Most of the gas F-150 sales are crew cab models, so it makes sense not to target that relatively small niche.
The long-bed was popular back when people owned a truck as an extra vehicle/work vehicle only, now many use their truck as their main vehicle and have need of carrying others.
If you look at the creature comforts of older bench seat trucks (bare-bones) and the trucks sold today, a truck today will have everything an SUV will have in terms of comfort and maybe more.
"The long-bed was popular back when people owned a truck as an extra vehicle/work vehicle only, now many use their truck as their main vehicle and have need of carrying others."
My favorite configuration is:
- 8 foot bed
- extended (not full) cab
- rear doors are "suicide" doors
Our ranch truck is a Silverado 1500 in that configuration and it is nice to have optional seats but not lose the 8 foot bed. Suicide doors allow you to open the entire vehicle up with no pillar in the way and I love that.
Chevy no longer offers this but I think Ford does, currently ...
I've got the same but the 6.5 bed. That just means I can park it at Home Depot somewhere near the entrance to the store. The 8 foot bed does have its allure.
My selection of vehicles agrees with you but friends who are new parents were shocked to see that child seats don’t fit in the back of Tacoma or I presume f150 supercab
Serviceable, sure. But the crew cab has a cavernous rear seat area. I used to drive a BMW 5 series and now drive an F-450 w/Crew Cab (my wife and live full-time in a Fifth Wheel RV, otherwise I'd never own such a large vehicle). I was astounded when I saw just how much more rear leg room the truck has compared to the 5 series.
I have a supercab and I am happy that I have the 6.5' bed to go with it, I can lay 4'x8' sheets flat with the tailgate down. Combined with a backrack/hitch extender I can get 16' long lumber.
The backseat is passable with my dog and kids, but barely. If they were able to take some room from the front where there is no engine and give me both a reasonable bed and a crew cab I would be happy.
A lockable frunk is pretty attractive though so that you don't have to worry about leaving tools in the bed.
The vast majority of pickups these days are sold either for work or family, and both benefit from additional people capacity. It makes sense to go after this huge market first.
Yeah, this is a bummer for me. I don't really like crew cab (either how it looks, or how it compromises bed length vs. overall truck length), and this really doesn't need it.
Indeed; I was trying carefully to not imply that this was some unique advantage of the F-150, but rather an interesting property of the electric truck category in general.
The long-bed was popular back when people owned a truck as an extra vehicle/work vehicle only, now many use their truck as their main vehicle and have need of carrying others.
If you look at the creature comforts of older bench seat trucks (bare-bones) and the trucks sold today, a truck today will have everything an SUV will have in terms of comfort and maybe more.