About F-150
The Ford F-150 is less a vehicle than an economic indicator with a tailgate. The F-Series has been the best-selling truck in America since the late 1970s and the country's best-selling vehicle overall since the early 1980s, and the F-150 is the heart of that streak. It tows boats and campers, hauls drywall and feed, doubles as a family car with a back seat the size of a living room, and, in King Ranch and Platinum trim, quietly serves as a luxury car for people who would never admit to wanting one.
Ford has a habit of taking big risks with its most important product. In 2015 it switched the F-150 to an aluminum body, a gamble rivals mocked until they started chasing the weight savings themselves. Turbocharged EcoBoost V6 engines displaced the V8 as the volume choice, though the 5.0-liter Coyote V8 survives for traditionalists, and the PowerBoost hybrid added an onboard generator that can run a job site. The Raptor, born in the desert-racing world, turned the truck into a high-speed off-road toy, and the Tremor offers a milder dose.
The electric chapter has been the most dramatic. The F-150 Lightning arrived for 2022 to enormous hype and long waiting lists, proved its worth by powering homes during outages, and then ran into slowing EV demand and heavy losses. Ford ended production of the all-electric Lightning and has pointed toward an extended-range version that pairs electric drive with a gasoline generator. In the showroom, the F-150's eternal sparring partners remain the Chevrolet Silverado, GMC Sierra, Ram 1500 and Toyota Tundra.
Because the F-150 sells in such numbers, every recall touches a lot of driveways, and campaigns covering everything from instrument clusters to brakes and fuel tanks are followed closely by owners and analysts alike. The stories that matter most here are the trim and powertrain changes for each new model year, comparison tests against the Tundra and Silverado, the quarterly sales tallies, the next Raptor, and the future of electrified power in a truck that still defines what Americans expect a pickup to be.