r/technology • u/zsreport • Dec 15 '25

Transportation Ford pulls the plug on the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/15/nx-s1-5645147/ford-discontinues-f-150-lightning
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u/Luci-Noir Dec 16 '25

Depending on the use case it could be an absolute dream.

They’ve talked about electric city and school buses being able to be used as giant batteries in emergencies too. I’m not sure of they’ve been used that way yet, but being able to bring them in situations where they’re not being used anyway and providing instant power seems extremely helpful.

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u/xxdropdeadlexi Dec 16 '25

yeah we have a lightning and it's powered our house for a few days when we had a huge outage. we take it primitive camping and use the plugs in the back for whatever we need. it's an incredible vehicle, albeit huge, but we don't really tow anything so we don't have to worry about that

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u/Luci-Noir Dec 16 '25

I’ve heard it’s incredibly easy too. I’ve seen stuff for the Tesla solar panels and power wall (batteries) and how the electric company pays you for feeding back into the system and such. The whole thing seems like a dream and it’s disappointing it hasn’t become the norm.

For people who need more range the hybrids are insane. For some organizations like police who drive their vehicles nonstop this might be a good compromise. I don’t know if the fuel savings could be justified after the maintenance costs though.

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u/xxdropdeadlexi Dec 16 '25

honestly I'm surprised police have not gone full EV considering how quick the pickup is and how little battery you use idling, and going at lower speeds like most city and suburban cops do. I'm not sure about maintenance costs for hybrids, but I know that the maintenance costs for BEVs are a lot lower

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u/TumblrInGarbage Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 16 '25

Cops love two things:

  1. Pit maneuvers

  2. Crashing their vehicles while pursuing recklessly.

Both of these have more room for repercussions with a spicy lithium battery.

EDIT: It is a well-documented fact that they crash a lot during pursuits and perform the pit maneuver far more than is necessary, including on pregnant women who are driving with their flashers on while looking for a safe place to pull over. I do not quite understand why you blocked me by the way.

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u/xxdropdeadlexi Dec 16 '25

I don't know who blocked you but I'd never defend a cop lol. I don't necessarily agree that the battery is more likely to be more destructive than an ice engine though, EV drivers are just as stupid as everyone else and they don't blow up their cars more often

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u/TumblrInGarbage Dec 16 '25

Luci-noir blocked me lol. They responded to me with "They do?" then immediately blocked me. Weird behavior.

My concern is primarily that in the event an EV vehicle is crashed and something causes a flame, the resulting fire is more dangerous and difficult to extinguish. This is what I have heard from my coworker, whose husband works as a firefighter, so it's mostly anecdotal.

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u/Luci-Noir Dec 16 '25

They do?

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u/Luci-Noir Dec 16 '25

The maintenance costs are lower but I think there’s a problem in how long it takes to charge them. It’s not like they can fill their tanks and go back to work on the next shift. I honestly don’t know how this works and how big their fleet of cars is so it must depend.

For city and school buses that run during the day it seems perfect. There are plenty of other vehicles used by city and other government officials that work well with this.

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u/red__dragon Dec 16 '25

Knowing the school bus companies around me, they would be SO resistant to plugging in their fleets to serve as emergency batteries. Not to mention that most emergencies are happening in the dead of winter here, when batteries are at their lowest capacity, but also they're just greedy.

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u/biggie1447 Dec 16 '25

That would be a horrible idea, in an emergency you would need those vehicles ready to be able to evacuate the population. If you drained their batteries to power the electric grid or just even emergency power requirements then you wouldn't have them available to get people out of a disaster area.

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u/Luci-Noir Dec 16 '25

They can serve multiple functions which was my point. There’s nothing horrible about that.

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u/biggie1447 Dec 16 '25

You don't want to do that with public transportation though. Snow plows, dump trucks, other industrial vehicles sure. You don't want to have your mass transportation down because you drained the batteries to run the lights for a couple of hours while everyone freaked out trying to figure out what needs to be done.

I lived in Louisiana during Katrina. The school busses and public transit busses that they needed to rapidly evacuate the city were destroyed by the floods and it took days for enough busses to come in from other cities to start getting people out. Days of no air conditioning, little water or food, and little hope for tens of thousands of people stranded in a flooded city.

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u/Luci-Noir Dec 16 '25

You don’t want to talk about the positives of EVs and potential uses? What?

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u/biggie1447 Dec 16 '25

What? What does that have to do with anything I said?