Ford Lightning - What'cha think about it?

[mcgaskins]

Loving all the "normal" people getting EVs and being blown away by the actual real world performance...and not in a good way:

Not all EVs are the same in cold weather. Last week I picked up a Rivian R1S in Brooklyn showing 97% state of charge and 300 miles of range remaining, and I drove 219 miles to Boston and arrived with 92 miles of range remaining. It was in the low 40s and high 30s, and I had the heated seat and steering wheel on the entire time and used the heater for about 2 hours of the drive after the sun went down. Two big things helped - the Rivian has conserve mode which uses just the front motors and turns off the rear motors (and lowers the vehicle for better aero), and I ran into quite a few places of stop and go traffic where regen helped increase the range a little bit. I never had to stop for a charge, and when I got to my hotel in Boston there was a free level 2 charger in the garage. Extremely easy and convenient road trip.

 

[Stuckinthe80s]

I am really, really looking forward to seeing more and more EVs put to the test like this. Regular people just trying to get their job done; will the batteries last through the work-day, will the chargers be reliable enough? Right now only 1% of cars on the road in the USA are electric, by far the most in the history ever, but still only 1%.

I totally agree. We need more data and I can't think of a better environment to get real-world data from. If more municipalities make this switch, then maybe we can close the feedback loop a lot quicker. There are going to be mistakes made in the manufacturing process but there's no way to predict every scenario that those mistakes will manifest themselves into failures.

Additionally, there needs to be some more incentive for infrastructure if all of this is going to work. If cities switch over to electric fleet vehicles, then they should be more motivated to get more charging stations installed.

 

[Notyourmomslx450]

I saw my first one in the wild today.

 

[Stuckinthe80s]

First time I've seen the driveline setup and they definitely dont have any ground clearance.

 

[Notyourmomslx450]

First time I've seen the driveline setup and they definitely dont have any ground clearance.
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That’s how I knew it was an EV. First thing I said to myself was that don’t look right.

 

[J1000]

We have one at work lol

I’ll never be allowed to drive it but apparently the government has a mandate that x% of vehicles purchased have to be electric. The tech ops (or someone) folks needed a truck. Bam government Ford lightning lol

Let us know when it hits the city auction!