I'm out after 6 months

[kbuicker]

That's fine, but you made the decision to take that hit? Glad you're in a position where you can afford to do that. How is that any different that with a normal car you trade in after 15k miles?Not much.

And, the EV demand falling off a cliff, not true. If you'd attend any EV event (as I did in Austin at the EV EXPO), where they dispel these rumors in the face of the media who is spreading them, you would hear the actual numbers, and EVs, they're doing just fine. I work for a group of dealerships and know as well.

My question for you, you claim the range went from 320 to 100. It did on your center readout? Or was that using Ford's Nav which calculates, wind, weather, speed etc? I don't believe it cut it as much as you claim, unless you didn't preheat and were doing 90mph on the way to the Audi dealer.

I have an extended battery too, and I've seen what low temps can do, did you PREHEAT your cabin and batteries prior to taking this trip?

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[eRockBoon]

Right now EVs really work best for analytical minded people that like numbers and data and enjoy planning and calculating everything all the time. If you are not that kind of person and you EVs may not be right for you.

 

[Hank42]

did you PREHEAT your cabin and batteries prior to taking this trip?

Hey, slightly off-topic; maybe I missed something - how do you preheat the batteries? Or is that the same as "Starting" the car remotely an letting it heat up?

 

[flyct]

I understand your decision and respect it.

As a Florida owner I’ve never experienced the effects of cold weather on an EV’s range. We own 3 Teslas and a Lightning currently. Prior to that we owned 5 Nissan Leaf’s from 2015-2022 and put well over 120,000 miles on our EVs.

We collected the $7,500 tax credit on 7 of the 8 EV’s.

The current major EV depreciation is due to Tesla massively dropping prices and Ford and others having to follow their lead to be able to sell their EVs. We drove the Leafs 6 months to 2 years and depreciation never exceeded the $7,500 tax credit so we broke even. With our current stable of Tesla and Lightning we will suffer major depreciation but we will not go back to ICE.

We will take the biggest depreciation hit on the Teslas since we bought one a year ago and the other 8 months ago and prices dropped since. We bought our Lightning Lariat ER a little over a month ago and between tax credit, dealer Discount, $7,500 Rebate, PCO and Ford Lass points the net cost was about $62k for an $80k MSRP truck.

Our only ICE vehicle is a 2022 F-450. King Ranch and it’s worth $10,000 more than we paid for it due to limited availability. We use it to tow our 14k lb 5th wheel RV. I have 3 more 2024 F-450s on order, 2 Platinums and a Limited at $10k under MSRP and if they ever are built I’ll flip them for a profit. It’s all about supply and demand.

 

[kbuicker]

Hey, slightly off-topic; maybe I missed something - how do you preheat the batteries? Or is that the same as "Starting" the car remotely an letting it heat up?

Hank! How are ya man. You can set departure times, and the truck will anticipate the time/trip and warm itself. Especially when it's cold outdoors. You can set the interior temps to warm or cool the cabin while it's plugged in, and using the house's power and not the trucks power.

 

[TaxmanHog]

But I thought the high heat would have been similar to the cold, but that's not the case when I was blocking an intersection with a dead truck.
That was my "tipping point"

There was one time long .... long ago when I ran my ICE F150 HD edition out of gas in I95 , my wife will NEVER let me live that down again........ How could you NOT pay attention to your SOC and begin planning for an energy stop along the way?

 

[Oafy44]

After 6 months of driving my Lightning Platinum - I'm out.

Paid $100,000 for it on Memorial Day and received a trade in on Thanksgiving for $64,500. (Other trade in offers were $45,000, $53,000, and $59,000) Not good.

I put 15,000 miles on the truck in 6 months and loved the ride and acceleration of course. Living in Southern Wisconsin, when the meter said I had 320 miles, I could rely on 250; no problem...............in the summer temperatures.

WELL - then the temperature dropped to 20 degrees F (not that cold) and my 320 miles dropped real fast. In the garage the meter said 320 & when it sat out on the driveway, that 320 now said 260 at 100% charge. Driving it to the Audi dealership that was 70 miles away, the range dropped from 320 to 100 miles. Sorry, that doesn't work with me and my job.

Read the Wall Street Journal & EV's have fallen off a cliff in demand. Ford dropped the price of the truck $10,000 6 weeks after purchase, Ford rebated me $6300, but the dealer (Gordie Boucher / Janesville WI) kept $5000 and there was nothing I could do about it, they had a lame excuse. Recently Ford started offering $7500 rebates and that tanked resale further. (Please remember no "green" rebates for this price level.)

I gave it a fair shot. I got caught up in "the hype" of the waiting list and seeing it after 2 years. The dealers aren't good at representing these. Part of it is Ford's fault and some responsibility is with the dealerships as well. (The Illinois Ford dealers won a lawsuit saying they can't be forced into paying upgrades for EV's.) It's still a bit of a mess. The idea is good, but it's time will come down the road.

I'm very lucky I had the money to buy it for cash, take the hit on trade in, and return to Q7's which have treated me well.

