As Ford prepares to get the electric version of its top seller out on the streets, it’s working on educating the public about EVs.
Ford has never explicitly stated when its upcoming all-electric F-150 will actually debut, but the tea leaves are coming together to suggest that 2021 is going to be the year America’s best-selling vehicle finally gets its zero-emission powertrain.
The latest indicator comes from Ted Cannis, Ford’s global director for electrification, who said in a recent interview with Automotive News Canada that the electric F-150 will follow the Mach E, a Mustang-inspired electric crossover that is going to be introduced in 2020. The electric truck is supposed to follow “as soon as a year later,” which takes us to the 2021 date. All a Ford spokesperson would tell Car and Driver is that the all-electric F-150 will arrive “in a few years” and that we will have to keep waiting for an announcement about specific timing.
Perhaps the EV version of the biggest-selling vehicle on the market will help consumers get a handle on what, exactly, electric vehicles are all about; Ford says its studies show 42 percent of Americans think electric vehicles need gasoline to run. In other words, there’s some educating still to do, despite the increased numbers of electric vehicles on the market and all the media attention being lavished on them.
Whenever it gets here, the electric F-150 will arrive a full decade after the first mass-market EV, the Nissan Leaf, which debuted in 2010. Ford did play in the small-electric-car waters for a bit with the Focus Electric, but overall the automaker hasn’t exactly dominated the EV landscape. Cannis’s renewed media push this week (he also wrote a post on Medium describing how Ford is going to solve the EV puzzle) implies the company is ready to change that narrative. “Who says electric vehicles can’t drive in snow?” is one of the “EV Myths Busted” videos the automaker released this week.
