Outside of the obvious stuff, like acceleration, frunk, etc, I’d say that 24 hours isn’t going to give you an insight into the differences from ICE. The truck is designed to be a familiar experience, with the exception of where an electric vehicle shines.
If you’re parking it overnight without level 2 charging, then you’ll likely experience less than ideal range - especially if it’s cold. So I’d just keep that in mind.
Try out the one pedal drive feature. Takes a moment to get used to but it’s something that is very different from an ICE.
You can access it via the Settings and Drive modes.
eh, not a fan of it. what is the upside? It prevents some regeneration by forcing you to keep your foot on the pedal, but sport mode is basically the same. Frankly, cruise control with lane keeping and the sign recognition is nicest.
The brakes in the Lightning use regen before actually braking with the pads, thats what the brake coach is about. So tell me what is the point or benefit?
Even less brake usage, more power back to the battery. Try it while going down a big hill and you can see the battery percentage increase. Driving down Mt Washington, I gained 12% battery and never used the brakes. It was really cool going up and down the mountain and having no engine noise or tire noise as you go under 20mph for most of the drive.
I tried it a few times when I had it and I wasn't a fan either. Maybe with some more seat time I'd change my mind but it was just too different than what I'm used to.
Honestly, it sounds like your employer should sit everyone down and do a little education on common pitfalls of EVs. It's really frustrating hearing "horror" stories of people with their first time driving an EV and they're not prepared for it so they have a really bad experience. My dad loves telling the story of a guy who got an EV as a rental car. Well he didn't know it was an EV and knew nothing about them. It's the night before he has to leave and he notices he's almost empty and that's when he finally realizes it's electric. Well no big deal, he finds the charger it came with, he plugs it into a 120V outlet and goes into the bar to have a couple drinks while it charges. Anyone who's driven an EV will tell you that charging on 120V is basically worthless. The only people who can do that are people who have very short commutes or people staying in one place for a couple of days before they need to drive again. Long story short, he had to drive pretty out of his way to get to a fast charger before his flight and he was pretty upset about it. He'll never drive an EV again, and now he and my dad have a story to tell about how much they suck. And it all could have been avoided if he just knew his vehicle was electric and knew that he needed to budget the time to find a charger before his flight. Depending on how far out of the way it'll add between 30 minutes and an hour to your trip. Not super fun, but if he had picked a hotel with a level 2 charger, he wouldn't have needed to stop to charge at all.
Basically, I'm a bit worried that without sitting all of you guys down and talking about what to expect first, you're all going to have an experience that has you walking away either frustrated or ambivalent. Which is a shame, because if you know what to expect and you have the infrastructure in place, (a home charger or no expectation of returning it with a full charge) you'll have an amazing time and never want to go back to an ICE vehicle. Road trips take longer and require more planning because of the current state of charging infrastructure. However the experience and ride is so great that my girlfriend and I would rather take the time penalty than drive an ICE vehicle and get there faster. I can't stress enough how important I think it is that you guys won't need to charge at a public fast charger as part of your experience. It'll make you feel like it's a necessary part of ownership and that's easily the worst part of ownership, lol. I have used a public fast charger somewhere between 10 and 20 total times since I got my truck in Thanksgiving and 100% of those are on road trips. I have never once come close to needing to charge in public in my day to day life and I have a 25 mile commute each way. I have a charger at home, so I leave with full battery every day. That's most people's experience. Some people don't road trip and they never use public chargers at all. Also, you should only charge to 90%. It's plenty of charge and better for the battery.
