Enlarge / I wonder if the US Forest Service will like the F-150 Lightning as much as everyone else who drives one? (credit: US Forest Service)
At the end of 2021, US President Joe Biden set the federal government on a path to being more sustainable with an executive order that among other goals included only buying emissions-free vehicles. For light-duty cars and trucks, that has to happen by 2027, with a deadline of 2035 for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. And it's a pretty significant fleet—currently the US government has more than 600,000 cars and trucks.
Most of the headlines regarding government trucks being electrified have concerned the US Postal Service, where an intransigent Postmaster General paid mostly lip service to the idea of an EV fleet until finally bowing to public pressure earlier this year. More quietly, other government departments and agencies have gotten on with acquiring some EVs and working out how they fit their needs, and anecdotally, I can say I'm starting to see a few EVs with government license plates driving in the DC area.
One of the latest arms of the federal government to get electrocurious is the US Forest Service, which last week reached out to Ars to let us know it's just starting a yearlong experiment with a trio of Ford F-150 Lightnings—the first time it has tried using any battery EVs in the field.
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