The IER is a lobbying group for various oil companies, not exactly a source I would trust on this kind of thing. Nothing comes "free," and there are compromises to everything. But the overall consensus is that electric vehicles are less harmful than gas. We can spend the entire thread litigating that, but it's not relevant. The Lightning is coming to market regardless.

 

the way that battery compartment is looking, all flat covering the undercarriage.....has this "edition" of the F 150 become a unibody instead of the normal body on frame ?

how will this affect performance in deep snow and sand .....

asking for a friend

 

Couldn't find an apolitical photo of just the frame, but this is from the President's visit visit early this week. Still a body on frame, but the frame is very different from the gas models.




I would guess that it would perform better in deep snow or sand because the PCM has a lot more control over individual wheel torque with independent electric motors. They also have an off-road drive mode, and with halfway competent engineers it should know what to do with wheel spin.

 

If you look at the photo I posted above it says they mounted the battery pack between the frame rails.

 

We may see a move back to body on frame where the frame is the skateboard that contains the battery and suspension; the body mounts to skateboard (frame). An example: For the CANOO vehicles, the skateboard will likely be outsourced from one of the Korean manufactures. CANOO is not planning to build its entire vehicles, just the unique modular pieces that make up the vehicles they will market. If this works out, there maybe more examples like this where a common skateboard is used in a number of platforms. VW is doing it for their planned electrical vehicles, I would not be surprised to learn that they are going to outsourcing their skateboard to other manufacturers (like Skoda).

The use of a square frame will go down this path until the "liquid" battery comes forward allowing for the reemergence of the unibody as we remember... but that is a few years away.

 

And I think I read the batteries are lifetime of the vehicle warranty, just like the hybrid F150.

 

The rust proofing will have to improve over current practices as the skateboard will be subjected to the salted roads. The batteries packaged in the frame will have to survive what they will be exposed to to last the lifetime vehicle warranty I suspect?

 

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like Ford does a better job at rust resistance than any other manufacturer these days. But it really comes down if customers want to pay the extra few dollars at the dealer for rust and paint protection. I mean they do a lot better job than Toyota does, they still have frame rot issues to this day. Long as you wash your vehicle a couple times a week during the winter, you're already doing better to keep the vehicle long term.

I work on used cars and I can tell which vehicles were taken care of during the winter and which ones were not, by just the amount of rust under the vehicle. When a vehicle is only a couple years old and it looks like it has 10 years of rust, yeah it was never washed during the winter.

 

In general I would agree with you, but...

You may not be up to speed on the 2021 F150: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-202...ing-with-rust/

Rust isn't everywhere, but to show up this early on specific components isn't good for the brand.

 

The nice thing about the design if done right, is it would only take the removal of a dozen mounting bolts and one wire harness connector and the body could be lifted off to easily work on it.

 

True, but threads complaining of superficial rust on new trucks have been around for decades. People were complaining about that in 2003 when I came to FTE, and that hasn’t changed. The rust people are complaining about on the ‘21s are on the same meaningless things that never fail from corrosion.

 

Or to change out to a different body...

 

Tom,

The rust on specific components that is showing up on the 2021 models should not be there like it is. This was a screw up on the QC side. The rear axle assembly is going to have the issues where the shocks/springs mount (more like the shocks) after many years when the next owner is trying to mount new shocks to a [weakened] base that has much more "surface rust" than it should.

But, you may have a point. You may not care about such things when dishing out $50-60K for a truck. I do because it tells me there may be other issues that have been over looked because an area done well in the past looks ify.

As for this thread, I stand by my comment that rustproofing for any EV needs to be done well (design/engineering/manufacturing/assembly) because the batteries are very heavy and need to be well protected for the vehicle to last well. The vehicle will have a very low resale value if the next owner looks underneath and finds a lot of visible rust.

 

A bank robber's dream.

 

The underside of my truck when it was brand new 8 years ago. Although you can't see it, the driveshaft is indicative of the rear axle assembly in places, leaf springs etc.



It looks exactly the same today, surface rust is just that, on the surface and poses no structural concerns. Sure it may not look very good but who cares, it's underneath where it's never seen unless one is looking underneath intentionally.

Also to consider is a northern vehicle where the roads are salted as mentioned, that stuff will eat any vehicle in half not just an ev and undercoating will also provide for sound deadening not just rust protection. We don't have any winters where salt is required so vehicles usually last a lot longer.