First 1000 mile Road Trip in my Lightning Lariat ER Extended Range

[detansinn]

I took delivery of my F150 Lightning Lariat extended range a couple of weeks. I thought that I would share some of my travel notes. I have experience EV road tripping in various Teslas, Mini Cooper SE, Porsche Taycan, and even the HD Livewire.

• The charging curve of the Lightning ER is pretty good. While it’s not Taycan fast (really, what is) I saw rates north of 170 and it carries those rates up to 60%. I was quite happy with it.
• I tend to go for more frequent short stops in my route planning to take advantage of the charging curves. I did a couple of 10 minute charging stops along my journey, because you only need enough charge to get to the next step.
• I don’t bother with the navigation route planning. I hopscotch my route using what I research in the Plugshare and ABRP apps. With that being said, Ford’s system is pretty slick.
• My drive took me through temps of 80F to 30F. Some of the temp changes were sudden changes in the mountains. Guess-o-meter is pretty good, if not pessimistic on temperature-based range changes.
• Between fast driving and temperature changes, my guess-o-meter has gotten really pessimistic. I am showing 218 miles at 90% charge this morning. It’s good to know that even with some aggressive driving and cold temps, the ER battery still makes for a 200 mile plus machine.
• I remain convinced that one pedal driving is suboptimal for highway driving, so I don’t run with it enabled.
• I put over 26k miles on my Taycan in eight months. I’ve got another 1000 mile trip on deck next week for the F150. Looking forward to it.
• I did this same 1000 mile trip in an 2023 ICE F150 XLT earlier this year. My charging costs tracked to about 30% of what I paid in gasoline, which isn’t bad at all.
• I used Electrify America and Chargepoint DC chargers for this trip.
• I ran into a new Model 3 owner at an Electrify America charger that had about 3 miles range left. They didn’t have a CCS adapter and pulled in out of desperation. I pointed them to a supercharger that was 5 miles away and told them to turn off all of their HVAC, keep the windows up and go for it.

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[RickLightning]

Using Ford nav would precondition battery for the 30 degree charging....

 

[detansinn]

Using Ford nav would precondition battery for the 30 degree charging....

To be clear, I use the Ford navigation to navigate to the chargers. So, I get the benefit of the preconditioning without using the route planning.

 

[Zprime29]

I forget which adapter we need to use our mobile charger with ProPower. That tesla could've plugged in for a couple minutes to get a little extra juice for that SC.

Did you use hands free blue cruise at all?

 

[detansinn]

I forget which adapter we need to use our mobile charger with ProPower. That tesla could've plugged in for a couple minutes to get a little extra juice for that SC.

Did you use hands free blue cruise at all?

I have the adapter for the 240V outlet to use with the portable charger, but I don’t keep a J1772 to Tesla adapter with me. I might order one so that I can be a Good Samaritan in the future.

I used Blue Cruise extensively. It’s pretty great to be truly hands-free and a wonderful thing for when you are stuck in traffic.

 

[Zprime29]

I was surprised at how much more relaxed I was after my trip, despite it taking a little longer than usual. I think the combination of frequent stops and the hands free cruising took a lot of the stress away. I look forward to making more road trips with it.

 

[Amps]

I forget which adapter we need to use our mobile charger with ProPower.

NEMA L14-30P to NEMA 14-50R

https://www.amazon.com/RVGUARD-Generator-Adapter-L14-30P-Indicator/dp/B085H7BPM7

 

[detansinn]

I was surprised at how much more relaxed I was after my trip, despite it taking a little longer than usual. I think the combination of frequent stops and the hands free cruising took a lot of the stress away. I look forward to making more road trips with it.

Agreed 100%. I do enjoy the cadence of an EV road trip.

 

[Maxx]

I have the adapter for the 240V outlet to use with the portable charger, but I don’t keep a J1772 to Tesla adapter with me. I might order one so that I can be a Good Samaritan in the future.

Would you be able to juice up the M3 while charging if you had the adapter?

 

[Zprime29]

Would you be able to juice up the M3 while charging if you had the adapter?

