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Adventures of our 2023 Carbonized Gray Metallic Lariat Lightning ER
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SpaceEVDriver
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Tried to do a charge on another NACS DCFC charger today and it didn't work. I suspect the truck just hasn't been updated, but who knows. I'll fiddle with updating it myself later this week if I can make the time. This time we did need a charge, so we plugged into an EA charger and it just worked, which is what the vast majority of our experiences have been.
This was the first DCFC on the Lightning that I paid attention to with CarScanner. I was pretty happy with the charge curve. I had told the truck to navigate to the charger about 12 miles before we arrived. The orange and grey lines are the requested (grey) and received amps from the EA charger (350 kW station). The green is the received charge rate in kW. The blue is the state of charge. It took almost exactly 40 minutes to go from about 25% to about 82% state of charge (displayed).
The flat curve at about 110-120 kW is pretty good in my mind. Just high enough to get through the charge relatively quickly but not so high that it's running above 1C and puts the battery in danger, and slowly enough that we could get lunch.
I intended to stop charging at 75%, but got distracted by something in the store and didn't get back until it was at nearly 82%.
After charging, we climbed from 1800 feet to 7,000 feet, on 75 mph freeway. My partner did about half of that driving and she doesn't keep the speed below the speed limit. We arrived home with 33%, so while we needed the charge, we definitely could have stopped charging much earlier than we did. Good information for future trips.
This was the first DCFC on the Lightning that I paid attention to with CarScanner. I was pretty happy with the charge curve. I had told the truck to navigate to the charger about 12 miles before we arrived. The orange and grey lines are the requested (grey) and received amps from the EA charger (350 kW station). The green is the received charge rate in kW. The blue is the state of charge. It took almost exactly 40 minutes to go from about 25% to about 82% state of charge (displayed).
The flat curve at about 110-120 kW is pretty good in my mind. Just high enough to get through the charge relatively quickly but not so high that it's running above 1C and puts the battery in danger, and slowly enough that we could get lunch.
I intended to stop charging at 75%, but got distracted by something in the store and didn't get back until it was at nearly 82%.
After charging, we climbed from 1800 feet to 7,000 feet, on 75 mph freeway. My partner did about half of that driving and she doesn't keep the speed below the speed limit. We arrived home with 33%, so while we needed the charge, we definitely could have stopped charging much earlier than we did. Good information for future trips.
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SpaceEVDriver
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And we're already at >1300 miles on the odometer.
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SpaceEVDriver
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Having our power service entrance upgraded to 400A today, so our power will be off for 6-8 hours. Happily, the Lightning can power our fridge, freezer, computers, and a bunch of other stuff for the day.
Mashedtators
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What app are you using on your tablet?
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SpaceEVDriver
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CarScanner, using an OBDLink MX+ piece of hardware to pull data from the truck. I'm recording the entire session so I can better understand what my options will be if I need to do this again. For today, I shut down my high performance computers and need to know whether this small draw is at all an issue.
As seen in the photo, the 0.93 kW power output, if it stayed consistent throughout the day, means I'd have about 110+ hours of power before the truck's battery was depleted. But my servers draw a lot more power than my desktops+fridge+freezer, etc. If I don't require my servers to be powered on, I would definitely shut them down, but sometimes I have a delivery and can't afford to take them offline.
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SpaceEVDriver
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Okay. Power outage is complete. As noted above, we had our power turned off today while we had our service panel upgraded from 200A to 400A. This took about half the day, but we were working so didn't bother to disconnect and shut off the truck until the end of the work day.
At 07:35 local time, I took this photo. The energy to empty according to CarScanner was 110.1 kWh.
At the end of the work day, at 17:00 local time, I took this photo. The energy to empty reads 105.1 kWh.
Over the course of approximately 10.5 hours, the truck powered our house, delivering ~5 kWh of energy (this is less than our 364 day median power draw of 1.61 kW). I turned off my compute and storage clusters for this, just in case something went wrong. Otherwise, this was a typical work day. Except that we didn't microwave lunch. Though we did get into the fridge, we ran fans, etc. It's a mild part of the year weather-wise, so we benefited from not needing to run AC or heat.
