Ford F-150 Taillights Have A Feature Previously Unknown In All Of Taillightdom

Jalopink ^ | 13 Oct 2021 | Jason Torchinsky

[DUMBGRUNT]

I have to hand it to Ford: This is a genuinely new and unprecedented use of taillights

...A lone figure, an older woman, rose up from the pile of broken chairs and shattered taillight lenses. “New F-150 taillights do something no taillight has ever done before!”

Here’s what those lights are indicating: weight. Yes, weight. Ford has a system they introduced earlier this year called Onboard Scales. It weighs how much is being loaded into the truck and then displays that as a little four-part graph in the taillights, based on the truck’s payload capacity, so you can see easily how much more you can load, right there by the back of the truck. No outside scales necessary.

Smart taillamps operate like the battery charge indicator on a mobile phone, displaying the percentage of payload capacity by illuminating LEDs arranged in a built-in vertical bar. As the truck is loaded, all four lights illuminate,

[LizzieD]

Used to know a guy who ran a steel stud operation, turning sheet steel into building studs. One night thieves tried rolling a coil of steel off a flatbed into their pickup...it didn’t go well; the steel coil annihilated the pickup. Don’t think this gadget would’ve helped...

[MrLucky1966]

After a month the dash went dark, covered under warranty, the replacement cost was about a third the cost of the car. He showed us all the receipts.

Yeah, I know, they can have their downside too. I remember my cousin's 1984 Nissan 200SX had a digital dashboard and he also had the warning voice too. Even so, I sort of like the retro-futuristic look of those dashboards. I know a lot of today's cars also have electro-luminescent dashboards, something Imperial and Dodge had tried in some of their 1960 t0 1966 models.

[DUMBGRUNT]

Yes, they do look cool!

That said, I HATE working under a dash!
And not wild about pulling one either.

Then I jumped down the rabbit’s hole for a look at some EL.

Ended up reading about EL repair, fun stuff and I admire the guys with that talent.
http://teamchicago.com/Imperial/imp-el.htm

“The needles on your gauges are supposed to glow too. If some don’t, then look for a really tiny little wire in each gauge that has broken off from the needle. You may reattach it with electrical solder, and a precision solder iron. “

I read that and think “OH CRAP!”, the needle swings on a hairspring!
I have a nice soldering iron but mostly use it on a bench.
And it’s not like I’ve never used a flashlight taped to the dash or extended the glovebox lamp to the dash to drive at night.

This is like doing microsurgery!...

Thanks!
That was a fun trip down the rabbit hole.

[MrLucky1966]

Interesting story there. It is interesting that there were some cars as far back as the 1950’s and 1960’s that were quite advanced for their time.