DOSSIER: 2022 FORD F-150 LIGHTNING

FORD'S ELECTRIC PICKUP SHOWS ONE POSSIBLE FUTURE.

- JOHN PEARLEY HUFFMAN

THIS IS ABOUT SOMETHING very American In the United States (and Canada and Mexico), pickup trucks aren't mere tools, but aspirations. The boss drives a pickup here, and the boss's boss does too. Pickups in North America are status symbols, family heirlooms, and beloved companions. And the all-electric F-150 Lightning adds environmental virtue beyond that. Plus, it's about the quickest brick Ford has ever thrown.

"We're investing in [internal-combustion engine] segments where we're dominant and where we think, as competitors leave the segments, we can actually grow," Ford CEO Jim Farley told Fox Business in September. "I find it intriguing that we're portraying the future of our industry as monolithic. That's not how it goes. That's not how it's going to manifest itself."

The new Lightning is appreciated within a line of personal-use, occasionally high-performance pickups: from the cushy 1955 Chevrolet Cameo to Dodge's rowdy 1978 Lil' Red Express and on to the insane turbocharged 1991 GMC Syclone, the 2004 V-10-powered Ram SRT-10, and the two Fords that previously wore the Lightning name where some utility is forsaken for looks, luxury, acceleration, and audacity.

Deceptively, the new Lightning wears F-150 skin. The aluminum cab and body pieces port from Ford's best-selling F-series are more or less intact. This isn't Tesla's someday Cybertruck doorstop moon buggy or the ludicrously large Hummer EV bent on domination. If an observer doesn't know the Lightning's discreet styling cues, it swims anonymously amid the traffic stream.