said you have apps that are 20 years old that still work, but in the Mac world, I think that is not the norm. Apple is notorious for breaking backwards compatibility with their updates - in the past 15 years, they've gone thru three major hardware changes (Power PC, Intel, and now the new Apple M1 chips) - each time breaking some backwards compatibility.

I totally agree with your statement about standardization - and I think that is where Windows shines - they create the "bucket" (windows) where things go and have standardized how things are done, but it is open to anyone to create things within that bucket. I think that standardization is why windows market share is much larger than Mac. Software has driven it more than anything, and software is easier to create for windows than Mac, so the variety is larger.

The negative about Windows is that there are "standards" but sometimes there are grey areas that cause issues - maybe the standard doesn't define everything and some hardware can cause issues if they slide into those grey areas.

The standardization for electric vehicles needs to be done at the charging stations - just like gas pumps have standardized nozzles, etc, the charging stations need to have standardized plugs along with standardized interfaces for the flow of electricity. I think the challenge there is that it isn't just a physical thing -there will need to be software handshakes in order to know what the vehicle will support as far as rate of charging, etc.

I think progress has been made, but there needs to be a lot more done in that area.

 

[DeathRanger]

I'm not at all against electric vehicles. Quiet, Clean, Excellent acceleration and torque, all positives. All I'm saying is I can't afford to have two vehicles. One I charge at home and one I drive on trips.

I thought the hybrids where a great idea, especially for my area of the world. From my town west or north, it's 100 miles to the next fuel, no charging stations. I never owned one, because frankly, paying $10-15K extra for the same vehicle just wasn't in the cards.

As city computer cars I think the electrics are great. Kind of hard for me to see something like the Lightning in a Big City environment. Just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I'm curious as to how much it costs for a charge when you plug it in every night. I know that would depend on daily driving costs.

I vaguely remember an article about the "Volt" that it cost around $8-10 a day to charge for a 20 mile commute. At $9 average, that's $270 a month to drive 600 miles? Even at $4 a gallon at the time that's like $120 a month. I can't speak to the accuracy of the article, and that was years ago.

I'd be curious if someone with an electric car would do some rough calculations on annual cost. Include things like cost to purchase, recharge costs, battery replacements every 2 years (I read that somewhere), loss when you trade at 18 months - 24 months (assuming you don't want to replace batteries), thinking the resale will be horrible if the first thing a dealer or new owner will need to do is spend $5-10K for new batteries. Maintenance (I have no idea what maintenance is needed on an electric vehicle. I can cypher the cost of any fossil fueled dinosaur (pun intended), so it would be interesting to compare.

I'm really excited about these new fangled things ... LOL. Not at all averse to the tech, I just don't think it's a good fit for a rural area or a guy like me that has traveled the world and would now like to see the areas of this country I haven't yet. On the other hand, I think it's a great fit for city life. Less noise, less pollution, etc.

I also agree with another poster, increase charging speeds would make it a lot more palatable for me. I watched the video that was posted on here about the guy that went from Fort Collins to Long Beach in an electric car. He made it to Grand Junction and it was dark. I've made that trip several times to purchase motorcycles. I generally leave my house at 6am and am back home having purchased a new to me bike and brought it home by 4pm. Kind of nuts that he had all that trouble with the charging. I'll quote my dad, sorta, "We can put a man on the moon and we can't make a charging station that works without "errors".

I have long suspected the problem with emerging tech is we don't make it universal. I always use this example.

Apple and the Mac.

So my theory is the reason Macs work so well is the operating system is written for a machine made by Apple. Because of that, they only have to make drivers for a handful of hard drives, monitors, etc. The software writers just write programs for a handful of drivers.

PC products.

Windows writes their operating system, sells it to manufacturers and then they write their drivers for their devices. Then the software guys write their programs trying to accommodate all the drivers.

I'm probably way off the mark here, but, it's my theory. I have been on Mac's for 26 years, you know how many "Blue Screens of Death" or similar error's I've had ..... 0. I still have an old laptop that's over 20 years old that will run the same programs this Mac does. It's really slow, but, they run ... Heck, I still have a Newton ... LOL.

I know how the government loves to get involved in everything. I think they should get involved in standardizing the charging stations and charging systems on the cars or this may never work well. Every manufacturer is gonna have a "better idea" and it will never work for every car.

I owned a mobile pool repair service, and customers would tell me stuff like, "Why do you need to order the impeller for my pump, you should stock that." I would tell them that there is literally thousands of impellers out there. They would get made and tell me "They are all the same." Obviously they are not, much like I'm sure no two charging systems on cars or stations are the same.

I have a couple other questions about going electric. What do we do with the millions of people working in the fossil fuel industry? Yea I know, "Teach them to code." How do we deliver products like electric vehicles across the country, you know without diesel driven 18 wheelers? When do we start building electric airliners? Electric ships?

I use the same argument when talking about a fixed income tax. Imagine how fair a solid 18% income tax would be. We'd generate more income for the government, we wouldn't have rich folks not paying their share and individuals would never have to file income taxes. Employers would just withhold 18%. Of course the downside, millions of IRS workers, accountants and other such ilk would be "needing to learn to code" ... LOL.

Okay ... so off the soap box ... I'm kind of hoping I'll get some "feed back" on my views, and that I won't be flamed for them ... LOL ... I'm probably in left field, a position I'm in a lot.

Let me offer my experience. I've been waiting for an Electric Ranger forever and wish I could buy one now. I have almost every new electric truck pre-ordered, waiting to see which one will be best.

I have a 2019 Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor Long Range. Cost was 48k brand new or only about $6k more sticker price than my Ranger.
I do not live in the city. I live 45 miles from a public charger. I'm out in the country on a gravel road. I have more cows than neighbors.
The Tesla is 2 years old with 110,000 miles. So far my cost for maintenance has been 1 bottle of washer fluid and tires.

The battery pack is 80 kwh. My electricity cost is $0.11
80kwh X $0.11/kwh = $8.8 to charge full which has a range of 300 miles.

My Ranger for comparison gets about 23 mpg. a full tank is 18 gal, Gas is $3 near me.
18 gal x $3 = $54 for about 415 miles.

The Tesla drives on average 150 miles every single day. It's been driven from KC to PA, CO, Vegas, TX and never once pre planned route or worried about charging. the car will route you to a charging station when needed to ensure you do not run out

Currently both vehicles are worth more than I bought them for but the used vehicle market is crazy right now.

Vehicle charging is not that complicated or fragmented. In the US we basically have 3 charging options.

J1772 is AC, slower and what most people will commonly see at public charger, charge speed is slow
CHAdeMO is going away and was never really used.
CCS Type 1 is old
CCS Type 2 is DC fast charging and the most common fast charger people will experience
Tesla designed their own AC/DC connector to cover slow/fast charge in 1 connector.

 

[2020FRL]

Interesting. So is it a myth about the battery Chage and cost?

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