An all-electric Ford F-150 pickup is coming, and a new patent filing shows us exactly what’s in store under the hood. Since it won’t be an engine, it looks like Ford instead will offer a front trunk, or a frunk, and a pretty clever storage system.
As reported by Car And Driver, the patent shows a vaguely Ford-looking design, with the C-shaped headlights, and describes a front storage area featuring two bins that can be accessed either by opening the truck’s hood, or by opening a front door disguised as the grille without having to open the hood.
The patent describes lighting, security, and functionality for the frunk, featuring proximity sensors that communicate with the vehicle’s key fob that detect when someone accesses the storage area with or without a key, potentially sounding the car alarm.
Inside the frunk are two connected bins, one in front of the other that are connected at a pivot point which allows the first bin to be pulled out of the front access door and out of the way of the second bin.
You can read the full patent description here.
We’re no stranger to frunk designs, with our own Jason Torchinsky drawing up plans for a double-bed pickup almost exactly like Ford’s patent design back in 2013.
Ford won’t be the first to do it when its truck is expected to debut in 2021, as the Bollinger B2 already features a front storage area and does the Ford one better—it has an access door that lets you run long objects all the way through the body of the truck and out through the rear bed.
But who cares! The industry currently hasn’t tried too hard to maximize the potential of the frunk, with new EVs like the Mercedes-Benz EQC not even bothering to try, instead filling the space with HVAC systems and preventing owners from accessing the space.
Trucks were always going to be different to electric Mercedes crossovers, though. We’ve gone through generations of towing wars, payload wars, bed strength wars, and now I fear we may not be ready for the marketing machine’s plans for the frunk wars.
If you think Honda putting a human-sized storage area under the bed of the Ridgeline was strange, you’re not prepared for how weird it’s going to get when these things lose their bulky internal combustion engines.