Assuming the median power draw, we could power the house for about 68 hours, if I reserved 20 kWh.
Overall, we're quite happy with the performance and ultimate ease of doing this. At some point I'll either install the full solution to power the house from the truck, or I will install a whole-house/workshop battery backup. Either way, we're even happier with the Lightning than we were before this "test."
At 07:35 local time, I took this photo. The energy to empty according to CarScanner was 110.1 kWh.
At the end of the work day, at 17:00 local time, I took this photo. The energy to empty reads 105.1 kWh.
Over the course of approximately 10.5 hours, the truck powered our house, delivering ~5 kWh of energy (this is less than our 364 day median power draw of 1.61 kW). I turned off my compute and storage clusters for this, just in case something went wrong. Otherwise, this was a typical work day. Except that we didn't microwave lunch. Though we did get into the fridge, we ran fans, etc. It's a mild part of the year weather-wise, so we benefited from not needing to run AC or heat.
Assuming the median power draw, we could power the house for about 68 hours, if I reserved 20 kWh.
Overall, we're quite happy with the performance and ultimate ease of doing this. At some point I'll either install the full solution to power the house from the truck, or I will install a whole-house/workshop battery backup. Either way, we're even happier with the Lightning than we were before this "test."
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SpaceEVDriver
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- #23
After a few weeks of analysis paralysis I finally decided on a middle-of-the-road tonneau cover that also allows a rack, and went ahead and got the rack too.
I ordered the Syneticusa manual retracting roll-away tonneau cover and the accompanying rack. I'll be using the rack for PV, a 270º shade, a solar water heater, and other items. I'm not a huge fan of the way it looks right now, feels a bit too "wannabe militia" but it was one of the better options I could find for what I want to do with it, and it has the T-track style mounting capability, which means it's far more flexible than many other options.
Installation was low difficulty, but the written instructions are poor-quality (or missing entirely for the rack). The video instructions were okay, but IMO, everybody in every video speaks about 1/3 the speed they should and uses 10x the number of words they should (just like my posts here, which are way too long).
I ordered the Syneticusa manual retracting roll-away tonneau cover and the accompanying rack. I'll be using the rack for PV, a 270º shade, a solar water heater, and other items. I'm not a huge fan of the way it looks right now, feels a bit too "wannabe militia" but it was one of the better options I could find for what I want to do with it, and it has the T-track style mounting capability, which means it's far more flexible than many other options.
Installation was low difficulty, but the written instructions are poor-quality (or missing entirely for the rack). The video instructions were okay, but IMO, everybody in every video speaks about 1/3 the speed they should and uses 10x the number of words they should (just like my posts here, which are way too long).
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SpaceEVDriver
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Added a mount for 200 Watts of solar panels to power our fridge when we're boondocking. Added a mesh to the front of the truck to stop junk getting into the radiator scoop.
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SpaceEVDriver
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We finally took the Lightning camping! It was fantastic!
I first installed a couple of 100 W solar panels on the rack so we could recharge our 1.4 kWh battery that would power the ICECO 60L fridge/freezer, which fits neatly under the tonneau cover.
Packed up everything we thought we would need and a few more things as well.
We headed north from the Flagstaff area toward southern Utah. We stopped in Page for a restroom break and to grab a couple of snacks. Then we continued on to Cottonwood Canyon Road, off of Highway 89 and then took the back roads about 45 miles to Kodachrome Basin State Park.
On the way up, our elevation started at about 6650 feet, went up to about 7300 feet, dropped to a low of 3500 feet, and then went back up to 6500 and finally down to about 5800 feet. We had lots of ups and downs along the way.
The truck freaked out at one point when it realized there were no chargers within its calculated range. We continued driving; it kept freaking out.
We left Flagstaff with 100% charge, 123 kWh on the CarScanner report. We drive the speed limit (65 mph, along with slowdowns, etc). The winds were pretty bad: steady crosswinds of 25-30 mph and gusts up to 50 mph. We arrived in Page, 210 km later, with about 77 kWh (65% SoC) remaining. After a quick stop, we continued on--there's no fast charging in Page. We arrived at Kodachrome with about 53 kWh (37% SoC) left. A total of about 320 km driving using about 70 kWh, for an efficiency of 4.5-4.6 km/kwh (2.8-2.9 miles/kWh).
