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Munro Team Praises the Ford F-150 Lightning Chassis, It's Built Tough but Simple

In August, the teardown firm Munro & Associates got a Ford F-150 Lightning to play with, delivered by none other than Ford CEO Jim Farley. After assessing the pickup’s undercarriage and frunk, it’s time to analyze the truck’s chassis more in-depth.
Munro team praises the Ford F-150 Lightning chassis 8 photos
Photo: Munro Live via YouTube
Munro team praises the Ford F-150 Lightning chassisMunro team praises the Ford F-150 Lightning chassisMunro team praises the Ford F-150 Lightning chassisMunro team praises the Ford F-150 Lightning chassisMunro team praises the Ford F-150 Lightning chassisMunro team praises the Ford F-150 Lightning chassisMunro team praises the Ford F-150 Lightning chassis
This summer, Jim Farley, Chief Engineer Linda Zhang, and Chief EV Officer Doug Field paid a visit to Sandy Munro. It wasn’t a courtesy visit but a business meeting. Ford executives brought an F-150 Lightning to Munro & Associates vehicle slaughterhouse while also seizing the moment to do a promotional interview on the hugely popular YouTube channel Munro Live. We’d excuse the commercial moment; after all, Sandy Munro worked a long time for Ford in the ’80s.

Although it was more of a publicity stunt for Jim Farley and his team, the F-150 Lightning teardown brought many interesting findings. We’ve recently seen videos of the teardown, which so far focused on the pickup’s undercarriage and frunk. In the latest video, the Munro team examines the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning chassis. And because they recently disassembled the Rivian R1T, they could make a parallel between the two electric pickup trucks.

After the body was removed, we were left with a bizarre contraption, which looked pretty much like my daughter’s room most of the time. There are all sorts of cables, pipes, and wires everywhere, and we imagine the truck’s assembly must be quite complicated. The Munro team thinks this happens because Ford uses mostly off-shelf parts for the electric pickup, and adapting them and fitting them all under the truck’s body is already a work of a genius. It’s the opposite of the Rivian R1T, which integrates many components built in-house.

There are advantages and disadvantages, though, and the Munro engineers talk about them. For instance, Ford’s experience building pickup trucks is obvious by how the chassis is built. The frame is better assembled than Rivian’s, and there are only 14 rubber bushings that connect the cab, the bed, and the chassis. This helps build a lot of trucks in less time. For comparison, Rivian uses over 100 bushings, which is mind-boggling. Besides that, the Lightning has no additional subframe, and various components are bolted directly to the frame.

The Ford F-150 Lightning shares quite a few components with its ICE brothers, which helps Ford save time and money during production. While the truck is as solid as other Ford body-on-frame vehicles, the Munro team sees an optimization coming with future generations. The best thing is that the Lightning is, as Ford advertises, built tough, so there’s no need to worry it will suffer from installing a slide-in camper, like the GMC Hummer EV.

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About the author: Cristian Agatie
Cristian Agatie profile photo

After his childhood dream of becoming a "tractor operator" didn't pan out, Cristian turned to journalism, first in print and later moving to online media. His top interests are electric vehicles and new energy solutions.
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