Will a Lightning work for me (towing + frequent offroad use)?

[Dan C]

I don't haul bales, but I tow and haul other stuff all the time. I picked up about 7-8k lbs of flagstone yesterday in my dump trailer an hour and a half away and made it home with charge to spare... and only had 75% when I left home (I have a Lariat and an XLT, both ER, this was the XLTs day). It honestly tows better than any truck I've ever had, like there's nothing back there. We camp a lot and absolutely load the bed from the bottom to the top of the canopy (on the Lariat, SmartCap) and there is still plenty of suspension travel. I put burly tires (Mickey Thompsons) on the Lariat and did lose some efficiency, hard to say how much but I'd guess 8-10%. The XLT has the stock 'smooth' road tires and definitely outperforms the guess-o-meter regularly. We have 2 properties, one of which is down a gravel road, up a mountain, and all 'off-road'; we raise sheep, goats and alpacas, and this is a truck like any other truck, capable of doing things any other truck in its class can do, and mine are dirty and offroad more than they are clean and at the mall, that's for sure! I bet you'd love the truck, and I'm sure it'd work for you, although as others suggest, you may want to consider a trailer for those bales rather than tossing them on the power tailgate...
Cheers, good luck, no regrets.
-Zap

When I haul dirt or debris I shove a piece of pipe insulation between the bed and tailgate. There is a hole in the bottom of the tailgate that seems to attract junk but will not easily come out.

 

[sunrise089]

Thank you everyone for your responses! In 20 years of car forum membership this is probably the best set of responses I've ever received for a question.

Quoting and responding to everything will clutter the forum too much, but some responses where I'm especially grateful and/or have follow-up questions:

however related to the bale question the tailgate (particularly the Lariat) - looks like a $5k repair bill waiting to happen.

A couple people mentioned the tailgate. Unfortunately I think (?) all XLT and Lariat ERs have the fancy tailgate. I'd be happy to have the standard one but not at the expense of the ER battery.

What distance will you be doing your heavy payload and tow? IMO that dictates whether the truck will work for you or not.

A few people asked my towing distance and I'm sorry to have left it off. The vast majority will be 60 miles or less, and most will be less than 20 miles roundtrip. Plus I'm generally putting out feed and so I'm coming back empty...maybe on a flatbed trailer the mileage penalty isn't as stiff when you're empty?

You'll be towing 1/2 your max capacity so it probably wouldnt hurt for you to get tow package. You could go either way on that if it made much of a difference on the numbers

Thanks! I'd love any other perspectives on how much to prioritize the tow package. I ideally want a used, ER, black truck and so insisting on the tow package means there even fewer to choose from.

If you want to fully charge fast, say to take advantage of nighttime off-peak rates, I recommend the 80amp Charger Pro.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) my rates are low but fixed irrespective on the time of day. I plan to plug in overnight every night.

Finally, I you use a generator a lot, you'll love powering all your tools off the 8 120v receptacles (+ 1 240). You literally can run a whole job site. Having had a dozen power tools running all day is the equivalent of driving less than 10 mi.

I'm definitely looking forward to the onboard generator a lot. Not only for tool usage but for the hurricanes we get in Florida. A 9k watt generator is fairly expensive plus storing fuel to run it a few days is annoying and dangerous so I'm very happy to potentially move to electric for my home power backup.

As far as range is concerned, places where you have a lot of stop and go it regenerates and gives you a little extra juice but when you are on the highway, you get much less range because you are not getting any regeneration where in an ice vehicle you get less range in the stop and go driving and better range when you can just let it go down the road.

I average about one 20-mile roundtrip highway shot each day at 70-75mph. For farm work though it's mostly very low speed and tons of idling time as I open and close gates and load/unload feed. I think the lightning will do great there relative to ICE.

(I have a Lariat and an XLT, both ER, this was the XLTs day).

I'd love to hear your opinion on the two trim levels. As I understand it all ER XLTs have the fancier XLT package. I spent a few minutes sitting in a Lariat and an XLT and didn't find the interior differences dramatic aside from leather vs cloth. Some of the Lariat features are small negatives like the power rear window and possibly the larger screen. I value an upgraded stereo a lot except I've read here the B&O may not actually be much of an upgrade. I'd consider an XLT and going aftermarket leather but only if heat + ventilation wasn't affected.

The other factor to look at is what size is your breaker panel wherever you would install a charger the Ford ChargeStationPro is an 80 amp charger requires 100 amp breaker.

Thankfully the previous owner of my house installed 2x 200amp breakers.

OP and I have a little bit in common. Gladiator in manual, live in FL, considering a Lightning. I think I’m pretty stuck on the Flash trim, just sucks for me as in my area there aren’t any and I’ll probably have to drive 2 hours or so one weekend.