I wondered about that as well but in the end decided to assume that ProPower would be disabled while charging.

 

[Solar_EE]

I took delivery of my F150 Lightning Lariat extended range a couple of weeks. I thought that I would share some of my travel notes. I have experience EV road tripping in various Teslas, Mini Cooper SE, Porsche Taycan, and even the HD Livewire.

• The charging curve of the Lightning ER is pretty good. While it’s not Taycan fast (really, what is) I saw rates north of 170 and it carries those rates up to 60%. I was quite happy with it.
• I tend to go for more frequent short stops in my route planning to take advantage of the charging curves. I did a couple of 10 minute charging stops along my journey, because you only need enough charge to get to the next step.
• I don’t bother with the navigation route planning. I hopscotch my route using what I research in the Plugshare and ABRP apps. With that being said, Ford’s system is pretty slick.
• My drive took me through temps of 80F to 30F. Some of the temp changes were sudden changes in the mountains. Guess-o-meter is pretty good, if not pessimistic on temperature-based range changes.
• Between fast driving and temperature changes, my guess-o-meter has gotten really pessimistic. I am showing 218 miles at 90% charge this morning. It’s good to know that even with some aggressive driving and cold temps, the ER battery still makes for a 200 mile plus machine.
• I remain convinced that one pedal driving is suboptimal for highway driving, so I don’t run with it enabled.
• I put over 26k miles on my Taycan in eight months. I’ve got another 1000 mile trip on deck next week for the F150. Looking forward to it.
• I did this same 1000 mile trip in an 2023 ICE F150 XLT earlier this year. My charging costs tracked to about 30% of what I paid in gasoline, which isn’t bad at all.
• I used Electrify America and Chargepoint DC chargers for this trip.
• I ran into a new Model 3 owner at an Electrify America charger that had about 3 miles range left. They didn’t have a CCS adapter and pulled in out of desperation. I pointed them to a supercharger that was 5 miles away and told them to turn off all of their HVAC, keep the windows up and go for it.

Chargepoint worked just once out of three tries for me. Really not reliable at all and the terminal I was trying is the only one within 80 miles. Fortunately I carry a NEMA 14-30 adapter for my Splitvolt NEMA 10-30 (3 prong) charger so I was able to plug into the dryer outlet on the ground floor of my rental house. Really quite annoying- the error message both times was just "something went wrong" try again later or another charger. Well this is the only DC fast charger in 80 miles!

 

[detansinn]

Chargepoint worked just once out of three tries for me. Really not reliable at all and the terminal I was trying is the only one within 80 miles. Fortunately I carry a NEMA 14-30 adapter for my Splitvolt NEMA 10-30 (3 prong) charger so I was able to plug into the dryer outlet on the ground floor of my rental house. Really quite annoying- the error message both times was just "something went wrong" try again later or another charger. Well this is the only DC fast charger in 80 miles!

The biggest problem with Chargepoint is that when the 3G sunset happened, so many of their chargers went offline. The chargers are technically owned by the property owners who may or may not go to the trouble of upgrading the modems. It’s a mess. Blink has similar issues. Always check PlugShare if you plan on visiting a Chargepoint charger.

 

[Joneii]

Although I haven’t tried it with DC fast charging, the ProPower works while AC charging. Also of note, Teslas come with a J1772 to Tesla adapter, so if you have your mobile charger with you and the NEMA 14-30 to 14-50 adapter, you are most likely able to charge a Tesla.

 

[RickLightning]

Always check PlugShare if you plan on visiting any charger.

Never go anywhere without checking PlugSahre.

 

[Solar_EE]

The biggest problem with Chargepoint is that when the 3G sunset happened, so many of their chargers went offline. The chargers are technically owned by the property owners who may or may not go to the trouble of upgrading the modems. It’s a mess. Blink has similar issues. Always check PlugShare if you plan on visiting a Chargepoint charger.

These charging companies need to step up their game. I do always check PlugShare and there were no problems reported with this particular station. It worked properly one day and then three days later a total failure. Three of my ICE driving friends witnessed the failure and were of course concerned that road trips could be quite inconvenient or impossible.

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