SEBASTOPOL, Calif. — Steve Dutton can't get his hands on an electric pickup fast enough.
The fifth-generation northern California farmer and his family grow wine grapes and apples on a 1,400-acre ranch in this Sonoma County farming community. As part of a just-announced pilot program, Ford Motor Co. will equip Dutton Ranch and two other farms in the county with electric trucks, E-Transit cargo vans, charging stations and software services. Dutton hopes to have an F-150 Lightning Pro soon — and that's when he'll really start to see the impact of moving to an electric, digitally enhanced vehicle fleet.
"The benefit is going to be when we can buy a Lightning and replace this truck," he said of one of the 70 or so fossil fuel-powered vans and trucks that move workers, equipment and goods across dozens of work sites on the farm each day.