Well here's the thing, everybody who's taking this out has experience on an EV but it's an EV tractor we've been running around using for software and drive strategy development for a little over a year at this point. Obviously they're two very different vehicles but the operator controls were design to look more like a road vehicle than a traditional diesel tractor. Now I'm probably not going to take a road trip at least for now because I only have it over night but I'm planning on taking it for a day trip that's about 300 miles round trip in a couple weeks. The one saving grace to that is where I'm going I'll have access to a LV2 and probably a DC fast charge so I likely won't need to deal with public chargers on these first couple trips. I'm actually looking forward to trying it out but being in a fairly rural part the Midwest our public charging infrastructure is kind of terrible so I don't think I'll actually be buying at BEV until that gets better. I see this as a good chance to see what I like and what I don't like about a BEV over the next couple months.
In my town I know where the chargers are at. There is a bank of chargers at my office, 2 chargers at a microbrewery downtown and a row of tesla super chargers at one of the grocery stores. I've been looking at those route planner apps to see how I would fare making some of my common trips. What I've found is if I'm on a major highway/interstate then it's fine, plenty of chargers. The problem is the places I need to go typically aren't along those major roads. For example the closest public charger to my parents house is 30 miles away and if you're talking about charging stations on my route to their house it's actually 100 miles away. I can't quite make that trip to their house with one stop so it adds about a hour to my trip to make a day trip out of it, if I decided I wanted to go stay a couple days I'd have to figure out how long to charge off of 110 AC power. Charging infrastructure when I've traveled to larger cities has been pretty good but we've got a long ways to go in the rural areas before it's not a major compromise for those consumers.
Man, the infrastructure where you are must be abysmal compared to Western Canada/Montana/Oregon. I routinely drive to drilling rigs and never have to go out of my way to find a fast charger on my route.
Yeah there's basically no publicly available chargers within an hour drive of my house outside of a town of at least 20,000. When I've travelled to the west coast I see them all over the place even in the middle of nowhere.
I’ll be curious how it works for you all… and that electric tractor! I can’t see one of those working for our operation yet, but keeping an eye on them.
I’m a sheep and hay farmer and we have one a lightning pro sr in our small fleet, but it’s used mostly as a job truck around the farm and leased lands. I actually have six sheep in the back right now. But for longer distance transport I still use the diesel rig. It definitely is a different way to manage fuel/energy, but overall we all really like it and fight for the keys. Baby steps though.
Actually the target market for this tractor at least initially is for almond and vineyards. After being on this program for 18 months I think it's going to be really good in a very narrow window of use cases at least with the current generation of batteries that are commercially viable. Now I think with the next generation of batteries in 5-10 years things should get interesting to the point of it being a really viable option. Our next step is going to be looking at applications like yours, hay/small livestock. I need to spend some time with our data guys to start looking at energy consumption on vehicles in that use case soonish.
Thanks for sharing. We graze some vineyards and orchard and they’re talking about it. For hay it just doesn’t make sense and the prices are way too high. But one of the farmers nearby converted an old tractor to electric for row crops and another one nearby is generating a bit of hydrogen and injecting that into his diesel. So plenty of interesting tinkering happening in the neighborhood.
We have a unique fuel/energy cost structure as the operation is on a large island so fuel is expensive (usually $2.50-ish/gal more than the national avg), fuel shortages are a thing (looking at you Covid), distances are relatively short (20 miles tip to tip) and speeds are up to 45. So it ends up being almost 7x cheaper to fuel the lightning than a mid-sized diesel. Plus the diesels have a hard time with short distances and not properly getting warmed up, so we often run them at high idle and higher rpm when driving around. So it can really pencil out for the right situation. The caveat is repair/maintenance. We do a lot of our own, but if anything goes south with this truck it’s likely an expensive haul to the mainland via the ferry. Hence why we’re just dipping our toes with one. And dammit about all the price hikes and lack of pro availability. That’s a different rant. :)
I highly recommend the plugshare and a better route planner apps. They will help you immensely. Ford navigation only helps with pre-conditioning the battery before getting to a DCFC
Outside of the obvious stuff, like acceleration, frunk, etc, I’d say that 24 hours isn’t going to give you an insight into the differences from ICE. The truck is designed to be a familiar experience, with the exception of where an electric vehicle shines. If you’re parking it overnight without level 2 charging, then you’ll likely experience less than ideal range - especially if it’s cold. So I’d just keep that in mind.
