Another electric car mishap has surfaced online, this time when a YouTuber with more than 1.4 million subscribers attempted to pull a vintage Ford Model A truck from the 1930s with a modern Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup. Even though he had set the bar absurdly low—just a little over 100 miles round trip—the entire project was a stunning “full and total catastrophe.”
In the video seen below, YouTuber Tyler Hoover argues that it is absurdly idiotic “if a vehicle hauling 3,500 pounds can’t even travel 100 miles.” He continues by emphasizing the main argument against EVs. “This truck can’t do normal truck things. You would be stopping every hour to recharge, which would take about 45 minutes a pop, and that is absolutely not practical.”
He continues, saying, “My plan was to make two trips up today,” he said. “About 32 miles each way, so that’s about 64 times two: 128 miles round trip.”
“I had this thing charged to just over 200 miles when I started my day, so ample margin for error when it comes to range and towing and also considering the fact that the trailer was going up empty two times,” Hoover later added.
Unsurprisingly, the journey started out worse than anticipated. In preparation, Hoover had fully charged the car, only to see the battery life deplete more quickly than a gas leak. The EV had just traveled less than a mile when he began “pulling out my neighborhood,” but it had already lost three miles of range. The vehicle then lost an estimated 68 miles of range after traveling 32 miles to get there.
From then, it only got worse as a warning for low battery was shortly triggered. “Are you kidding me?” You can hear Hoover responding. “That’s almost 90 miles of range in 30 miles. Are you serious? That’s nuts. What a joke.”
Hoover is open about how he feels about the situation of electric vehicles right now. “So, yeah, that was abysmally bad, and if the future is electric, there has to be some kind of solution for this,” Hoover stated. “I have no idea why EVs tow so bad. My guess would be it doesn’t have a normal transmission where there’s gears and a car’s in a lower rev range. If a truck towing 3,500 pounds can’t even go 100 miles — that is ridiculously stupid,” he continued. “This truck can’t do normal truck things. You would be stopping every hour to recharge, which would take about 45 minutes a pop, and that is absolutely not practical.”
He says at the closing of his video that the Ford F-150 Lightning may make sense if consumers merely wanted a large truck to operate like a regular car. However, it is not a “good idea” if people purchased an electric truck in the hopes that it would function similarly to a real truck with the ability to tow.
Featured Image screenshot from YouTube.
"*" indicates required fields