Now 53 kWh is obviously not enough to get back home, and we'd planned for that. The second night we had an RV site with 50 Amp service. We parked the truck there at around 3:30 PM and it was back up to 100% SoC when we retrieved the truck the following morning.
On our drive home, we encountered more winds, but they weren't as bad. However, we were climbing up in total elevation, so we expected to lose some efficiency. And we did. Overall we drove around 320 km and used 79 kWh of energy for an efficiency of 4.0-4.1 km/kWh (2.5 miles/kWh).
Overall, this was a fantastic camping trip. We'll probably reserve an RV site every night next time we stay here, which is usually twice a year. When we've gone before, we've always had to go into Bryce to fill up on gas, which usually takes at least half a day. Freeing ourselves from that necessity has been fantastic!
A few things on my to-do list:
1) Get an induction cooktop to replace the propane stove.
2) Figure out a propane/firewood replacement for the "fire" pit. I'm allergic to wood smoke, and I would love to be done with propane entirely.
3) Add a solar canopy that pulls over the side of the truck. While we had way more energy than we needed for running the fridge, on longer, hotter boondocking trips, we'll need a bit more power generation for the fridge and I'd like to plug in my L1 charger to add a few kWh to the truck. A 3-day summer camping trip like this one could give us around 12 hours of clean sun, so a 400-600 Watt PV canopy could generate around 6 kWh in a day, and even if only 3 of those go to the truck, the weekend total could be 9kWh to the truck, or almost 50 km (30 miles). For a weekend trip where there aren't any chargers, 50 km gives me a nice buffer to play with. The weight won't add up to a noticeable impact, and a flat surface 300 mm, 100 mm, or 0 mm above the tonneau cover really doesn't change the overall drag on the truck.
I first installed a couple of 100 W solar panels on the rack so we could recharge our 1.4 kWh battery that would power the ICECO 60L fridge/freezer, which fits neatly under the tonneau cover.
Packed up everything we thought we would need and a few more things as well.
We headed north from the Flagstaff area toward southern Utah. We stopped in Page for a restroom break and to grab a couple of snacks. Then we continued on to Cottonwood Canyon Road, off of Highway 89 and then took the back roads about 45 miles to Kodachrome Basin State Park.
On the way up, our elevation started at about 6650 feet, went up to about 7300 feet, dropped to a low of 3500 feet, and then went back up to 6500 and finally down to about 5800 feet. We had lots of ups and downs along the way.
The truck freaked out at one point when it realized there were no chargers within its calculated range. We continued driving; it kept freaking out.
We left Flagstaff with 100% charge, 123 kWh on the CarScanner report. We drive the speed limit (65 mph, along with slowdowns, etc). The winds were pretty bad: steady crosswinds of 25-30 mph and gusts up to 50 mph. We arrived in Page, 210 km later, with about 77 kWh (65% SoC) remaining. After a quick stop, we continued on--there's no fast charging in Page. We arrived at Kodachrome with about 53 kWh (37% SoC) left. A total of about 320 km driving using about 70 kWh, for an efficiency of 4.5-4.6 km/kwh (2.8-2.9 miles/kWh).
Now 53 kWh is obviously not enough to get back home, and we'd planned for that. The second night we had an RV site with 50 Amp service. We parked the truck there at around 3:30 PM and it was back up to 100% SoC when we retrieved the truck the following morning.
On our drive home, we encountered more winds, but they weren't as bad. However, we were climbing up in total elevation, so we expected to lose some efficiency. And we did. Overall we drove around 320 km and used 79 kWh of energy for an efficiency of 4.0-4.1 km/kWh (2.5 miles/kWh).
Overall, this was a fantastic camping trip. We'll probably reserve an RV site every night next time we stay here, which is usually twice a year. When we've gone before, we've always had to go into Bryce to fill up on gas, which usually takes at least half a day. Freeing ourselves from that necessity has been fantastic!
A few things on my to-do list:
1) Get an induction cooktop to replace the propane stove.
2) Figure out a propane/firewood replacement for the "fire" pit. I'm allergic to wood smoke, and I would love to be done with propane entirely.
