2 weeks Ago By David Booth
Article content That $79,995 is actually considered ‘cheap’ by electric pickup standards says all we need to know about the ravages inflation has wrought on the automotive world — not to mention the difficulty of making battery-electrics price-competitive with their combustion equivalents. That said, the Lightning — especially this Flash variant — has much to recommend it. For one it handles a delight.
Having its substantial weight distributed better front-to-rear — not to mention lower in the chassis — has no ends to benefits. It is simultaneously more agile and more stable, the first afforded by the weight distribution, the second by the lower centre of gravity borne of the giant battery placed down low. It is also decidedly more powerful than anything else wearing F-150 badging, there being 580 horsepower and 775 pound-feet of torque.
Think round about four seconds to 100 kilometres an hour and less than 13 seconds in the quarter-mile. That means that it’s quicker than a Porsche 911 Carrera and, if you wanna wax nostalgic, pretty much any muscle car you worship from the ‘60s or ‘70s. My favourite part is that, if you punch it below about 60 km/h, it’ll squeal one (or more) of its big Goodyear Territory 175/60R20s.
The interior is both commodious and rich. About the only serious omission compared with the Lariat version of the Lightning is the bounty of leather that usually covers pretty much everything. There are a few other notable differences — the Lariat boasts a moonroof, power-adjustable pedals and steering wheel, power tailigate, and an Advanced Security Pack that the Flash lacks — but I suspect that the lack of leather will be most noticeable in the showroom.
The Flash also lacks the Lariat’s rain-sensing wipers, illuminated sun visors, power-folding mirrors and premium front grille which, I suspect, will not be anywhere near as lamented for their loss. On the other hand, it does include the larger 15.4-inch screen for the infotainment system while its ICE equivalent — the XLT powered by a 3.
5L EcoBoost V6 — makes do with a 12-incher. Ford’s Sync system is more than a little busy, and the screen is mounted, Tesla-like, in portrait profile. In other words, the larger screen is appreciated because the 12.
0 would seem more than a mite busy. The cabin, as you’d expect from an electric vehicle, is much quieter. That, too, is appreciated.
Pickups never have as much sound-deadening material as their passenger-car siblings, and their extra avoirdupois means their engines have to strain harder. The Lightning is noticeably quieter than a base F-150 — moreso, relatively speaking, than a typical battery-powered sedan might hush compared with its base gas-powered equivalent. Wrap it all up — not forgetting things like the ability to power devices and even a home using its big battery — and, as an everyday urban commuter, the Lightning is superior to any F-150 variant I have ever tested.
That’s a good thing, because when you start hauling — both literally and figuratively — things do go down hill. Battery talk The Extended Range version of the F-150 Lightning is powered by a 150-kilowatt-hour battery. That’s not the spec you’ve read in reviews or the one Ford of Canada claims in its spec sheets and advertising, because the battery’s usable energy is limited 131-kWh.
That means Ford has built in a 19-kWh “buffer” for battery longevity. That’s quite a lot of “protection.” The first thing you should know is that all manufacturers build this margin into their batteries.
Discharge a battery too far and there’s a distinct possibility that it will not recharge. Similarly, as lithium-ion chemistry is charged to its peak, the process becomes less efficient and generates more heat. So, there’s nothing unusual about Ford building a buffer zone into its 150-kWh Extended Range battery.
What is unusual — and the reason for this lengthy explanation — is that those 19-kilowatt-hours are the biggest buffer zone Range Finder has ever seen. Some manufacturers — admittedly on smaller batteries — only provide a 4.0-kWh safety zone, but even on a percentage-of-total-capacity basis, the F-150’s buffer is about twice as big as anything this side of a GMC Hummer .
The reason that may be important is that, should Ford become more confident about its battery’s durability, it could easily increase the Lightning’s range — perhaps even with an over-the-air update. Indeed, Ford already made a similar upgrade to its Mustang Mach-E . If the company could squeeze another 10-kWH without risking damage, that might result in as many as 25 more kilometres in our Range Finder testing and as many as 40 km in NRCan’s official range estimates.
Range Finder The F-150 Lightning managed 328 kilometres out of it 131-kilowatt-hour battery. That’s not hardly the 515 kilometres that Natural Resources Canada rates it for. In fact, the spread between that 515-km rating and the 328 klicks we achieved — again, our testing is conducted on Ontario’s Highway 407 between Toronto and Peterborough, and is always performed on dry roads with a temperature ranging from 15-30oC with cruise set at 120 km/h — is among the largest deltas we’ve seen in our Range Finder testing.
It’s also a far cry from the 450 or so kilometres the Lightning can knock off in lower speed, urban driving. That said, for veracity’s sake, I repeated the process at the same speeds on the same road a second time and eked out 325 klicks. That’s less than a 1% differential between tests, which would pass muster by anyone’s measure.
