This will be my last attempt at a Lightning Road Trip

[Rip]

I am in one hotel, and my lightning is languishing at another hotel, hooked up to a slow-ass Blink L1 charger because it was all I could find. I had to take an Uber back to my hotel, and will have to take an uber back to the other one tomorrow morning, and hope that it picked up enough miles to get me to a real charger.
Until Ford decides to get serious and actually build a freaking network I will confine my Lightning driving to local only. The Ford Pass "network" is just a list. It doesn't work. What i have now are two nav systems (Google and Ford). Google is flawed and unreliable when it comes to charging, but at least I can get somewhere with it. Ford can't find many locations, has all the functionality of Garmin 2004, and looks awful. The FordPass app can find chargers and sometimes feed them to Google Maps, but it's as likely to take me to the wrong place or to a charger that is not available or compatible. After two long days of driving 2 hours to charge for an hour (when I can actually find a charger close to the route), collecting charging apps so I can sit in an isolated spot with no rest rooms and no amenities, I have had it. My wife is ready to leave the Lightning at an airport and rent an ICE so we can finish driving to our vacation destination.
Ford, if you're listening, quit making us beta test your tech. Get it together.

Sponsored

 

[Lightning Bronson]

To be fair, your Lightning doesn't have to be a road trip vehicle.

 

[lightspeed]

I am in one hotel, and my lightning is languishing at another hotel, hooked up to a slow-ass Blink L1 charger because it was all I could find. I had to take an Uber back to my hotel, and will have to take an uber back to the other one tomorrow morning, and hope that it picked up enough miles to get me to a real charger.
Until Ford decides to get serious and actually build a freaking network I will confine my Lightning driving to local only. The Ford Pass "network" is just a list. It doesn't work. What i have now are two nav systems (Google and Ford). Google is flawed and unreliable when it comes to charging, but at least I can get somewhere with it. Ford can't find many locations, has all the functionality of Garmin 2004, and looks awful. The FordPass app can find chargers and sometimes feed them to Google Maps, but it's as likely to take me to the wrong place or to a charger that is not available or compatible. After two long days of driving 2 hours to charge for an hour (when I can actually find a charger close to the route), collecting charging apps so I can sit in an isolated spot with no rest rooms and no amenities, I have had it. My wife is ready to leave the Lightning at an airport and rent an ICE so we can finish driving to our vacation destination.
Ford, if you're listening, quit making us beta test your tech. Get it together.

It does take some planning if you're going across rural areas. But I'm not sure why you are running into issues.

The FordPass app Public Charging section seems to be basically 100% accurate (where I've used it) in showing available chargers.

I turn on the: Ultra Fast Only, Available Now, BlueOval Charget Network filters.

You can see the chargers around you or anywhere on the map and click on them to see how many chargers are available and what rates and fees. When I find one that looks good, I just send it to apple maps and it all works fine.

The Tesla chargers are more likely to match the available number. The Electrify America usually has 1 or 2 chargers broken, so I avoid them unless it says 3+ are available. I rarely use other networks.

Since I restrict to Blue Oval Charge Network (Tesla, Electrify America, EVGo, etc..), I just drive up, plug-in and it works with Tesla and Electrify America and automatically bills through Ford. It would be nice if plug-n-charge worked on all of the networks. You are supposed to be able to manually 'activate' any non-plug-n-charge charger, from any supported charge network, on the FordPass app and it will still bill automatically through Ford, but I haven't tried it.

Sponsored