3) Add a solar canopy that pulls over the side of the truck. While we had way more energy than we needed for running the fridge, on longer, hotter boondocking trips, we'll need a bit more power generation for the fridge and I'd like to plug in my L1 charger to add a few kWh to the truck. A 3-day summer camping trip like this one could give us around 12 hours of clean sun, so a 400-600 Watt PV canopy could generate around 6 kWh in a day, and even if only 3 of those go to the truck, the weekend total could be 9kWh to the truck, or almost 50 km (30 miles). For a weekend trip where there aren't any chargers, 50 km gives me a nice buffer to play with. The weight won't add up to a noticeable impact, and a flat surface 300 mm, 100 mm, or 0 mm above the tonneau cover really doesn't change the overall drag on the truck.
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SpaceEVDriver
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- #26
Completed my first serious tow today. I towed a small tractor on a midweight trailer with surge brakes. The total weight was about 6000 pounds.
The one-way distance was about 50 miles freeway and about 5 miles on poorly-maintained gravel then dirt road. Elevation change was about 2500 feet down outbound and 2500 feet up on the return.
On the drive out, I had a passenger and we ran the AC at relatively low temperature. The outside temperatures were in the high 90s once we got off the mountain and above 100 by the time we got to our destination. I set the cruise control at 73. The efficiency out was 2.2 mi/kWh.
The truck was powered on for about 9 hours as I was using the jackhammer and several other power tools.
I also took several meetings in the truck so had the AC running for about four hours total. The outside temperature was 100+ and it was very humid.
The jobsite is not mine. It has a bunch of crap everywhere, and the rear driver's side tire was punctured. So I had to swap to the spare. It was getting dark by the time I finished that fun first, which came with the added complication of having a loaded trailer hooked up with nowhere to drop it.
On the drive back up the mountain, it was storming, so I stayed at 65 mph once on the freeway. AC was on for only the first 5 miles. The efficiency home was 1.1 miles per kWh.
The total distance driven was about 120 miles. Final SoC displayed is 39%. I believe almost 10% was non-driving use.
I think I'm happy with this. Most of the towing I'll be doing will not be with this kind of load. Almost none of it will include running the onboard power for 9 hours, nor multiple meetings taken inside the truck with the AC blasting.
I didn't like the stock tires for towing. They are mushy and seemed to be just passable as a 116 load rating. I'll likely get a set of tires with stiffer sidewalls at some point
I also don't like the trailer's surge brakes when towing with one pedal. I'll have to try shutting it off next time.
Oh, and Ugh. I had to stop for diesel on the way out.
The one-way distance was about 50 miles freeway and about 5 miles on poorly-maintained gravel then dirt road. Elevation change was about 2500 feet down outbound and 2500 feet up on the return.
On the drive out, I had a passenger and we ran the AC at relatively low temperature. The outside temperatures were in the high 90s once we got off the mountain and above 100 by the time we got to our destination. I set the cruise control at 73. The efficiency out was 2.2 mi/kWh.
The truck was powered on for about 9 hours as I was using the jackhammer and several other power tools.
I also took several meetings in the truck so had the AC running for about four hours total. The outside temperature was 100+ and it was very humid.
The jobsite is not mine. It has a bunch of crap everywhere, and the rear driver's side tire was punctured. So I had to swap to the spare. It was getting dark by the time I finished that fun first, which came with the added complication of having a loaded trailer hooked up with nowhere to drop it.
On the drive back up the mountain, it was storming, so I stayed at 65 mph once on the freeway. AC was on for only the first 5 miles. The efficiency home was 1.1 miles per kWh.
The total distance driven was about 120 miles. Final SoC displayed is 39%. I believe almost 10% was non-driving use.
I think I'm happy with this. Most of the towing I'll be doing will not be with this kind of load. Almost none of it will include running the onboard power for 9 hours, nor multiple meetings taken inside the truck with the AC blasting.
I didn't like the stock tires for towing. They are mushy and seemed to be just passable as a 116 load rating. I'll likely get a set of tires with stiffer sidewalls at some point
I also don't like the trailer's surge brakes when towing with one pedal. I'll have to try shutting it off next time.