Maybe someday I'll be back.

thanks for the real world feedback. I’m wondering if something was wrong with your battery.
1- a platinum should not be at 320 full charge but around 300. The larger wheels ect make the range lower then a ER lariat . Even in 20 degrees you should have still had 20-30 miles left IF you preheated and went around 70 mph

I have driven my lariat in 5 degrees last year and out of 320 full range I had 240 instead during those 3 days. I also preheated the truck

The only thing I would disagree with you about is the timing of your purchase. If you were a Realator and you sold a house to somebody and a month later 2008 happened all over would you give 30% of the value back to your client?

the timing sucked but I’m surprised ford actually gave you money back.

just like everything - innovation comes with some drawbacks. But guarantee less then 5 years manufactures will have solved some of the shortfalls of batteries.

we forget just a few years ago colonial pipelines got hacked and the south had no gas for 2 or 3 days. I wonder how many people got fed up and went out and bought a Tesla that week.

hopefully you will be back but understand you need a certain tool for the job. When people ask me about mine I tell them I am like a doctor - they have multiple tools they use during surgery. They don’t just use one. A lightning wont solve all issues but it will solve many and God willing we all have the means to have a car in the family that solves the rest.

 

[Gato Meoow]

Right now EVs really work best for analytical minded people that like numbers and data and enjoy planning and calculating everything all the time. If you are not that kind of person and you EVs may not be right for you.

Still waiting for my delivery but it does seem more like sailing than motoring, you need to plan a bit more and be willing to do some calculations. I love sailing tho!

 

[Peddyr]

How could NOT pay attention to your SOC and begin planning for an energy stop along the way?

If memory serves me, ORD has EV charging in the short term parking decks. Range anxiety alone would make me charge just to be safe

 

[FirstF150InCasco]

I got hit with the first time Cold reduced range this Thanksgiving day weekend. I don't mind the range reduction so much as I do all the broken EVGO Chargers. Getting out in the cold, futzing with an app to get the truck to charge because the "Plug'n go" is not working, (freezing my hands off to use the touchscreen on the app in the process) and then finally calling the # on the charger an waiting on hold for the EVGO tech to reboot the charger and "unplug it, now plug it back in, now unplug it again.. Oh, sorry sir, this charger is broken, can I help you find another?

Two failed EVGO charger stops later and I finally wound up at a Tesla Supercharger with 11 miles to spare. It had Magic docs at all 8 stalls, and it just "worked".

To tie this back to the OP - for a trip in the summer that I can do with no charge stops, the cold changed things for me, and not having reliable charging is the sh1t icing on the cake.

As the CEO of Ford said after his Route 66 Road Trip this summer, "The problem is not range anxiety; the problem is chaging anxiety." Having charges that are broken is a discrace.

 

[Calvin H-C]

There seems to be a lot of new EV drivers that experience cold weather shock that often is not really that bad in the big picture, just different enough that it can cause panic. That's not to say that applies to everyone, as there are some who need a greater daily range and the cold weather effects make a significant impact that means an EV is not a good fit.

In a way I feel privileged to have been able to "cut my EV teeth" with a Focus Electric over six winters before we got the Lightning. It's 100 mile range in the summer drops to 60 in the winter must sound unfathomable to anyone who bought an EV for the first time in the past year or two.

For the most part, that meant that weekday use only required charging once every three days in the summer and once every two in the winter. There were some extreme examples, but were fairly rare.

The experience has given me a pretty good skill at making longer trips and knowing where I would have to charge and figure out alternatives for those just-in-case situations. I can say that the Lightning definately does not need the same effort to plan out things, and our Lightning is just SR!

 

[Gewalt]

Running out of range is pretty upsetting and can even be a safety issue when unprepared in the cold. Unfortunately, since EVs cannot predict the future and cold high-speed driving absolutely saps the range, this will continue to be a problem for a lot of people. That is, unless you're one of us nerds who knows their miles per kWh at a given speed and remaining kWh in the battery.

The heat pump for MY24 will help soften the blow of cold weather range, though.

 

[SmoothJ]

This will be the second winter with the F150L, and while the decrease in range does bother me somewhat, I am used to it. My wife also has a Bolt that suffers from this too.

I have been a "long time" EV driver with my first EV being a 2016 Kia Soul EV with a 33 kWh battery pack. I became accustomed to it and the decrease in range... especially when you can only drive 80 or so miles.

 

[RickLightning]

Running out of range is pretty upsetting and can even be a safety issue when unprepared in the cold. Unfortunately, since EVs cannot predict the future and cold high-speed driving absolutely saps the range, this will continue to be a problem for a lot of people. That is, unless you're one of us nerds who knows their miles per kWh at a given speed and remaining kWh in the battery.

The heat pump for MY24 will help soften the blow of cold weather range, though.

Nobody should be unprepared to drive in winter. Whether it's an EV or an ICE vehicle, a responsible driver has gloves, hat, coat, blanket in the vehicle at all times.

 

[Zprime29]

Nobody should be unprepared to drive in winter. Whether it's an EV or an ICE vehicle, a responsible driver has gloves, hat, coat, blanket in the vehicle at all times.

Having grown up in the desert, I was wholly unprepared for winter in the north. I was stationed in OH after basic training and tech school in TX. Ended up late to work my first day because I had nothing to scrape the ice off my windshield. I was 22 and I had never once needed to do that. I'm back in the desert again, but still have a snow brush/ice scrapper at the ready.

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