Ford F-150

Dearborn has electrified its most iconic utility vehicle. European-market sales beckon

MODEL TESTED: LIGHTNING PLATINUM

Ford is banking on some bold decisions to make much-needed headway on electrification. It's the kind of boldness that resulted in an electrically powered Ford Mustang, the Mach-E of 2019, and that more recently gave rise to the zero-emissions reimagination of the world's biggest-selling pick-up truck - arguably Ford's greatest commercial asset of them all.

The F-Series - the most popular and best-known version of which is the F-150 - has a history going back to the 1940s. More than 40 million have been made to date, almost all for American and Canadian buyers, but none has yet officially been offered for sale either in the UK or mainland Europe, nor has any been the subject of an Autocar road test.

Until now. When it announced its intention to electrify the F-150, Ford made ears prick up the world over. The F-150 Lightning became known nine months before Tesla first showed its Cybertruck in 2019, its story building to the moment, in April 2022, when production started at Ford's Rouge factory in Dearborn, Michigan. And it recently took a surprise turn when Ford of Europe announced that the car will be made available in Norway later this year, which invites us to wonder where else it might end up being sold.

DESIGN AND ENGINEERING 4/5

Less than two years separated the start of production of the combustion-engined version of the current, 14th-generation F-150 (which was itself almost entirely new from the ground up) from the introduction of the F-150 Lightning in April last year. And this isn't simply a regular F-150 with an electric motor where a big V8 was, though it isn't so dissimilar.