Joneii
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2022
- Threads
- 5
- Messages
- 229
- Reaction score
- 371
- Location
- Central PA
- Vehicles
- F-150 Lightning, Tesla MY
- Thread starter
- #1
I've been lurking on this Forum for over a year and I have learned a ton. Thank you to all of the folks who share their knowledge and experiences. I owe the fact that I have a Lightning to this forum. I live in PA and put my reservation in for the Lightning like everyone else. Then I waited. My research on this forum led me to discover that most of the allocations were going to zero emmisions states, so I informed my dealer (they didn't believe it until they called their Ford rep and he confirmed the situation--only 1 vehicle/EV certified dealer in most of PA). I moved my reservation to a Maryland dealership and was invited to order in wave 6!
Now I have an extended range Lariat with max tow and this past weekend we took it on a shakedown trip towing our 2002 Airstream Classic (25' long, 8.5' wide, about 7300 lbs loaded, bullet shaped). I did a short test drive (53 miles) in the local area mostly 50-70 mph speeds and averaged 1.1 mi/kW. We plotted a trip from central PA to Bethany Beach, DE. It is a trip we did before with our diesel Ram 2500 pulling the same camper. Also the DelMarVa penninsula is sort of a fast charge desert, so it would be a challenge.
Inputting the destination into the truck yielded a route that immediately raised some questions. Our truck calculated that it could go 113 miles on 100%, which didn't make a lot of sense to me given the 1.1 mi/kW average, but it was conservative. It gave us a charge stop at a car dealership in a bigger city. This didn't sound fun (I imagined trying to manuever my whale of a camper around a cramped lot full of expensive new cars), however, there weren't any other fast charge options in the area, so we decided to go for it.
The first few miles of our route climb a PA mountain (more like a big hill; 1500' up 8% grade) and the truck recalculated the range to 87 miles--ouch! This trip was not looking good. Luckily the dealership was closing and the service center was done for the day so we could drop the camper in front of their service garage and charge the truck. I really appreciated the Blue Oval network as I didn't want to download a separate App for every charger type that we were going to encounter. The first charge was fast and cheap (.20/kWh). But we decided to eliminate the other car dealership from our route. This is where the limits of the in truck navigation and trip planner became clear.
We knew there was an Electrify America charger close to our route, but it wasn't coming up in the truck. The truck wanted us to go to another car dealership and then to a Royal Farms Chargepoint in DE. We looked up the Electrify America station and input the address. The navigation system routed us to it, but still didn't recognize it as charging stop. We chalked this up to our ignorance and user error (anyone know how to designate an address as a charging stop?).
That stop was great! Walmart parking lot meant that we didn't have to unhook to access a charger without blocking any or traffic, there were 7 of 8 chargers operational and only one other car while we where there. A quick meal in the camper while we charged and we were on our way. The next stop (our final before our destination) wasn't operational. That would've been nice to know, but we looked for a nearby alternative. It too was at a Royal Farms, and unfortunately, it too was not operational. At that point we were relegated to a slow charger. Luckily we had a camper and could spend the night charging on a level 2.
The trip home was much better. We decided to use 4 Apps to do our own mission planning (FordPass, ABRP, PlugShare and GoogleMaps). This combination allowed us to find reliable, trailer friendly fast chargers. The truck was also learning the camper and had figured out that it could do 145 miles on 100%, so staying in the heart of the charge curve (15%-90%) yielded a route home with three stops and fairly short charge times (40 minutes, 1 hr, and 20 minutes). We learned a lot and also have a lot of questions:
1. Why doesn't the FordPass App indicate if stations are out of service (it turns out that the Royal Farms locations in DE have been having issues with their ChargePoint chargers for months).
2. Why doesn't the truck's trip planner show the Electrify America stations?
3. How can we indicate that a particular waypoint is a charging stop?
4. When is Pet Mode going to be a reality?!
5. Ditto for PAAK?
Okay, now the big question. After returning home I disconnected the camper and returned to Normal Drive mode with no active trailer, and charged my truck. However, the next morning I was surprised by my new Guess O Meter indications--100%, 232 miles of predicted range! Did I get a standard range over the air downgrade?! I drove a bit hoping this would reset itself, but it hasn't. If I put it into tow mode with the trailer, the range goes to 160 miles (that seems awfully high). I'm guessing my truck is confused because we now have more miles towing (700 or so) then normal driving (400 or so), but I would assume that the drive modes would keep the range calculations independent. Any guesses on how I can get my extended range back?
