OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAFord Ford is literally shocking long-time F-150 owners with a stunt involving a prototype all-electric F-150.Okay, maybe not literally in the sense its running the battery-powered trucks voltage through their chests, but the pickup is leaving them very thoroughly taken aback.In a video posted July 23, Linda Zhang, Fords chief engineer for the F-150 program, pilots the prototype as it tows a million-pound train from rest, a feat no other truck has ever done before. Sure, thereve been other stunts involving pulling planes and other heavy things, but not a million-pound train.The audience for the stunt are a bunch of F-150 owners, guys with mostly newer models, but a few older models, too, including a 1990s truck and a late 1970s model.Their electric-vehicle skepticism sloughs away as the truck pulls the train no problem. Overcoming the rolling resistance of steel-on-steel train wheels is impressive, as is the fact its able to yank the train cars 1,000 feet, a distance marked by 42 F-150s parked end-to-end (because, yknow, thats the number of years its been the U.S. best-selling truck). After the stunt is completed, Zhang ups the ante by loading the 42 gasoline-powered trucks into the train and attempting to pull it again, the load now tipping the scales way over 1 million pounds. Hopefully, the stunt changes the minds of some people that doubt the capabilities of electric vehicles, and helps usher in a new era of electric utility. Hybrid F-150s are expected to arrive in 2020, with all-electric models soon
Origin: All-electric Ford F-150 pulls a 1-million-pound train 1,000 feet