Tesla CEO Elon Musk congratulates Ford for 'embracing an electric future'

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is among some of the first industry leaders to congratulate Ford on its first electric pickup truck on Thursday. The US-based auto giant unveiled the electric version of its immensely popular pickup truck F-150 in its attempt to step up its EV push in coming days.

Elon Musk took to Twitter to congratulate Ford Motor for going the electric way with the F-150 Lightning, a pickup truck that he will consider as rival when Tesla officially brings its Cybertruck to US roads.

Elon Musk took to Twitter and wrote, "Congrats to @Ford on embracing an electric future!"

Ford Motor's F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck will come at a starting price of 39,974 dollars (roughly converted to less than ₹30 lakh), which is likely to attract a lot of customers in the US for being one of the most affordable electric vehicle of this size.

The price of the base variant F-150 Lightning is likely to be at par with the Tesla Cybertruck. The official price of the electric pickup truck from Elon Musk's company has not been revealed yet. Considering some of its other possible rivals, the Ford electric pickup will cost almost half of what the Rivian R1T costs in the US.

As far as performance is concerned, Ford claims that the top-spec F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck will offer a range of around 482 kms on single charge. The claimed range is slightly more than what the base model of the Tesla Cybertruck claims to do. However, the top-end Cybertruck, with larger battery and more capacity, promises to deliver more than 800 kms on single charge.

While Tesla remains the biggest electric vehicle manufacturer in US, others are in the mood to play catch up. Electric cars currently contribute to about 2 per cent of the entire vehicle sales in the country. Carmakers like Ford and Tesla hope that affordable electric vehicles with a vast and accessible charging infrastructure will attract more customers to switch to EVs in future.