Now I have an extended range Lariat with max tow and this past weekend we took it on a shakedown trip towing our 2002 Airstream Classic (25' long, 8.5' wide, about 7300 lbs loaded, bullet shaped). I did a short test drive (53 miles) in the local area mostly 50-70 mph speeds and averaged 1.1 mi/kW. We plotted a trip from central PA to Bethany Beach, DE. It is a trip we did before with our diesel Ram 2500 pulling the same camper. Also the DelMarVa penninsula is sort of a fast charge desert, so it would be a challenge.
Inputting the destination into the truck yielded a route that immediately raised some questions. Our truck calculated that it could go 113 miles on 100%, which didn't make a lot of sense to me given the 1.1 mi/kW average, but it was conservative. It gave us a charge stop at a car dealership in a bigger city. This didn't sound fun (I imagined trying to manuever my whale of a camper around a cramped lot full of expensive new cars), however, there weren't any other fast charge options in the area, so we decided to go for it.
The first few miles of our route climb a PA mountain (more like a big hill; 1500' up 8% grade) and the truck recalculated the range to 87 miles--ouch! This trip was not looking good. Luckily the dealership was closing and the service center was done for the day so we could drop the camper in front of their service garage and charge the truck. I really appreciated the Blue Oval network as I didn't want to download a separate App for every charger type that we were going to encounter. The first charge was fast and cheap (.20/kWh). But we decided to eliminate the other car dealership from our route. This is where the limits of the in truck navigation and trip planner became clear.
We knew there was an Electrify America charger close to our route, but it wasn't coming up in the truck. The truck wanted us to go to another car dealership and then to a Royal Farms Chargepoint in DE. We looked up the Electrify America station and input the address. The navigation system routed us to it, but still didn't recognize it as charging stop. We chalked this up to our ignorance and user error (anyone know how to designate an address as a charging stop?).
That stop was great! Walmart parking lot meant that we didn't have to unhook to access a charger without blocking any or traffic, there were 7 of 8 chargers operational and only one other car while we where there. A quick meal in the camper while we charged and we were on our way. The next stop (our final before our destination) wasn't operational. That would've been nice to know, but we looked for a nearby alternative. It too was at a Royal Farms, and unfortunately, it too was not operational. At that point we were relegated to a slow charger. Luckily we had a camper and could spend the night charging on a level 2.
The trip home was much better. We decided to use 4 Apps to do our own mission planning (FordPass, ABRP, PlugShare and GoogleMaps). This combination allowed us to find reliable, trailer friendly fast chargers. The truck was also learning the camper and had figured out that it could do 145 miles on 100%, so staying in the heart of the charge curve (15%-90%) yielded a route home with three stops and fairly short charge times (40 minutes, 1 hr, and 20 minutes). We learned a lot and also have a lot of questions:
1. Why doesn't the FordPass App indicate if stations are out of service (it turns out that the Royal Farms locations in DE have been having issues with their ChargePoint chargers for months).
2. Why doesn't the truck's trip planner show the Electrify America stations?
3. How can we indicate that a particular waypoint is a charging stop?
4. When is Pet Mode going to be a reality?!
5. Ditto for PAAK?
Okay, now the big question. After returning home I disconnected the camper and returned to Normal Drive mode with no active trailer, and charged my truck. However, the next morning I was surprised by my new Guess O Meter indications--100%, 232 miles of predicted range! Did I get a standard range over the air downgrade?! I drove a bit hoping this would reset itself, but it hasn't. If I put it into tow mode with the trailer, the range goes to 160 miles (that seems awfully high). I'm guessing my truck is confused because we now have more miles towing (700 or so) then normal driving (400 or so), but I would assume that the drive modes would keep the range calculations independent. Any guesses on how I can get my extended range back?
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