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Ford F-150 Lightning Pro Is a Better Deal Than a Tesla Powerwall

Anyone with solar panels at home will probably look for battery packs to store the electricity for when they actually need it – at night for most people. What if, instead of a Tesla Powerwall, people bought a Ford F-150 Lightning Pro? Jason Fenske, from Engineering Explained, did the math and recommended people to do precisely this.
Ford F-150 Lightning Pro may be a better solution than the Tesla Powerwall for storing energy 32 photos
Photo: Ford
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That’s obviously not something that should be considered for all situations. However, Fenske’s reasoning makes a lot of sense considering what you pay for and what you get.

A Tesla Powerwall starts at $10,500. If you buy four or more, prices drop to $7,500 each. A Ford F-150 Lightning Pro costs $41,669 if you manage to find a dealer that is not fond of markups: $39,974 for the price and $1,695 more for destination charges.

The entry-level F-150 Lightning comes with a 98 kWh battery pack. At 14 kWh each, you would need 7 Tesla Powerwalls to get the same energy capacity the electric pickup truck offers. That means you would have to pay $52,500 on the Tesla products. Buying the F-150 Lightning Pro would cost you less and would also put a pickup truck around the battery pack.

As Fenske mentions, the issue is that Powerwalls are always there, charging from the solar panels. Anyone with a pickup truck would probably use it to work in the morning and get home at night. In other words, they would lose the energy generated by the solar panels unless they worked at night and charged (and slept) during the day. Another hypothesis was that the F-150 was not the main vehicle for the family but rather something that would be used only every once in a while.

This is not the only issue with having an electric pickup truck with V2L capability. For the F-150 Lightning Pro to work as a giant power bank, it needs a Home Integration System, the 80A charger, and a house prepared to deal 320A. Fenske did not mention how much that would cost, probably because Ford may not have defined the prices yet.

Even if these things are expensive, the $7,500 federal tax credit should bring them significantly down. There may be incentives for Powerwalls depending on where they are installed, but we are not sure about that.

The main problem with getting an F-150 Lightning Pro instead of a Powerwall is that you could only get one by the end of 2023 due to the high demand for them. Ford has more than 200,000 pre-orders and plans to produce all of the ones that become purchases that time. Everyone who has not yet ordered one may have to wait for the second generation, which will be presented by 2024.

According to Fenske’s calculations, the F-150 Lightning Pro will have the best price for kWh among all the electric vehicles about which we know prices and battery pack capacities. The engineer wonders how Ford managed to offer it for such a price tag. Regardless of the answer, it is worth checking the Engineering Explained video right below for other interesting insights.

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About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
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Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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