An Electric Ford Maverick Lightning Could—and Probably Should—Happen
This is the Maverick Lightning we think could hit the streets in the near future.
With both the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning(all-electric) and 2022 Maverick compact pickup (with its efficient hybrid powertrain option) already loose in our consciousnesses, the mind quickly turns to the white space in between. Ford is literally invested in electrifying its fleet, and the Maverick is launching with an electrified base powertrain. It's not too much of a leap to imagine a fully electric Ford Maverick truck—whether Ford called it the Maverick Lightning, or something else.
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And this isn't a line of thought that Ford appears to be trying to quash. Instead, it's feeding the rumor, with Ford CEO Jim Farley telling The New York Times in an interview that the company is considering an electric version of the little pickup, while one of the company's PR representatives is tweeting wire-frame images of an electric pickup silhouette to some who've doubted the viability of a compact EV truck.
It seems, barring some unlikely series of events, that an electric Maverick will happen. It also seems that, judging by the little truck's front end styling, it may be a natural fit for the standard smooth-grille EV look, as seen on the F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E, and others. Filling in the upper portion—whether, as we imagine, smoothly in base models (as seen above) or with a stylish texture in higher trims (as seen below)—doesn't jar the eye thanks to the stylish bar linking the headlights and a bit of texture. And the smaller proportions of the Maverick's front end help; by comparison, the F-150 Lightning's filled-in grille looks overly wide between its small, wide-set headlights.
The wheels seen here are pulled straight from the F-150 Lightning's selection; they may not be representative of a design a Maverick EV would actually wear, but they follow the contemporary EV wheel styling tropes. Other changes are mostly minor: a charging door on the front fender, the bedside "LIGHTNING" badge, a partially-filled-in lower air intake.
Around back, however, the F-150 Lightning's taillight connection strip looks right at home adapted to the Maverick's rear proportions. Beyond that, the Maverick doesn't need much to visually communicate that it'd be right at home as an EV—something that would have been baked in, stylistically, right from the start of development.
The F-150 Lightning will, if all goes to plan, hit dealers in May 2022. We haven't had an official confirmation of an electric Maverick yet, although Ford seems to be spelling out that it's coming, so assume that a Ford Maverick Lightning would be announced in the next few months, with production trailing by roughly the same timeframe as its larger stablemate.
Like a lot of the other staffers here, Alex Kierstein took the hard way to get to car writing. Although he always loved cars, he wasn’t sure a career in automotive media could possibly pan out. So, after an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Washington, he headed to law school. To be clear, it sucked. After a lot of false starts, and with little else to lose, he got a job at Turn 10 Studios supporting the Forza 4 and Forza Horizon 1 launches. The friendships made there led to a job at a major automotive publication in Michigan, and after a few years to MotorTrend. He lives in the Seattle area with a small but scruffy fleet of great vehicles, including a V-8 4Runner and a C5 Corvette, and he also dabbles in scruffy vintage watches and film cameras.
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