Love it! If I was going new I'd do a Flash. Lightnings have just depreciated fairly hard and the price delta between an XLT and Lariat is pretty small (assuming both are ERs) so that's my current lean.

The front lower cooler opening is a problem out in the weeds, especially this Summer (first one for Lightning) -- it was filling up that space with crap when driving off road in weeds and grass. Brother ordered a grill for that opening.

Thanks for the tip! Do you know what grill he went with?

A manual tranny gladiator has got to be crap for towing.

Haha it's not great. I take it easy so it's perfectly stable, but loaded down there's just no power and reversing I have to be pretty mindful of the cluth.

Stock rims will need to be ditched. Get the ford 64H rims from a HD F150.

Great tip! I was hoping it would be viable to just try and swap for Lighting XLT rims. Hopefully those 64H rims pop up on eBay or Facebook marketplace. I wish they had a name that made them easier for search for!

EDIT: I had been going off this thread for trim differences but it looks like it incorrectly states XLT ER gets ventilated seats (which I care about a lot) and the LED rear light bar (which I'd rather not have). I do believe XLT ER still gets the power tailgate though so it's still likely an expensive repair job, right?

 

[Zaptor]

I'd love to hear your opinion on the two trim levels. As I understand it all ER XLTs have the fancier XLT package. I spent a few minutes sitting in a Lariat and an XLT and didn't find the interior differences dramatic aside from leather vs cloth. Some of the Lariat features are small negatives like the power rear window and possibly the larger screen. I value an upgraded stereo a lot except I've read here the B&O may not actually be much of an upgrade. I'd consider an XLT and going aftermarket leather but only if heat + ventilation wasn't affected.

The stuff you get going from XLT->Lariat is nice but neither necessary nor ultimately compelling. I got the Lariat first because I loved the Atlas Blue color and heard they were discontinuing it, there weren't a ton of reviews of BlueCruise and I thought it compelling initially, and they were in very short supply at the time but I was able to get it for MSRP (groan). We got the XLT next because we liked the Lariat but didn't see the cost/benefit of the additional features at nearly 10k delta between them. Yes, both are ERs so the XLT is 'upgraded'. TBH (as a former car stereo sales guy) I don't think the B&O system is 'all that' either. We did add black 'faux' leather seat covers to the XLT both because they look better, and because my wife lets the dogs ride inside her truck, in the back seat, whereas I only let them in the truck bed (w canopy) where the sliding window actually is a benefit to me... I obviously 'overpaid' for the Lariat at $80k+ but the $49k XLT ER made up for it. I don't think there are any 49k ER trucks left in the country, but if you can find one for a reasonably good price, it's all the truck you'll need.
Cheers and good luck
-Zap

 

[Ragman]

Quite a few good points have popped up in this thread.

Air dam / intake - I too am somewhat concerned on this, Florida it'll be bugs and debris, up north here I'm worried about ice and gravel/sand. I just don't see those plastic fins lasting - freeze up and burn out motor etc.
Tail gate - it's a pretty feature... being completely hard plastic I foresee it as a weak point (-30C/F here). I like the Pro for the old school mechanical, my others have the ridged plastic which takes a beating.
ProPower - get the Generlink installed on your power meters, just hookup the truck in an outage. One thing to be aware the "breakers" are electronic not manual, there is zero overage - the truck really does not like equipment with start-up spikes. If you plan to use it for backup on anything with a compressor (ie a/c being in Florida) you may want to install some soft starts now.
Pricing/Depreciation - lot's of Lariats/Platinum's hitting the dealer/lease auctions near cities, I wouldn't be scared of anything still on warranty take advantage of a "used" one if you don't need 0% finance

For all the short comings I think the aftermarket world will come up with more options shortly, if I was going to be serious about using the bed of mine for the farm I'd put a 1/2" rubber stall mat on bottom and potentially on the tail gate as well which should also seal that gap. Pet peeve ... why is the back bumper not installed an inch higher (hate that gap... lol).

On bigger tires, add the 3" lift/spacers to front to level it - likely don't need to lift the rear. Also get the full coverage rubberized mats, the Ford brand seems decent enough.

 

[Hank42]

...

If you want to fully charge fast, say to take advantage of nighttime off-peak rates, I recommend the 80amp Charger Pro. It was included in my purchase, but I think it no longer is. It adds 50/mi hr -- a 48amp charger is about half that.
...

I think the new Lightnings are limited to 48Amp charger - they did away with the 80 amp version.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I think the new Lightnings are limited to 48Amp charger - they did away with the 80 amp version.

True, though rare as hens teeth, a fleet ER can be optioned with an 80 amp OBC

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