Electric pickup truck powers nearly 3,700-square-foot home

Boy, have things changed.

It was only a few years ago that homeowners thought they’d be able to use extension cords to power their early model electric cars. But now, it looks like cars and trucks are going to be the ones powering homes.

Word is coming from Babcock Ranch that Pulte Homes was able to power a 3,654-square-foot home in the community using a Ford F150 Lightning all-electric truck. The homebuilder, at a recent community event held at the solar-powered community, used the Ford truck’s onboard Intelligent Backup Power feature to provide power to the two-story, five-bedroom home. The house was built with Ford+Sunrun’s home integration system and the automaker’s Charge Station Pro technology.

Sunrun, a San Francisco residential solar, storage and energy services company, installs the EV charging stations and equipment that enable the truck’s backup power feature in homes.

The home is one of two test homes in Babcock Ranch’s Innovation Way neighborhood that Pulte is using to explore “cutting-edge technologies, innovations and advanced eco-friendly building systems for improved sustainability, energy and water efficiency and healthier smarter homes.”

Babcock Ranch is an 18,000-acre planned community with an 870-acre solar panel farm powering it and its own water reclamation facility. The community has a school, lakes and a downtown as well as a recently opened shopping center with a Publix Super Market. A 378-unit apartment complex is about to open.

Josh Graeve, the president of Pulte’s Southwest Florida division, says in a statement that “As a living laboratory, the Innovation Way neighborhood gives us the opportunity to test sustainability from different perspectives, including advanced electric vehicle technology as a solution for backup emergency power to homes. There’s incredible potential for creating a critical lifeline for homeowners during natural disasters.”

In additional to powering a home up to three days, the company says the truck can also "optimize a home’s energy use when bidirectional power is combined with other lower-carbon energy sources to help reduce energy costs, increase the use of renewable energy and manage consumption."

According to the industry publication InsideEVs, pricing for a Lighting starts at $55,974, plus an $1,895 destination charge, which is about 40% more that what it was initially priced at. The F-150 Lightning XLT ER starts $80,974 and the Platinum model starts at $96,874.

“In general, it seems that there is a trend that the price increase is lower for the more expensive versions,” says InsideEvs.

“Part of the reason might be the change in the federal tax credit — only models under $80,000 are eligible for the $7,500 incentive. Besides that, the more expensive trims are usually more profitable and do not require changes as much as the very affordable entry-level versions.”