And just like that, the dream of a hybrid F-150 gets put on the back burner. Ford and Toyota announced their plans for a “feasibility study” two years ago. According to this press release, the answer to the question of feasibility is a solid nope.
Ford says they’ll continue building their own hybrid system for rear wheel drive pickups and SUVs. We should still expect hybrid pick-up trucks in the future, but we just won’t see them until at least the end of this decade. Damn.
The partnership wasn’t totally useless, however. Ford and Toyota will work together on developing in car telematics and in building back-end support systems. None of that seems as interesting as a battery powered F-150, but hey, I guess it’s better than nothing.
Not all so-called Memorandum of Understanding pacts end in actual collaborations. For instance, after a two-year “feasibility study,” Toyota and Ford have just announced that they will not be developing hybrid systems for use in light trucks and SUVs as previously planned, and the two automakers will instead continue to develop their own hybrid technology independently.The would-be collaboration was first announced in August of 2011, and would have seen a rear-wheel-drive hybrid platform that would “improve the efficiency of trucks and SUVs while still allowing them to be driven in the way customers expect,” according to our initial post on the topic.Keep in mind that this announcement isn’t to say we shouldn’t expect hybrid pickups and SUVs from the two automakers, but that they probably aren’t coming very soon – Ford says it will have a system “before the end of this decade” and we haven’t heard much from Toyota on the hybrid truck front since the 2008 A-BAT Concept (pictured above) – and that they will not share any components between them (and they never have, for what it’s worth).
In any case, Ford and Toyota are continuing to work together on “next-generation standards for telematics and will consider other areas for future collaboration as well.” Feel free to read announcements from both automakers below.
Would you be interesting in hybrid F-150? Or are you glad this project came to an end? Let us know in the comments!