Oh, and Ugh. I had to stop for diesel on the way out.
invertedspear
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This is the quintessential use case for this truck. Absolutely amazing. It tows, it runs tools on-site, and it is the "supervisors office" with the work surface. You lived an honest to god Lightning commercial right there.Completed my first serious tow today. I towed a small tractor on a midweight trailer with surge brakes. The total weight was about 6000 pounds.
The one-way distance was about 50 miles freeway and about 5 miles on poorly-maintained gravel then dirt road. Elevation change was about 2500 feet down outbound and 2500 feet up on the return.
On the drive out, I had a passenger and we ran the AC at relatively low temperature. The outside temperatures were in the high 90s once we got off the mountain and above 100 by the time we got to our destination. I set the cruise control at 73. The efficiency out was 2.2 mi/kWh.
The truck was powered on for about 9 hours as I was using the jackhammer and several other power tools.
I also took several meetings in the truck so had the AC running for about four hours total. The outside temperature was 100+ and it was very humid.
The jobsite is not mine. It has a bunch of crap everywhere, and the rear driver's side tire was punctured. So I had to swap to the spare. It was getting dark by the time I finished that fun first, which came with the added complication of having a loaded trailer hooked up with nowhere to drop it.
On the drive back up the mountain, it was storming, so I stayed at 65 mph once on the freeway. AC was on for only the first 5 miles. The efficiency home was 1.1 miles per kWh.
The total distance driven was about 120 miles. Final SoC displayed is 39%. I believe almost 10% was non-driving use.
I think I'm happy with this. Most of the towing I'll be doing will not be with this kind of load. Almost none of it will include running the onboard power for 9 hours, nor multiple meetings taken inside the truck with the AC blasting.
I didn't like the stock tires for towing. They are mushy and seemed to be just passable as a 116 load rating. I'll likely get a set of tires with stiffer sidewalls at some point
I also don't like the trailer's surge brakes when towing with one pedal. I'll have to try shutting it off next time.
Oh, and Ugh. I had to stop for diesel on the way out.
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SpaceEVDriver
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- #28
One of the several reasons for choosing the Lightning was for this exact purpose. I've gotten more use out of it in just a few short months than most of my other trucks after years of ownership.
I got home late last night and was too tired to unhook and put everything away. So... I didn't charge overnight. The 80 Amp Ford Pro Charge Station saved me $20-$30 and 45 minutes by giving me a charge this morning from 39% to 70%, while I repaired the tire and loaded 700 pounds of batteries into the truck. That 70% charge is enough to drive back out to the job site (without the trailer), run tools and take a couple of meetings. It used to cost $50 or more a day just to drive out here with the Tacoma. And I couldn't provide power to the tools.
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SpaceEVDriver
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I took my first long road trip with the Lightning this past weekend. Previously we'd gone 500-ish miles round-trip, but this time it was about 1200 miles round-trip, with several days of Level 1 charging in between. The trip was from northern Arizona to Pasadena along I-40, I-15, and the 210 in the LA area.
I charged to 100% before leaving the Flagstaff area, but got a late start.
There was a lot of stormy weather along the route. Passing by Williams, I ran into a hailstorm that coated the freeway with ice. Lots of large gusts of wind and sheets of ice and hail being blown around. Traffic was slowed to about 35 mph for a mile or so.
Once I got out of that, the winds remained high, but traffic accelerated up to the typical 80+ mph for some, 70 mph for others. I set BC to keep me at 73 mph, which is my typical speed.
I stopped at the Needles east Supercharger to charge. Outside temperature was 120 ºF, charging peaked at 150 kW and then decreased rapidly from there. Given the temperatures, I'm not surprised that the speed was throttled. I was also running the AC during charging since it was just too hot to do anything else.
After Needles, I moved on. I didn't need to stop for another charge (I was getting 2.4 miles/kWh on the freeway, which was enough to easily get me the rest of the way into Pasadena). However, I stopped in Barstow to charge for two reasons: 1) I needed to move around; 2) I knew I would be charging on a Level 1 charger for the weekend, and I wanted a bit of running around juice.
