It took a while but the electric trucks are finally coming. Now the big question is whether they will have as much towing capacity as their gas-guzzling counterparts. But Lordstown Motors wants everyone to know that it won’t be a problem for its all-electric pickup.
The Ohio-based EV startup has just shared a new video designed to show off the towing might of its upcoming Endurance truck. And the electric pickup seems to be more than up to the task, soundly beating America’s top selling truck, the Ford F-150, in a tug of war.
In the clip, the 2022 Endurance and 2019 F-150 Lariat are both parked in a grass field, connected by a heavy-duty towing strap. Both drivers are told to start their engines, and within seconds the Lordstown truck can be seen easily dragging Ford’s pickup behind it, the latter’s tires spinning futilely in the wet dirt. And this doesn’t just happen once, but in three successive takes.
2022 Lordstown Motors Endurance Lordstown Motors/Facebook
The video is a publicity stunt, of course, but it’s also an effective show of the Endurance’s power. The electric truck features a four-motor, all-wheel-drive set-up, with one motor located at each wheel. That allows the pickup to produce 600 hp and, more importantly for this display, 2,000 ft lbs of continuous torque and 4,000 ft lbs of peak torque. That means the Endurance can tow up to a 7,500-pound payload, comfortably ahead of the F-150 Lariat’s 4,500-pound curb weight. To be sure, those figures are impressive, but it remains to be seen how they will affect the vehicle’s battery life and range. Lordstown says the Endurance will be able to drive 250 mile one a single charge, but it’s unclear how that figure will be affected when towing a substantial payload.
It should also be noted that the F-150 used in this demonstration is not Ford’s latest or most powerful model. This particular Lariat is equipped with a 2.7-liter EcoBoost V-6 that outputs 325 horsepower and 400 ft lbs of torque—specs that can’t quite compete with those of Lordstown’s pickup. The bigger, more apples-to-apples test will come when Ford finally debuts an electric truck of its own—especially if it can tow 1.25 million pounds. That’s a tug of war we won’t miss.
