Edmunds Took Its Ford Lightning and Rivian R1T to a Tractor Pull

Electric pickup trucks are rad. They do all the stuff a truck is supposed to be good at, like hauling and pulling and generally making tons of torque, but they do it in near silence and without belching tons of black diesel smoke. Sure, they’re still in their infancy, but that isn’t stopping Edmunds.com’s Ryan ZumMallen from taking their long-term test Ford Lightning and Rivian R1T to a tractor pull in Northern California.

Taking EVs to a tractor pull is wild, but what’s even wilder is that Edmunds bought these trucks with its own money. That differs from most long-term test vehicles, where the car company will loan a publication a vehicle for six months to a year and then ask for it back. Of course, that comes with a few minor strings, like, presumably not participating in tractor pulls with a sled three times heavier than the truck’s maximum tow rating.

The shocking thing (I’m not sorry for that, by the way) is just how well these bone-stock electric pickups do. The Rivian, with its off-road tires and four electric motors, managed to outperform the Ford, but even the dual-motor Lightning on street tires didn’t embarrass itself in front of the people in the grandstands, despite their boos.

Doing dumb stuff in cars is generally a well-loved pastime of the Jalopnik staff, and we’d like to think that if we owned our test vehicles, we’d do this kind of thing but seriously, hats off to Edmunds for actually going and doing it. You are all very silly and we salute you.