Ford plotting mini F-150 Lightning

Ford is secretly developing a second pure-electric pick-up truck to sit beneath the recently revealed Ford F-150 Lightning – and it could be based on the forthcoming Australian-developed Ford Ranger T7 platform.

Tweeting a picture in response to a question on whether or not there would be a battery-powered version of the new 2021 Ford Maverick, the Blue Oval brand's North American PR boss, Mike Levine, showed the outline of what is a clearly a sub-F-150 ute that will feature battery power.

No other details were given, but the outline of the snub-nosed pick-up has sparked rumours that it comes from an official Ford presentation for future models and features a pure-electric version of a Ford Ranger-sized ute.

If so, the pure-electric powertrain will appear on the next-generation Ford Ranger that is being developed alongside the second-gen Volkswagen Amarok.

Set to be revealed in the second half of this year before going on sale globally in early 2022, the T7 Ford Ranger is unlikely to offer an electric version from launch.

It's also still to be officially confirmed whether the electric ute will be based on a modified version of the T6 evo platform or the next-gen T7, but it's believed either ladder-frame chassis would be far more feasible than adapting the C2 platform upon which the Maverick is based.

No other details or a timeline have been released on the baby Ford Lightning.

Meanwhile, the full-size pure-electric Ford F-150 Lightning has snapped up more than 100,000 pre-orders since the US car-maker invited prospective customers to place a $US100 ($A128) deposit to reserve the model late in May.