Where the Rubber Meets the Road: F-150 Lightning Test Drives and the Power of Demonstration
Every now and then I get a fresh reminder that the future of our energy systems holds some exciting surprises — and that demonstration is the best way to discover how these systems will perform in practice.
I learned to drive in an American icon, a Ford F-150 pickup truck. When I recently got the chance to drive the all-electric F-150 Lightning, I had to give it a try. I expected it to be a little like an old friend in new clothes, missing the usual growl of its combustion engine and swapping out a fuel tank for an electric plug.
I got more change than I anticipated. A gas or diesel engine sits in front of the driver. In an electric truck, there is air under the hood and the weight is in the battery, which sits low down and extends under the cab. That puts the truck’s center of gravity, low down, and further back. It feels like it is under the driver’s seat.
On a closed course with some encouragement to drive fast, the Lightning felt completely different from the trucks I grew up with, which often felt like driving a tractor with the weight upfront. It feels like a car you would buy to drive fast for fun.
Weeks later I am still thinking about the experience, not because I am in the market for a new truck, but because it was such a visceral reminder that new technologies can dramatically change the performance of an energy system. We can intellectually understand each component, but we still need to see a real-world demonstration to really internalize all the ways that performance will change with new technology integration.
It can be easy to think about demonstration as a path to discovering all the unexpected ways untested technologies will break, and that does happen. But putting new technologies into the field also lets us discover what is amazing, and how each change unlocks opportunities to rethink, re-optimize, and scale up connected systems.
And scaling up connected systems is core to what we do at GTI Energy. We think about how things work. How new technologies and practices get integrated into existing energy systems, how all of that will work together, and how to activate people in creating a low-carbon, low-cost energy systems through systems thinking, open learning and collaboration.
