2022 Ford F-150 Lightning redefines the pickup paradigm

Just before the media test drives of the 2022 F-150 Lightning, the battery-electric variant of Ford's market-dominating light-duty pickup truck, the Lightning's specs were updated to reflect modest last-minute enhancements in horsepower and payload capacity. The freshly-extracted extra horsepower and payload are useful, but hardly necessary: the F-150 Lightning would've been plenty spectacular regardless. If the F-150 Lightning is the standard we can expect from “electrifying” what we're already familiar with, nobody will need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the EV future.

Ford planners and engineers took the bull by the horns when it was decided the EV variant of a pickup that's sold some 40 million copies had to fulfill the same product brief - that is, offer essentially the same work-ready capabilities as every F-Series that's come before. Not only does the F-150 Lightning accomplish that, adding either the 98-kWh (standard range), SK Innovation-made lithium-ion battery or the 131-kWh extended-range battery offers all manner of new capabilities linked to having so much electricity onboard.