Can the F-150 Lightning Make Everyone Want a Truck That Plugs In?

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/13/busi ... =url-share

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By Talmon Joseph Smith
Talmon Joseph Smith, who covers the economy, reported from Commerce, Ga.

Aug. 13, 2022

Inside a colossal new plant, about 13 football fields long, the employees of SK Battery America are at work 24/7, essential players in the high-stakes early days of a worldwide battle to build the motors of the future.

The sweeping new climate bill just passed in Congress allocates nearly $400 billion over 10 years to encourage the clean energy transition and the growth of factories precisely like this one: A gleaming gray structure, midway through the semirural stretch of Georgia between Atlanta and Greenville, S.C., where the exurbs are encroaching, life is getting more expensive and a job building an electric car doesn’t mean you can afford one, at least not yet.

In green, taupe, teal and navy uniforms color-coded to their specific role — engineer, operator, maintenance, quality control — masked workers shuffle carts filled with half-finished parts between mechanical stations arranged like cavernous grocery aisles.

Supervisors peek at tablet screens, tweaking dials, overseeing the robotic orchestra tucked behind thin, sterile walls of glass. A dizzying range of machines pirouette perfectly around one another, chopping, welding and packaging: an ensemble that turns raw, rhino-size rolls of copper and aluminum coated with nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite into small but mighty packets — battery cells. Each one no longer or heavier than a hardback book.

All told, once packed and charged together and inside a new Ford F-150 Lightning, these lithium-ion batteries can make that all-electric truck, weighing in at over three tons, lurch forward from 0 to 60 miles per hour in just about four seconds.

“Listen, I drove it home last night, it’s badass,” said Cody Cain, the general manager at Billy Cain Ford, the local dealership owned by his father, Billy, which sits one mile away from the battery plant. “It’s an unbelievable vehicle.”

On a spin down the two-lane roadways of northeast Georgia’s Appalachian foothills, a display model of the Ford Lightning whizzes along. The truck wields the force of a 580 horsepower motor with silent ferocity, and zero carbon emissions — indistinguishable from its gas-powered brethren aside from the absence of exhaust pipes and roars from the front grill.

The Lightning, Mr. Cain noted, also doubles as a mobile generator — able to juice up various tools at a work site, recharge your home if the power goes out in a storm, or plug in anything on a camping trip. Great for big families, contractors or coaches, something Mr. Cain, 41, and a former college baseball player, has been himself.