For pickup owners, covered storage is a precious commodity. For years we thought Ram’s RamBox solution couldn’t be touched, but the advent of electric pickups has changed the game. Without a bulky engine under the hood or a drivetrain to deal with, electric pickup trucks have opened up vastly new packaging option to designers. While the Rivian R1T features a small frunk, small bed-mounted trunk, and an innovative transverse gear tunnel behind the cabin, our 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat instead features a massive 14.1-cubic-foot trunk where you’d find a V-6 or V-8 in gas versions of the truck. This cavernous frunk has been infinitely useful; here are some of the things we’ve crammed in the frunk of our Lightning over the past year (Seabaugh, 2024).
Pickup Essentials
Like most pickup owners, we never leave home without a set of ratchet straps and a bed net. In internal-combustion-powered pickups, we often stash these items wherever we can, which is typically underneath the rear bench seat, in the rear door pockets, or in seat-back pockets. In the Lightning, they live underneath the frunk’s false floor alongside our portable charger and various charging adapters (Seabaugh, 2024).
Groceries
As any pickup owner can attest to, placing groceries on the back-seat floor of a pickup is only slightly more ideal than leaving them loose in the bed because it eats up passenger space and items tend to roll around (or in my case, occasionally go missing when the dogs accompany me to the store). We’re thankful to not have to worry about that anymore, as the Lightning’s frunk is large enough for a week’s worth of groceries and then some (Seabaugh, 2024).
Despite the headaches inherent in EV road trips, our Lightning is frequently pressed into duty for weekend getaways. It swallows up multiple roll-aboard carry-ons with plenty of room to spare (Seabaugh, 2024).
As evidenced by this shot of the frunk fully loaded for a vacation. In this picture the Ford is hauling two carry-on suitcases, a laptop bag, a backpack, dog food, blanket, beach towels, and an electric guitar gig bag (Seabaugh, 2024).
Analysis
Given that the Ford F-150 Lightning has one of the most extensive frunk spaces among all EV pickups, I’m curious to see how people further utilize this massive space in their daily lives. In the article, the author provides numerous examples to show that you can fit nearly everything you could think of in this frunk area—from groceries and plants to luggage for weekend getaways or even an electric guitar on its way to the shop. Considering my project, balancing free spaces and creating add-ons or accessories will be a big task for me. It’ll be nice to design additional features, but allowing users to have their freedom to use the frunk area is still the priority.
Reference
Seabaugh, C. (2024, January 3). What we’ve fit in our Ford F-150 lightning’s frunk. MotorTrend. https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2022-ford-f-150-lightning-lariat-yearlong-review-update-10-frunk-review/
