F-150 Hybrid Is Good for Much More Than Gas Mileage
Ford plans to sell the F-150 Hybrid to traditional truck owners as a rolling power source. And by keeping their beer cold!
It should come as no surprise that truck owners don’t really care too much about fuel economy. Sure, it’s nice and all, but our expectations in that department tend to be on the low side. We buy trucks because they can haul and tow, get us just about anywhere, and hold up to abuse. Trucks are tools, plain and simple. So while most hybrids tout gas mileage as their main benefit, Ford must take a different approach with the coming F-150 Hybrid.
Granted, gas prices are pretty low these days. But Ford says that fuel economy ranks all the way down at 28th on an F-150 buyer’s list of priorities. And yet, the Blue Oval needs to sell enough F-150 Hybrid pickups to make them financially viable. Meanwhile, tough federal regulations are essentially forcing them to build one. As of now, automakers have only eight years to achieve an average fuel economy rating of 54.5 miles per gallon. And Ford will never get there without improving the F-150’s efficiency.
So Ford has invested a whopping $4.5 billion in electric and hybrid vehicle development, with plans of having 13 models on the road by 2020. And the F-150 Hybrid is perhaps the most important of that baker’s dozen. So instead of touting gas mileage or even lower emissions, Ford is trying a new marketing technique. Namely, touting the electric motor’s usefulness for other things, according to Automotive News.
Like powering your coffee maker on a camping trip or keeping your beer cold at a tailgate. The F-150 Hybrid will essentially act as a mobile power generator, giving you additional juice to power things like your circular saw at a construction site. That idea comes from a one-year brainstorming session from researchers. And it’s so crazy that it just might work.
‘We would see our customers just literally buying generators from Home Depot and strapping them down in their truck beds.’
“We immersed ourselves in their lives,” Nadia Preston, the research team’s project leader said. “That meant going camping with them, tailgating, going to rodeos, even spending the night. We would see our customers just literally buying generators from Home Depot and strapping them down in their truck beds.”
That sight literally set off a light bulb in the researcher’s minds. What if customers had a plug-in solution already built in? Despite truck owner’s general resistance to hybrid power, Ford seems to have found a way to win over even the stodgiest of folks. And keep their beer cold at the same time. Now there’s an idea we can get behind!