The Barstow supercharger worked fine, though there were, of course, two long rows of chargers with caution tape around them. I'd guess that only 2/3 of the chargers were online. Still more than the 8 at the Electrify America and that charger bank is not one of the ones in the pilot study restricting people to 85% before cost increases.
After Barstow, I headed into the valley with no problems (other than the usual traffic issues, slowdowns, etc). I arrived at my destination with about 40% remaining charge.
I spent the next several days running back and forth between Pasadena and Glendora, all around both towns, etc. I'd get about 10% recharge overnight and then use some 5% during the day. Overall, I ended up adding a net 20% charge to the truck.
I left the city a few days later, with about 60% charge. I considered stopping at a DCFC in the city, but then decided to skip that and charge in Barstow. In Barstow, I used the superchargers again. There was more caution tape wrapping more of the chargers. The station was pretty busy, but there were still some open posts and I had no trouble charging. It was hot again, so I had the AC running and the charge was throttled.
I stopped again in Needles, this time I stopped at the EA charger because I'd remembered that I had 250 kWh of free charging from EA. The EA chargers had been in use and were overheated, so while I started at 160 kW, it quickly dropped to 80 kW and stayed there. I grabbed an icee from the nearby fastfood joint. Then promptly fell asleep in the air conditioned truck. I woke up at 82% and headed out.
When I got to Kingman, I decided that the sky looked threatening and while I should have had a few miles to spare to get home, the weather looked bad enough that I should charge a few miles. While the Kingman EA station used to be pretty good, since the explosion in EVs, it's always been clogged, so I stopped at the supercharger on the southwest side of Kingman. It's one of my least-favorite charging stops, but I wanted to add 20 miles before I moved on.
After a few minutes, I moved on.
I noticed that the truck's Sync screen hadn't updated the GOM properly, but didn't bother with resetting it. Until I took a phone call and my audiobook stopped working too. So I pressed and held the reset combination (down-volume and forward-track, I believe). That set everything to right.
I ran into several more thunderstorms, so was happy I'd added those miles in Kingman. I made it home with about 10 miles on the GOM remaining. My efficiency home, climbing from about 0 feet elevation to 7000 feet elevation, pushing through storms, etc., was 1.7 miles/kWh.
Final stats and thoughts:
Outbound: 2.4 miles/kWh
Inbound: 1.7 miles/kWh
Taking the truck is slower than taking the Mustang because while the range is similar, the battery is larger and requires another 10-20 minutes of charging. This isn't usually a big deal, but... it's not as fast as I've grown used to with the Mustang (typically it's difficult to measure a realistic difference in road trip time between driving the Mustang and an ICE car because we like to stop and walk around in all of our vehicles). I'll have to start getting even more exercise. But with the very high temperatures outside, it's not nearly as pleasant to go for a walk while charging compared with other times of year. And throttling of the charge rate during the hottest time of year makes this even slower.
So...
IMO:
The Mustang is a great road trip vehicle.
The Lightning is also a great road trip vehicle. It's slower, but far more comfortable than the Mustang.
I charged to 100% before leaving the Flagstaff area, but got a late start.
There was a lot of stormy weather along the route. Passing by Williams, I ran into a hailstorm that coated the freeway with ice. Lots of large gusts of wind and sheets of ice and hail being blown around. Traffic was slowed to about 35 mph for a mile or so.
Once I got out of that, the winds remained high, but traffic accelerated up to the typical 80+ mph for some, 70 mph for others. I set BC to keep me at 73 mph, which is my typical speed.
I stopped at the Needles east Supercharger to charge. Outside temperature was 120 ºF, charging peaked at 150 kW and then decreased rapidly from there. Given the temperatures, I'm not surprised that the speed was throttled. I was also running the AC during charging since it was just too hot to do anything else.
After Needles, I moved on. I didn't need to stop for another charge (I was getting 2.4 miles/kWh on the freeway, which was enough to easily get me the rest of the way into Pasadena). However, I stopped in Barstow to charge for two reasons: 1) I needed to move around; 2) I knew I would be charging on a Level 1 charger for the weekend, and I wanted a bit of running around juice.
