Ford F-150 Lightning is so mighty it can power your home during a blackout

Ford F-150 Lightning is so mighty information technology can power your home during a blackout

(Image credit: Ford)

The Ford F-150 Lightning is one of the most exciting EVs to debut this year, or perhaps whatever yr. While it's due some potent competition from the Rivian R1T, the F-150 is an American hero, and likely to be trusted by existing pickup truck owners for its workhorse abilities and, crucially, some level of affordability.

Ford'due south too selling us on its flexibility in instance there's some sort of apocalypse. When purchased with the expanded bombardment pack, Ford claims that the F-150 Lightning tin power a dwelling for up to 3 days. As reported by Wired, the Lightning uses a system known every bit vehicle-to-grid, which allows electric car owners to take power from their automobile when needed.

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The F-150 Lightning can provide as much as 9.six kW of power back to a home it's continued to. That's more than enough to run a basic level of dwelling appliances in a crisis that cuts ability to the home. You could run lights, spotter Idiot box or even cook with that amount of output, and it could bear witness to exist invaluable for short ability outages.

That'southward something that would have been very useful during Texas' recent ability outages, which saw equally many as 5 million people without power at its superlative. While it's not a reason on its own to buy an EV, it'southward one more feature that would make the F-150 Lightning more than appealing.

Ford's decision to allow this functionality may likewise somewhen pb to ability companies being able to use electric vehicles to supply the grid at times of peak demand. It would be entirely possible for a large enough electric car network to provide power when information technology'south needed perhaps in exchange for a fee paid to the car's owners. This could be cheaper for power companies than buying ability from other places, or spinning upwardly their own electricity generation.

For anyone looking for a commercial vehicle, there are plenty of other bonuses that come with the F-150 Lightning, including the fact that there are eleven Ac outlets around the vehicle. This is ideal for someone to operate power tools or any number of accessories they might use in their twenty-four hours-to-day work. Information technology could too come up in handy for camping — provided you lot military camp in a place where at that place's a public charger.

More: Ford F-150 Lightning price, specs, release date, 0-60 and more

Ian has been involved in engineering journalism since 2007, originally writing near AV hardware back when LCDs and plasma TVs were just gaining popularity. Nearly 15 years on, he remains every bit excited as e'er near how tech tin make your life better. Ian is the editor of T3.com only has also regularly contributed to Tom's Guide.