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F-150 Lightning vs Tesla Cybertruck vs Rivian R1T: How Ford’s new EV stacks up against younger competitors
Ford recently unveiled the F-150 Lightning, marking the entry of another legacy automaker into the all-electric pickup truck market. The Ford F-150 is an iconic pickup truck, and its transition to the electric vehicle spectrum is a big step for American auto manufacturing.
However, as the Ford F-150 enters a new playing field, the OEM will be met with new contenders from startup EV makers such as Rivian and Tesla. While the Ford F-150 has been the standard for pickup trucks, Tesla has made a name for itself in the EV space. Rivian seeks to forge its own path in the EV market by delivering the first all-electric pickup truck to customers as well.
Rivian aims to start deliveries of the R1T Launch Edition in June 2021. As such, the Rivian R1T will be the first all-electric pickup truck to hit the market. Rivian told Teslarati that it has started contacting reservation holders in preparation for deliveries. Along with the start of deliveries, Rivian plans to launch a 4-month Demonstration Drive program across the United States to help new owners navigate their R1T pickup trucks.
The Tesla Cybertruck will be produced in Gigafactory Texas, which has been progressing rather quickly. Tesla has also started reaching out to Cybertruck reservation holders and reiterating its late 2021 delivery goal for the Tri-Motor AWD and Dual-Motor AWD variants.
Ford still has about a year to go before producing the all-electric F-150 Lightning at its Rouge plant. The legacy automaker plans to produce four variants of the F-150 Lightning, including one specifically produced and priced for business owners. Ford has not listed the price of the Lariat or Platinum yet. However, it did state that the Lightning’s MSRP starts at $39,974 and goes up to $90,474.
When it comes to function and utility, each of the electric pickup trucks has its advantages. For instance, Rivian made the R1T for owners who seek adventures outdoors. To accommodate future R1T explorers, Rivian has included certain features like the Gear Tunnel for muddy or wet items and an air compressor with a maximum pressure of 150 psi for tires or inflatable items.
On the other hand, the Ford F-150 Lightning seems geared more towards business owners. Ford seems to know its customer base very well as it added certain details to the F-150 Lightning that would be useful on the job site, like enhanced zone lighting and a slew of power outlets both front and back.
In a unique twist, the OEM also built the F-150 Lightning with Ford Intelligent backup power, allowing the vehicle to off-board up to 9.6 kW of peak energy. Ford estimates that the F-150 Lightning can power an entire home for three days or up to ten days if the power is rationed. Its estimates are based on home usage of 30 kWh per day using the F-150 Lightning’s extended battery.
The Tesla Cybertruck seems to tread the middle ground compared to the Rivian R1T and the Ford F-150 Lightning. Each Cybertruck variant could meet the need of explorers or business owners. Tesla also has its unique software system for Cybertruck owners, which has become an ecosystem of its own with features like Camp Mode, Dog Mode, Sentry Mode, and Tesla Theater, among others.
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Elon Musk is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.
Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.
Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.
He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.
Given that AI from 2 years ago feels so old that it should be in a museum, then obviously AI 2 years from now will be mind-blowing https://t.co/TcsKZ8o8OE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2026
This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:
The progression in AI of Will Smith eating spaghetti (2023 – 2026) pic.twitter.com/VDv82mB5gs
— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) February 10, 2026
This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.
Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.
Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.
But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.
Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.
In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.
10 million vehicles produced globally.
Congrats to all Tesla teams! pic.twitter.com/JkcraR63bs— Tesla Manufacturing (@gigafactories) July 30, 2026
Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.
The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.
Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.
This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.
Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.
Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years
Tesla just built it 10 millionth car