The Barstow supercharger worked fine, though there were, of course, two long rows of chargers with caution tape around them. I'd guess that only 2/3 of the chargers were online. Still more than the 8 at the Electrify America and that charger bank is not one of the ones in the pilot study restricting people to 85% before cost increases.
After Barstow, I headed into the valley with no problems (other than the usual traffic issues, slowdowns, etc). I arrived at my destination with about 40% remaining charge.
I spent the next several days running back and forth between Pasadena and Glendora, all around both towns, etc. I'd get about 10% recharge overnight and then use some 5% during the day. Overall, I ended up adding a net 20% charge to the truck.
I left the city a few days later, with about 60% charge. I considered stopping at a DCFC in the city, but then decided to skip that and charge in Barstow. In Barstow, I used the superchargers again. There was more caution tape wrapping more of the chargers. The station was pretty busy, but there were still some open posts and I had no trouble charging. It was hot again, so I had the AC running and the charge was throttled.
I stopped again in Needles, this time I stopped at the EA charger because I'd remembered that I had 250 kWh of free charging from EA. The EA chargers had been in use and were overheated, so while I started at 160 kW, it quickly dropped to 80 kW and stayed there. I grabbed an icee from the nearby fastfood joint. Then promptly fell asleep in the air conditioned truck. I woke up at 82% and headed out.
When I got to Kingman, I decided that the sky looked threatening and while I should have had a few miles to spare to get home, the weather looked bad enough that I should charge a few miles. While the Kingman EA station used to be pretty good, since the explosion in EVs, it's always been clogged, so I stopped at the supercharger on the southwest side of Kingman. It's one of my least-favorite charging stops, but I wanted to add 20 miles before I moved on.
After a few minutes, I moved on.
I noticed that the truck's Sync screen hadn't updated the GOM properly, but didn't bother with resetting it. Until I took a phone call and my audiobook stopped working too. So I pressed and held the reset combination (down-volume and forward-track, I believe). That set everything to right.
I ran into several more thunderstorms, so was happy I'd added those miles in Kingman. I made it home with about 10 miles on the GOM remaining. My efficiency home, climbing from about 0 feet elevation to 7000 feet elevation, pushing through storms, etc., was 1.7 miles/kWh.
Final stats and thoughts:
Outbound: 2.4 miles/kWh
Inbound: 1.7 miles/kWh
Taking the truck is slower than taking the Mustang because while the range is similar, the battery is larger and requires another 10-20 minutes of charging. This isn't usually a big deal, but... it's not as fast as I've grown used to with the Mustang (typically it's difficult to measure a realistic difference in road trip time between driving the Mustang and an ICE car because we like to stop and walk around in all of our vehicles). I'll have to start getting even more exercise. But with the very high temperatures outside, it's not nearly as pleasant to go for a walk while charging compared with other times of year. And throttling of the charge rate during the hottest time of year makes this even slower.
So...
IMO:
The Mustang is a great road trip vehicle.
The Lightning is also a great road trip vehicle. It's slower, but far more comfortable than the Mustang.
OP
OP
SpaceEVDriver
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Have been busy and haven't posted much lately.
The Lightning is now 5-1/2 months old and it has 6854 miles on it. The Mustang is about 2-1/2 years old and has 41,266 miles on it. Both are still fantastic vehicles and we don't have any regrets.
I just got home from an 1100 mile round trip work trip to the LA area. I drove the Lightning.
I began the trip with 100% charge. Once I was on the freeway, I hit 72 and turned on BlueCruise. I found a truck to draft behind and stayed put as much as possible. The trucks don't tend to maintain speed, though, so I usually have to pass one or two on any given trip. The drive there has an elevation drop of about 7,000 feet. So I was happy but not too surprised to see 2.8 miles/kWh after the first leg of 217 miles (from the Flagstaff area to Needles, CA). I stopped at my first stop with 48% remaining.
The GoM is funny. There are several results one could arrive at for total range given the numbers on the screen.
Because of the way this particular drive usually goes (several climbs of a couple thousand feet each to get out of the Colorado River valley where Needles is), the lower numbers are usually more reliable. In fact, at one point shortly after charging up, I was down to 1.1 miles/kWh. It went back up as I continued, but it wasn't a welcome sight---I would be towing a trailer home and didn't like the idea of getting 1.1 miles/kWh unburdened.