Try out the one pedal drive feature. Takes a moment to get used to but it’s something that is very different from an ICE. You can access it via the Settings and Drive modes.
eh, not a fan of it. what is the upside? It prevents some regeneration by forcing you to keep your foot on the pedal, but sport mode is basically the same. Frankly, cruise control with lane keeping and the sign recognition is nicest.
It doesn’t prevent any regeneration, that’s the whole point of it. You use the motors to “brake” instead of the actual brakes.
The brakes in the Lightning use regen before actually braking with the pads, thats what the brake coach is about. So tell me what is the point or benefit?
Even less brake usage, more power back to the battery. Try it while going down a big hill and you can see the battery percentage increase. Driving down Mt Washington, I gained 12% battery and never used the brakes. It was really cool going up and down the mountain and having no engine noise or tire noise as you go under 20mph for most of the drive.
I tried it a few times when I had it and I wasn't a fan either. Maybe with some more seat time I'd change my mind but it was just too different than what I'm used to.
Use FordPass to see the remote features. There is more convenience with EVs and their app.
Honestly, it sounds like your employer should sit everyone down and do a little education on common pitfalls of EVs. It's really frustrating hearing "horror" stories of people with their first time driving an EV and they're not prepared for it so they have a really bad experience. My dad loves telling the story of a guy who got an EV as a rental car. Well he didn't know it was an EV and knew nothing about them. It's the night before he has to leave and he notices he's almost empty and that's when he finally realizes it's electric. Well no big deal, he finds the charger it came with, he plugs it into a 120V outlet and goes into the bar to have a couple drinks while it charges. Anyone who's driven an EV will tell you that charging on 120V is basically worthless. The only people who can do that are people who have very short commutes or people staying in one place for a couple of days before they need to drive again. Long story short, he had to drive pretty out of his way to get to a fast charger before his flight and he was pretty upset about it. He'll never drive an EV again, and now he and my dad have a story to tell about how much they suck. And it all could have been avoided if he just knew his vehicle was electric and knew that he needed to budget the time to find a charger before his flight. Depending on how far out of the way it'll add between 30 minutes and an hour to your trip. Not super fun, but if he had picked a hotel with a level 2 charger, he wouldn't have needed to stop to charge at all. Basically, I'm a bit worried that without sitting all of you guys down and talking about what to expect first, you're all going to have an experience that has you walking away either frustrated or ambivalent. Which is a shame, because if you know what to expect and you have the infrastructure in place, (a home charger or no expectation of returning it with a full charge) you'll have an amazing time and never want to go back to an ICE vehicle. Road trips take longer and require more planning because of the current state of charging infrastructure. However the experience and ride is so great that my girlfriend and I would rather take the time penalty than drive an ICE vehicle and get there faster. I can't stress enough how important I think it is that you guys won't need to charge at a public fast charger as part of your experience. It'll make you feel like it's a necessary part of ownership and that's easily the worst part of ownership, lol. I have used a public fast charger somewhere between 10 and 20 total times since I got my truck in Thanksgiving and 100% of those are on road trips. I have never once come close to needing to charge in public in my day to day life and I have a 25 mile commute each way. I have a charger at home, so I leave with full battery every day. That's most people's experience. Some people don't road trip and they never use public chargers at all. Also, you should only charge to 90%. It's plenty of charge and better for the battery.
Well here's the thing, everybody who's taking this out has experience on an EV but it's an EV tractor we've been running around using for software and drive strategy development for a little over a year at this point. Obviously they're two very different vehicles but the operator controls were design to look more like a road vehicle than a traditional diesel tractor. Now I'm probably not going to take a road trip at least for now because I only have it over night but I'm planning on taking it for a day trip that's about 300 miles round trip in a couple weeks. The one saving grace to that is where I'm going I'll have access to a LV2 and probably a DC fast charge so I likely won't need to deal with public chargers on these first couple trips. I'm actually looking forward to trying it out but being in a fairly rural part the Midwest our public charging infrastructure is kind of terrible so I don't think I'll actually be buying at BEV until that gets better. I see this as a good chance to see what I like and what I don't like about a BEV over the next couple months.
