News - Western Star's New 57X, Ford's Police F-150 Lightning

Two articles in one today.

First, WS has announced it's new Cascadia, I mean 57X...

Picture from WS's site.

It looks okay, but it's basically a Freightliner Cascadia with a different hood, bumper, and logos.

Which makes sense, as they're both under the Daimler banner. But, the new WS 47X and 49X *daycabs* appear to have their own cab designs, and do not share one with any FL model, but do share sleeper cab styles with FL. Wonder why they bothered making a specific daycab design just for WS? Why not the same for both brands? Why not just basically have the same trucks under each brand, with only minor cosmetic changes? Or keep them totally different, like Volvo/Mack? Mostly just idle curiosity here, but it's an interesting look into how big manufacturers plan out new models.

Wanna see a test drive? Here's one!

www.ccjdigital.com

Western Star replaces its 5700XE with the most fuel-efficient model its ever built.

And our second news item, Ford's F-150 Lightning for Law Enforcement.

*photo from Ford.

I'm 100% a Ford guy, so I like basically anything they build, but an electric pursuit rated F-150 for Police?

Yes! It's got all kinds of bells and whistles, including a 0-60 time of 4.03 seconds, but I won't go into all those details; check them out here - https://www.hardworkingtrucks.com/pickup-trucks/article/15295177/2023-ford-f150-lightning-law-enforcement-model-delivers-fastest-to-60-time-yet

Now, in my opinion, BEVs will eventually be a reasonable option for fleets, who stay local to their base and have set routes and sufficient downtime to charge (overnight). That said though, the current BEV craze is a farcical scam. There's nothing to be done with the used batteries (which are toxic) except throw them away, the batteries are dangerous in an accident and afterwards, they take a long time to charge, and, the detail that always gets glazed over and sugar-coated - where does the electricity to charge them come from?! Fancy mobile charging station? Probably a diesel generator. Charging station? Being powered by the local power plant burning their fuel of choice.

Rant over.😆

Anyway, that's a couple tidbits of interesting news for your perusal. Thanks for looking!