After stopping and charging in Needles, I hit the road again. As I neared Barstow, I needed to make a decision: I could make it to Pasadena without stopping, but my bladder needed a stop and so did my back. And also my destination does not have a level 2 charger and I'd be commuting to my meetings every day so I wanted some buffer in the battery in case I couldn't find a charger.
I stopped at the EA charger in Barstow. There was a wonderful diversity of vehicles charging and also space for me. After plugging in, I went for a restroom break and a short walk. On the walk, I discovered a hair salon and decided to get my hair cut. They had space so I got a haircut and a beard trim while waiting for the truck to charge. Just as I was paying for the haircut, I received a notice from EA that my vehicle had 10 minutes to be moved before I was charged idle fees. The truck had reached 90% SoC.
Oops. I hurried back to the truck. There were plenty of open spaces and this bus, which was being driven from its factory in the Bay Area all the way to Maryland. I don't know which battery it has, but it can't be smaller than about 500 kWh, so a 350 kW charger is... even more slow than on a Lightning.
I moved on to Pasadena.
I've run out of steam tonight. I'll add the around-town and drive home commentary tomorrow.
The Lightning is now 5-1/2 months old and it has 6854 miles on it. The Mustang is about 2-1/2 years old and has 41,266 miles on it. Both are still fantastic vehicles and we don't have any regrets.
I just got home from an 1100 mile round trip work trip to the LA area. I drove the Lightning.
I began the trip with 100% charge. Once I was on the freeway, I hit 72 and turned on BlueCruise. I found a truck to draft behind and stayed put as much as possible. The trucks don't tend to maintain speed, though, so I usually have to pass one or two on any given trip. The drive there has an elevation drop of about 7,000 feet. So I was happy but not too surprised to see 2.8 miles/kWh after the first leg of 217 miles (from the Flagstaff area to Needles, CA). I stopped at my first stop with 48% remaining.
The GoM is funny. There are several results one could arrive at for total range given the numbers on the screen.
- 377: I could take 2.8 miles/kWh and multiply by 131 (the advertised usable capacity of the battery) and arrive at about 377 miles range.
- 417: I could take the number of miles driven (217) and divide by the 52% of the battery used to go those miles and arrive at about 417 miles range.
- 393: I could take the remaining % of the battery (48%), multiply by the 131 kWh capacity of the battery to get ~63 kWh remaining and multiply that by 2.8 miles/kWh to get 176 remaining miles. Add that to the miles driven so far and get about 393 miles range.
- 376: I could use the 159 miles range on the screen and add it to the miles driven (216.9) and arrive at 376 miles range, which is very close to the first calculation.
Because of the way this particular drive usually goes (several climbs of a couple thousand feet each to get out of the Colorado River valley where Needles is), the lower numbers are usually more reliable. In fact, at one point shortly after charging up, I was down to 1.1 miles/kWh. It went back up as I continued, but it wasn't a welcome sight---I would be towing a trailer home and didn't like the idea of getting 1.1 miles/kWh unburdened.
After stopping and charging in Needles, I hit the road again. As I neared Barstow, I needed to make a decision: I could make it to Pasadena without stopping, but my bladder needed a stop and so did my back. And also my destination does not have a level 2 charger and I'd be commuting to my meetings every day so I wanted some buffer in the battery in case I couldn't find a charger.
I stopped at the EA charger in Barstow. There was a wonderful diversity of vehicles charging and also space for me. After plugging in, I went for a restroom break and a short walk. On the walk, I discovered a hair salon and decided to get my hair cut. They had space so I got a haircut and a beard trim while waiting for the truck to charge. Just as I was paying for the haircut, I received a notice from EA that my vehicle had 10 minutes to be moved before I was charged idle fees. The truck had reached 90% SoC.
Oops. I hurried back to the truck. There were plenty of open spaces and this bus, which was being driven from its factory in the Bay Area all the way to Maryland. I don't know which battery it has, but it can't be smaller than about 500 kWh, so a 350 kW charger is... even more slow than on a Lightning.
I moved on to Pasadena.
I've run out of steam tonight. I'll add the around-town and drive home commentary tomorrow.
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