What We Plugged Into Our Ford F-150 and How It Performed

We chose the redesigned Ford F-150 as our Best Pickup Truck of 2021 on its merits as a great full-size truck, but the available hybrid powertrain option definitely played into our naming it Cars.com’s overall Best of 2021 award winner and our decision to buy one for extended evaluation. The sweetener of the hybrid system is the standard Pro Power Onboard generator system, which provides 2.4 kilowatts or, optionally, 7.2 kilowatts at 120 volts to power practically any household tool or appliance and 240 volts to power a healthy list of commercial tools, or even an entire camper. There are outlets in the cargo bed wall, eliminating the need to carry a separate generator and gas supply — a benefit beyond the efficiency for which hybrid powertrains are desired. This value add expands the powertrain’s appeal, as Pro Power Onboard will continue to do in the upcoming all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup, which can automatically provide backup power to a home if you’re willing to foot the installation bill.

With so much experience behind us, we figured we’d gather in one list the notable items we plugged into our optional 7.2-kW Pro Power Onboard to explain how it worked and the few places it failed.

Hair Dryer

The first thing plugged into our system was a 1,500-watt hair dryer, which we used to soften and remove the dealer badge from the tailgate because we don’t recall receiving a discount for advertising the seller after the transaction. A 1,500-watt hair dryer is a demanding load that perfectly illustrates how different Pro Power Onboard is from the outlets you usually find inside vehicles; those usually top out at around 150 watts. The highest we’ve seen is 400 watts, including the one in our 2022 Ford Maverick’s bed. That’s all rookie ball. The F-150 hybrid’s 120-volt Pro Power Onboard outlets are rated for 20 amps, which means 2,400 watts.

Airstream Flying Cloud 25FB Camper

As we reported separately, Pro Power Onboard came through with powering an Airstream Flying Cloud 25FB camper trailer and its dual air conditioning units in steamy Tennessee. The only problem was how the engine shook the camper when it cycled on.

Ford Mustang Mach-E

We also successfully charged an electric vehicle, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, with the F-150, though our two options were overloading the system and tripping the breaker or charging at a lower-than-ideal rate. Neither of these things were the truck’s fault, as we detail in the report.

Miller Millermatic 141 MIG Welder

Senior Research Editor Mike Hanley plugged the pictured Miller Millermatic 141 MIG welder into the system in hopes of repairing the exhaust header of his team’s entrant at a 24 Hours of Lemons race, but it kept tripping the breaker, even after dialing down the unit’s output. Though it was a 120-volt 15.5-amp welder, Mike later dug deeper and found that Miller recommends generators with 4.5 kW of output. No 120-volt household outlet has 40 amps, so we suspect this means Pro Power Onboard’s 20-amp circuit breaker is a bit sensitive and couldn’t handle the initial startup demand of the welder. Ironically, a less sophisticated conventional generator might have worked.

Home Backup

Two of our editors took advantage of the F-150 for light home backup while getting EV chargers installed, which required the power to be cut for a few hours. One simply kept the internet up and running while the other maintained the internet and two home offices — as well as a Whynter portable air conditioner (11,000 British thermal units) for spousal comfort.

Below is a list of a few more notable items Pro Power Onboard powered without a glitch:

• Black & Decker Lawn Hog lawn mower
• Toro Ultra 12-amp leaf blower
• DeWalt 10-inch job-site table saw
• Skilsaw 12-amp circular saw
• Craftsman 1.5-gallon air compressor
• Craftsman 6-gallon pancake air compressor
• 1,200-watt quartz space heater
• Shopcraft 10-inch band saw
• Dyna-Glo 210,000-Btu kerosene torpedo heater
• Shop-Vac 3.5-horsepower wet/dry vacuum

How Clean Is Pro Power Onboard’s Power?

I didn’t plug this Tektronix TDS420A digitizing oscilloscope into the truck’s power, but I did use it to see what Pro Power Onboard’s alternating current looked like, and I was impressed. The sinewave shown on the display was almost perfect and remained that way under load — clean and actually more symmetrical than what I was seeing from my home electric utility at the time. By contrast, the waveform from outlets found in most vehicles, including the Maverick’s mentioned above, look more like Klingon script. I was also appalled to find that my portable backup generator, a vaunted Honda inverter type, had some errant spikes of its own.

The low-power outlets in most vehicles are meant merely to power electronics, not motors, so they can get by with dodgy AC. The difference is that those outlets have cheapo inverters behind them that convert the vehicle’s DC to AC. Pro Power Onboard uses high-quality, high-current electronics to achieve the same ends from the F-150’s higher-voltage hybrid powertrain. The upside to any inverter generator, be it this one or my Honda, is that the engine runs only as fast as it needs to for the power demanded. In the truck’s case, the engine can even turn off. Out of curiosity, I metered the voltage to see if it changed when the engine turned on or off, and it remained stock-still at 120 volts.

The steadiness of the voltage and the clean sinewave mean Pro Power Onboard’s inverter power should be as safe for sensitive electronics as it is appropriate for power-hungry motors. More than a year into our ownership of the F-150, Pro Power Onboard is probably our favorite feature. If Ford made it more resistant to transient startup spikes like those from Mike’s MIG welder, it would be even better.

More From Cars.com:

• • We Bought a 2021 Ford F-150: See How Much We Paid
  • What’s It Like to Drive a Hybrid Plug-In Ford F-150?
  • What You Get in a $75,000 Ford F-150 Limited, and What Else to Consider
  • Our 2021 F-150 Had Problems After 9 Days, 242 Miles
  • See the Rust Under Our Brand-New 2021 Ford F-150
  • Read More About Our 2021 F-150

Related Video:

Cars.com’s Editorial department is your source for automotive news and reviews. In line with Cars.com’s long-standing ethics policy, editors and reviewers don’t accept gifts or free trips from automakers. The Editorial department is independent of Cars.com’s advertising, sales and sponsored content departments.