Meet the man who powers his entire e-scooter business with two Ford F-150 Lightning pickup trucks. He is Max Rastelli, and he has always dreamed of buying an EV. But there was something that always prevented him from making the move. He used to think that it would not be suitable for his lifestyle. Until the Blue Oval’s electric pickup truck came along.
We somehow knew that we would come to this. Electric cars powering households, entire buildings, stadiums, hospitals, and various others. But it still amazes us. And Max Rastelli’s business strategy is, indeed, amazing. He runs an e-scooter business in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He started out back in 2019, giving locals an alternative mobility solution around the city for those who are fed up with traffic jams.
Max has been a long-time Ford F-150 owner. He had been hoping to buy an EV one day, but he could not afford to waste so much time charging the car. That was until the F-150 Lightning showed up in 2021.
He immediately placed a deposit and, in a couple of months, got his zero-emission truck delivered. From that moment on, October 2022, he has not just managed an electric scooter business, but has also driven an electric vehicle.
Max soon realized that the anxiety that the thought of using a model that needs to be plugged in every once in a while was ill-founded. The presence of the F-150 Lightning in his life actually accelerated his business.
Before buying the electric Ford, Max used to haul scooters to a central hub in central Halifax to charge them. That involved a lot of driving and a massive waste of time. In 2021, he came up with the swappable, rechargeable batteries for his e-scooters.
Photo: Ford
That helped a bit, but he still needed to drive to the central hub and recharge the batteries every single day. And that took a lot of time as the hub did not have enough power to charge all the units at once. So he had to wait. And wait. And wait.
And then the F-150 Lightning gave him an idea. The vehicle features 9.6 kW of Pro Power Onboard exportable power. That would be enough to charge multiple batteries, all at once, without taking them any further than his electric truck. Furthermore, he can charge the batteries on the move.
That instantly dissolved the forced link that he used to have with the central charging hub. And he made another move to help his business. He bought a second Ford F-150 Lightning in June 2023 that he also uses as a mobile battery charging station. Since 2019, when he started the business, he has doubled the number of e-scooters in his fleet.
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