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Electrifying an Automotive Classic

Learn how University of Michigan Engineering alumni, Linda Zhang, has utilized her experience in manufacturing and engineering to become a driving force in the creation of an iconic electric vehicle — the F-150 Lighting.

“When you think of EVs, you don’t typically think of tough, of capable,” Zhang said  . “A lot of people immediately think of a vehicle like the early Prius models. To bring people out of that mindset, we really needed to be able to demonstrate that EVs can be tough and that electric power is just as powerful, if not more so, than mechanical power.”

Topics:
Automotive Electrification Power

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    Transcript

    00:00:05 the electric pickup is is a really hard nut to crack right because there's so much skepticism around evs in general we were basically taking the bread and butter of our products with f-150 and doing something a little bit brand new with it so it was important to have someone that that understood the importance of that [Music]

    00:00:28 the fact that i have such a well-rounded background between engineering manufacturing as well as the business side of things really helped me in the role right because it really basically gave me that leg up in a way to make this product a success [Music] to me i always loved electrical engineering because in a way it's unseen

    00:01:08 it's a little mystical and it's almost like magic how that you know electrons move so i felt like it was also a really great area where it was just growing and there was a lot of opportunity to learn [Music] i did have great parents that were able to help guide me in terms of my crazy curious questions about how things

    00:01:33 worked but then also guide me in that academic path of what i might need to be able to be a successful engineer i look back on all of the things that i learned here and i realized how critical it was in terms of how to think about problems how to solve problems i think that's what's great about an engineering education in a way is it lets you explore how you think about

    00:01:58 things and solve problems [Applause] the one thing i would point out is you know the ambient noise this is the normal level of the operation right we don't have chains we don't have the pallets so whatever you hear is for the most part just going to be more people than anything else yes yes so we have um

    00:02:23 for me i try to put my head down and just deliver the best product but i do understand also the the significance of what we are trying to do here with the f-150 lightning we really needed to prove to customers that it can do the same things that a truck can do that it can be tough it can work it can play [Music]

    00:02:48 i'm really really really lucky to be able to work on such an awesome and profound project you know taking that icon and really being able to be that inflection point in many people's vision of what a av could be and that they don't have to sacrifice anything to get there the job's never done as an engineer

    00:03:14 there's there's always opportunities for improving there's always opportunities for for helping that customer experience for me it's all about what can we do to improve people's lives with whatever product that you're working on you