Watch Lordstown's upcoming electric pickup challenge the F-150 to a tug-of-war
- Electric pickup startup Lordstown Motors released a video on Wednesday of its Endurance truck battling the Ford F-150 in a game of tug-of-war.
- Lordstown set out to prove that the Endurance offers better traction than the most popular truck in the US.
- The Endurance appeared to win the battle, but the video was likely more of a marketing ploy than a true test.
With electric pickups from GMC, Rivian, Tesla, and others set to flood the market over the next few years, each company is looking to show why buyers should take a gamble on its unproven trucks instead of going with the best-selling vehicle in the US, the Ford F-150.
Ohio-based Lordstown Motors, for its part, released a video on Wednesday showing a preproduction Endurance truck battling a 2019 F-150 in a game of tug-of-war. The idea was to show that the Endurance has better traction on wet surfaces than America's most popular truck thanks to its four hub motors.
For the test, Lordstown put both vehicles in four-wheel-drive mode, turned off traction control, tied them together end to end, and positioned them on a patch of wet grass. In the clip, the Endurance appears to win the match, beginning to tow the F-150 backward while the F-150 spins its wheels and struggles to find traction.
However, more of a marketing stunt than any kind of useful experiment, the test was anything but scientific. Lordstown didn't mention what kind of tires each truck was outfitted with, and it appears in the video that the Endurance's wheels start turning before the F-150's.
Tesla released a similar tug-of-war video last year, where it pitted a preproduction Cybertruck against an F-150. Onlookers pointed out that the test didn't prove much, given that Tesla chose a rear-wheel-drive F-150 to match up with its all-wheel-drive electric pickup. Plus, Ford buyers can choose from a whole range of F-Series trucks with varying amounts of torque and towing capability.
Check out Lordstown's video for yourself below: