Bloomberg – If you spend your afternoon driving a Ford (F) F-150 Lightning Through the vineyards and back roads of California’s wine country, the power of this truck becomes apparent.
However, what makes the electric version of America’s best-selling car a game-changer is not its acceleration (0-100 km/h in 4.3 seconds) or its range (more than 500 km on a single charge). Rather, it’s technology that takes advantage of the Lightning battery pack to give it the ability to power the home or the power grid itself during increasingly frequent weather-related blackouts..
Lightning’s long-range lithium-ion pack has a capacity nearly 10 times that of Tesla (TSLAPowerwall, a $11,000 home spare battery that can’t be taken to the grocery store. Jason Glickman, executive vice president of engineering, planning and strategy at energy company PG&E Corp.. (GWP) “It can support the network on a hot summer day, when peak demand usually appears.”
Glickman, whose utility company is testing how to integrate the truck into your vehicle, adds Network Management.
He speaks from one of three Lightning models parked on a hill overlooking the vineyards of Dutton Ranch in Sebastopol, alongside a senior Ford executive and president of Sonoma County Winegrowers, an association of 1,800 farmers that promotes sustainable agriculture.
Ford hosted an event earlier this month to showcase a pilot program that equips Dutton Ranch and other local farmers with electric trucks and vans as part of a service called Ford Pro, which helps companies manage their fleets..
Lightning is the first electric vehicle sold in the United States with two-way charging to power homes and the grid. On that day, Ford had yet to deliver electric trucks to winegrowers: About 200,000 orders had been returned (a week later, the company delivered the first Lightning to a Michigan customer). But the fact that family farms are embracing a rural electrification initiative in the twenty-first century points to the potential for converting battery-powered trucks into vehicles to decarbonize the economy and build resilience to climate change..
Chief Wine Grower of Sonoma County Karissa Cross At first, he says, “wine growers were skeptical and there wasn’t much enthusiasm to go electric, especially in their trucks.”. Now they say: Can I participate in the beta program? I heard you can have a truck.”
“The real value up front is the gas savings, as California gas prices are over the top,” says Steve Dutton, a fifth-generation farmer and part owner of Dutton Ranch, who feeds himself partly on a solar array. “When we get the trucks out and get them running, we’ll see more and more opportunities where we can use that electrical power for the equipment in the field.”
The truck’s ability to keep the lights of Dutton employees on is especially good in a place like California, where wildfires and heat waves have caused seasonal blackouts in recent years.
Converting the Lightning into a home generator requires an 80-amp Ford charging station and $3,895 home integration system from Sunrun Inc. (BeingThe cost of installing a Sunrun system varies by home and location. The charging station comes with the extended range version of Lightning; It’s a $1,310 option for buyers of the 230-mile Standard Edition truck.
If Lightning is plugged in when the power is off, the house will automatically start drawing electricity from the battery. When power is restored, the system shuts down and the vehicle recharges. Ford claims that Lightning can power an entire average home for about three days.
“It’s a house like mine, with air conditioning, Xbox, and kids going crazy leaving lights everywhere,” says Linda Zhang, chief engineer of the F-150 Lightning. a Bloomberg Green. With more frugal use, Lightning can keep the house running for up to 10 days, he says.
Zhang, who installed the system at home, says half of Lightning’s retail bookings are from people who have never owned a truck..
He declined to say whether future Ford electric cars would have bi-directional capability..
Whether the technology helps speed up electricity depends on how it behaves on a daily basis, according to Depparia Chakraborty, a researcher at the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis.
“If you have to travel during a power outage, there are some limitations,” says Chakraborty, who studies consumer attitudes toward electric vehicles. “If it’s charged with solar energy, you can use battery power to power any machine most likely at night when electricity prices are higher.”
The version of the truck aimed at commercial fleets, called the Lightning Pro, starts at $39,974 before state and federal cuts and tax credits. With these incentives, the price is similar to the base gasoline F-150. From there, Lightning may veer into “Cadillac Cowboy” territory, with increasingly luxury models peaking with the Platinum Edition: $90,874.
Ford brought more than a dozen trucks to Sonoma to test the media, and I spent an hour experimenting with the Lightning Ledger. $77,000 “Ice Blue” through the narrow, winding roads of the Russian River Valley, wrapped in a quiet cabin. The 6,600-pound truck handles like a much smaller vehicle, And I can confirm that Joe Biden wasn’t exaggerating when he said “this guy is fast” after last year’s tour.
This article was translated by Andrea Gonzalez
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