I'm a potential customer on this. I'm in the market for a vehicle, need a pickup and towing (no really). My hesitance still is charge time on trips. If I'm taking my kids camping or something, I really don't want to add one or more hours to the trip. IMO for this sort of thing to really gain acceptance mainstream, we need 5 minute charge times and battery lifetimes on par with ICE engine lifetimes (300-500k miles).
I feel like the industry is getting really close, and this is a solid effort that puts Tesla on notice, but not _quite_ there in terms of mass acceptance.
If you've got kids, you need bathroom breaks. On our cross-country trip in our Model Y we calculated that we spent a whole 15 minutes waiting for the charger, every other time we charged while we were toileting, eating or sleeping.
That being said, the F-150 will be a lot worse than the Y. It only supports 150kWh charging instead of Tesla's 250kWh, it uses a lot more watts per mile, and it doesn't have access to Tesla's Supercharger network.
That's interesting to hear. I have several friends with Teslas and keep up with some of the reviews, etc. But I haven't heard much perspective from people with kids. I have a few friends with Teslas that also keep an ICE for trips. I think some would vary on location. I've gone so far as to do tesla's route planner for trips we commonly take, and I'm pretty sure between having to drive to charging station, and charge time, it would add a couple hours to our trips. Then again, I tend to not want to stop much.
I really hope Ford accounted for the possibility of a gas-powered range extender. Gas powered generators are extremely common on work trucks. And a moderately sized one could probably produce enough power to maintain this truck at highways speeds, or at least produce enough power to drastically improve range.
I feel like the industry is getting really close, and this is a solid effort that puts Tesla on notice, but not _quite_ there in terms of mass acceptance.