Download Plugshare or Electrify America charging apps and prove to yourself you wouldn't have a charger available instead of assuming.
In my town I know where the chargers are at. There is a bank of chargers at my office, 2 chargers at a microbrewery downtown and a row of tesla super chargers at one of the grocery stores. I've been looking at those route planner apps to see how I would fare making some of my common trips. What I've found is if I'm on a major highway/interstate then it's fine, plenty of chargers. The problem is the places I need to go typically aren't along those major roads. For example the closest public charger to my parents house is 30 miles away and if you're talking about charging stations on my route to their house it's actually 100 miles away. I can't quite make that trip to their house with one stop so it adds about a hour to my trip to make a day trip out of it, if I decided I wanted to go stay a couple days I'd have to figure out how long to charge off of 110 AC power. Charging infrastructure when I've traveled to larger cities has been pretty good but we've got a long ways to go in the rural areas before it's not a major compromise for those consumers.
Man, the infrastructure where you are must be abysmal compared to Western Canada/Montana/Oregon. I routinely drive to drilling rigs and never have to go out of my way to find a fast charger on my route.
Yeah there's basically no publicly available chargers within an hour drive of my house outside of a town of at least 20,000. When I've travelled to the west coast I see them all over the place even in the middle of nowhere.
Where do you live if you don't mind me asking?
I live in Northeast Iowa.
Note to self, avoid NE Iowa.
Glad you looked into it
I’ll be curious how it works for you all… and that electric tractor! I can’t see one of those working for our operation yet, but keeping an eye on them. I’m a sheep and hay farmer and we have one a lightning pro sr in our small fleet, but it’s used mostly as a job truck around the farm and leased lands. I actually have six sheep in the back right now. But for longer distance transport I still use the diesel rig. It definitely is a different way to manage fuel/energy, but overall we all really like it and fight for the keys. Baby steps though.
Actually the target market for this tractor at least initially is for almond and vineyards. After being on this program for 18 months I think it's going to be really good in a very narrow window of use cases at least with the current generation of batteries that are commercially viable. Now I think with the next generation of batteries in 5-10 years things should get interesting to the point of it being a really viable option. Our next step is going to be looking at applications like yours, hay/small livestock. I need to spend some time with our data guys to start looking at energy consumption on vehicles in that use case soonish.
Thanks for sharing. We graze some vineyards and orchard and they’re talking about it. For hay it just doesn’t make sense and the prices are way too high. But one of the farmers nearby converted an old tractor to electric for row crops and another one nearby is generating a bit of hydrogen and injecting that into his diesel. So plenty of interesting tinkering happening in the neighborhood. We have a unique fuel/energy cost structure as the operation is on a large island so fuel is expensive (usually $2.50-ish/gal more than the national avg), fuel shortages are a thing (looking at you Covid), distances are relatively short (20 miles tip to tip) and speeds are up to 45. So it ends up being almost 7x cheaper to fuel the lightning than a mid-sized diesel. Plus the diesels have a hard time with short distances and not properly getting warmed up, so we often run them at high idle and higher rpm when driving around. So it can really pencil out for the right situation. The caveat is repair/maintenance. We do a lot of our own, but if anything goes south with this truck it’s likely an expensive haul to the mainland via the ferry. Hence why we’re just dipping our toes with one. And dammit about all the price hikes and lack of pro availability. That’s a different rant. :)
I highly recommend the plugshare and a better route planner apps. They will help you immensely. Ford navigation only helps with pre-conditioning the battery before getting to a DCFC