The reason for that glaring difference between official ratings and our test result is that the F-150 is not only heavy, but pretty much a bluff body. Its squarish lines are pretty much the opposite of the raindrop shape that provides the least aerodynamic resistance. All vehicles use more fuel or energy the faster they go, but none see as large an increase as a big pickup or SUV.
That’s why, at 125 km/h, the Lightning uses almost bang-on 40 kilowatt-hours of electricity for every 100 kilometres traveled. That’s more than twice as much as a Lucid Air , which, while not as large as the F-150, is not nearly a small car. Indeed, the only vehicle we’ve tested that consumes more kilowatt-hours than the Lightning is GMC’s Hummer EV , which, if, anything, is even blockier and is certainly much heavier than Ford’s pickup.
Worse yet are the results when towing. Depending on whose test you believe, the expected range could be half (according to Edmunds ) or one-third ( Car and Driver ) of the official rating. That would mean that, optimistically, the longest you could haul a trailer in a Lightning would be about 250 klicks.
If you’re driving a little faster (70 miles per hour, or 112 km/h) and hauling a full 10,000-pound trailer — as C/D did — you might only be good for 175 kilometres. If you’re looking for the reason that battery power hasn’t taken over the truck segment, wonder no more. Charging According to EVKX , the Lightning offers consistent charging, if not overly rapid.
Unlike many EVs, it charges fast right out of the gate, reaching 145 kilowatts at 1% State of Charge (SoC). That’s almost unheard of; most manufacturers gradually ramp up the charging rate. It also reaches its peak charging rate — 160 kW — at 11% SoC.
That may not be the top peak charging we’ve seen — Porsche’s Taycan will suck lithium-ions up at twice that rate — but it is, again, earlier in the charging cycle. The problem is that, at 12% SoC — yes, one measly percentage point after its peak — charging drops off a cliff and plummets to 129 kW. That said drop is early in the charging cycle is also unique.
From 11% to 80%, the Lightning’s charging then maintains a small but steady decrease to 105 kW, where charging again — like so many other EVs — drops off another cliff to 59 kW, before falling below 20 kW after 95% SoC. The end result, according to EVKX, is that charging from 10% to 80% SoC takes a tad under 50 minutes on a DC fast charger at an average charging speed of 109 kW. At Range Finder’s predicted highway mileage, that would mean a return of 230 kilometres.
That works out to a return 276 kilometres an hour, not exactly record-shattering charging That said, what is unique about the Lightning is that, were you brave enough to run the battery down to near-zero, it would take but five minutes more than that 10%-to-80% figure to charge from 1% to 80% SoC. Again, that’s unusual, because the Ford charges so (relatively) rapidly at the beginning of its cycle. Final thoughts The Lightning, in its many guises, is an impressive piece of kit.
In fact, by most performance metrics, it is vastly superior to the gas- and diesel-powered versions of the Ford’s popular pickup. Not only is it cleaner and faster — both qualities we’ve come to expect from electric vehicles — it handles better, rides more comfortably, and is so much quieter inside that you’d swear you’re riding in a luxury SUV rather than a supposedly work-a-day truck. Were I not doing anything truck-like, such as hauling and/or towing for significant distances, it would be, by far, the lifestyle truck I’d recommend.
The problem, of course, is that its highway range is the antithesis of what we expect of a big, full-sized truck; its range while towing is a straight deal-breaker for anyone hauling anything from horses to Ski-doos. This isn’t a weakness unique to Ford’s battery-powered truck: all electrified pickups (and their full-sized SUV siblings) are equally handicapped when it comes to towing. The even bigger problem is that despite the many predictions of future improvements in battery technology, this towing deficiency compared with gas- and diesel-powered vehicles is unlikely to be remedied.
As I mentioned in a recent Motor Mouth, simply building bigger batteries will not be the panacea everyone thinks. Double the size of the battery and while you may double the range, you’re also doubling the cost of a battery that probably costs Ford some US$20,000. It will also require incredibly fast charging in order to prove useful on the highway while towing.
What remains is an ideal vehicle for the suburban commuter. As I said, if you’re shopping for a big-city truck that’s unlikely to travel far, the electrified F-150 is a great choice. On the other hand, it can’t tow across any distance worth a damn.
Read between the lines, and that makes the Lightning the perfect vehicle for everything you shouldn’t do with a pickup, but not nearly good enough at the things a truck is supposed to do. The only redeeming virtue to this conundrum is that a lot more people buy trucks these days for the wrong reasons than the right ones. Which makes me wonder why the Lightning isn’t more popular than it is.
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