Ford CEO Admits Electric Pickup Trucks, SUVs Aren’t Good for Towing

Ford debuted its all-electric F-150 Lightning to considerable fanfare a few years ago, and it’s sold reasonably well since then. The automaker billed it as a proper full-size truck that could do truck things, including towing big trailers. Technically, that’s correct. But it’s no secret that several factors work against EVs as tow vehicles.

Speaking to the media during Ford’s 2024 financial conference call, CEO Jim Farley conceded that full-size battery-electric or range-extended electric vehicles are not great platforms for towing.

“It’s not perfect,” he said. “If you tow, it’s not a good technology. The batteries have to be too big.”

Simply being big isn’t the problem. While battery costs are coming down, Farley believes the massive batteries required for big vehicles are still cost-prohibitive at this point.

“For larger retail electric [vehicles], the economics are unresolvable,” he said. “These customers have very demanding use cases for an electric vehicle. They tow, they go off-road, they take long road trips. These vehicles have worse aerodynamics and they’re very heavy, which means very large and expensive batteries. Retail customers have shown that they will not pay any premium for these large EVs.”

To that end, Ford has already canceled plans for a large, three-row electric SUV. In the world of pickup trucks, the company teased a full-size electric truck that was “something different” from the F-150 Lightning back in 2022. Little has been heard of this next-gen EV since, and at this point, it’s unclear whether it will reach production. However, Ford is moving ahead with plans for extended-range EVs (EREVs) that utilize a combustion engine to charge smaller battery packs.

“Ford will be developing flexible, body-on-frame and unibody platforms that will be designed for these multi-energy powertrains that are needed, given the realities of customer affordability and range requirements,” said Farley. “We’ve learned, actually, when it wasn’t popular to invest in hybrids, it turns out it was a good move. And therefore, we want to lean into EREVS and other powertrains to make sure that we go with the flow of the customers.”