President Biden Goes Truckin' With Ford

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

There are lots of pros to being the president of the United States. There are also many cons. To me, two of the biggest drawbacks would be the ever-present threat of assassination and having to give up driving forever.

Well, the current commander-in-chief is a car guy, and President Joe Biden reminded us of his automotive bona fides while giving Ford a nice PR boost. He did so by toolin’ around in a truck.

More specifically, the upcoming Ford F-150 Lightning.

Biden was in Dearborn, Michigan to tout his infrastructure plan, dubbed the American Jobs Plan, and to talk up the future of electric vehicles — and how America needs to beat China at the EV game.

Part of his plan includes government assistance via tax credits to help establish EV and battery production in the States, more incentives for consumers to buy EVs, more focus on electrifying the medium- and heavy-duty truck fleet, more EV charging stations, and upgrades to the electric grid.

Coincidentally, I was just down I-94, leaving Ann Arbor after sampling the Volkswagen Taos. Perhaps I should’ve headed east instead of west and crashed this shindig?

The Lightning won’t even be officially unveiled until tomorrow — though one was parked, uncovered, in the background — but like a buff-book journalist on a long-lead media drive, Biden got an early chance at driving the truck.

He even provided a review, saying “this sucker’s quick.” Maybe Biden wants to trade the White House Resolute Desk for a home office and a car reviewer’s salary?

If so, my editorial feedback is this: Concise, Joe, but far short of our minimum word count for a review. Still, if you find yourself unemployed in 2025, TTAC does welcome pitches.

That is, if the rules change and ex-presidents are allowed to drive again.

[Image: Ford]

Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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  • Probert They already have hybrids, but these won't ever be them as they are built on the modular E-GMP skateboard.
  • Justin You guys still looking for that sportbak? I just saw one on the Facebook marketplace in Arizona
  • 28-Cars-Later I cannot remember what happens now, but there are whiteblocks in this period which develop a "tick" like sound which indicates they are toast (maybe head gasket?). Ten or so years ago I looked at an '03 or '04 S60 (I forget why) and I brought my Volvo indy along to tell me if it was worth my time - it ticked and that's when I learned this. This XC90 is probably worth about $300 as it sits, not kidding, and it will cost you conservatively $2500 for an engine swap (all the ones I see on car-part.com have north of 130K miles starting at $1,100 and that's not including freight to a shop, shop labor, other internals to do such as timing belt while engine out etc).
  • 28-Cars-Later Ford reported it lost $132,000 for each of its 10,000 electric vehicles sold in the first quarter of 2024, according to CNN. The sales were down 20 percent from the first quarter of 2023 and would “drag down earnings for the company overall.”The losses include “hundreds of millions being spent on research and development of the next generation of EVs for Ford. Those investments are years away from paying off.” [if they ever are recouped] Ford is the only major carmaker breaking out EV numbers by themselves. But other marques likely suffer similar losses. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fords-120000-loss-vehicle-shows-california-ev-goals-are-impossible Given these facts, how did Tesla ever produce anything in volume let alone profit?
  • AZFelix Let's forego all of this dilly-dallying with autonomous cars and cut right to the chase and the only real solution.
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