Comment by Workaccount2
5 hours ago
It's a shame the Lightning got discontinued.
As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
People think EVs are cars with tanks of electrons, and run aground the same way you would if you thought horses were cars full of hay. It's a different transport tool that gives the same results, you just have to know how to use it properly.
> It's a shame the Lightning got discontinued. > As an EV owner, it sucks that the main thing holding the technology back is misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
The F150 Lighting (and the Cybertruck) are failing precisely because it was impractical. It was expensive, has limited range when doing actual "pickup truck" work, like hauling tons of construction materials. It was built for the very niche market of buyers at the intersection of luxury pickups and EVs.
People who buy huge luxury pickups tend not to want EVs, and people who buy EVs tend not to want huge luxury pickup trucks.
A practical work truck needs to be smaller, less luxurious, and less expensive, electric or not. If Ford follows through and releases a plugin-hybrid Maverick with 150ish miles of EV range plus the onboard generator, that would be ideal.
A pure EV drivetrain on the other hand is incredibly practical for daily commuter and even long distance travel - assuming you have home charging - but not for hauling tons of stuff long distances.
The lighting is fine for towing, especially the type that people usually do. You can tow up to 10,000lbs and the truck has ridiculous power to pull it.
What you can't do it tow it long distances (>90mi, worst case) without 40 minute stops every 1.5 hours. That sucks.
But the truth is very few truck owners are towing huge loads long distances.
However, if you are pulling your lawn care trailer around town, you will not have a problem, because every day you start with a full charge.
As an aside, the main killer of range for a trailer is a function of speed and drag. Low drag trailers driven at highway speeds (60-65) have marginal impacts on range, regardless of weight.
Again, the whole thing is ridden with misconceptions and misunderstandings. The majority of people who tow stuff, can still tow stuff while reaping cheaper operating costs.
> However, if you are pulling your lawn care trailer around town, you will not have a problem,
I live in a high CoL area, but I still can't imagine a lawn care business affording an $80k truck. Most of them seem to drive used Tacomas and Mavericks.
> The majority of people who tow stuff, can still tow stuff while reaping cheaper operating costs.
People who are paying $80 to $90k for a luxury pickup truck aren't particularly worried about operating costs.
With perhaps the exception of a few climate-change believers who happen to also run construction companies or farms/ranches (they do exist!), what F150/Cybertruck owners are worried about is signaling to others that they paid $80 to $90k for a luxury pickup truck.
To this day, I've seen 1 Lightning loaded with construction gear.
I've never seen a Cybertruck doing heavy work - they are usually rolling squeaky clean around ritzy parts of town, or getting stuck in snowdrifts in the mountains.
The EVs I see doing work: Ford Electric transit vans.
> But the truth is very few truck owners are towing huge loads long distances.
This pattern also applies more broadly. Most people don't actually need to drive 400 miles without stopping, don't actually need an SUV, and in some cases don't actually need a truck. For a huge swath of the population some variation on a hybrid/electric hatchback/wagon or minivan is actually the best match for their needs, but practicality is rarely the prevailing factor in vehicle purchase decisions.
The Lightning has an incredibly low charge speed given the huge size of both batteries. 155..175 kW is laughable for a 130 kWh net battery.
> hauling tons of construction materials
Lots of people do exactly that. You can load it all the way past GVWR and it has little effect on the range. It's towing that hurts. Many people use these for business with great success.
I don't think that market is a niche at all. From what I can tell, most pickup owners don't use them as a pickup. They use them as a more masculine pavement SUV. So, you'd think, the F150 L and Cyber truck would be perfect.
> From what I can tell, most pickup owners don't use them as a pickup
You are right, except most of those people don't want an EV
If you just use it as a pick up a few times a year, it could be worth it. I have furniture that I want to get rid of, and if I had a pick up I would have done it already.
Man, a gun is so much cheaper.
1 reply →
Right, but the people who buy luxury trucks dont want EVs. EVs dont align with the signal they are trying to send
The main thing holding EV back is the oil industry, not the tech. The US is the only country lagging on EV and its all because the industry puts so much effort in to squashing all progress.
EVs are simpler and cheaper. Look at how fast adoption is growing outside the US. If US citizens could buy a BYD for the same price as in China, the the US auto makers and oil companies would be in trouble.
It's not only US, it's global.
I drive quite a lot throught southern Europe with my EV, and it's super frustrating that gas stations have the infrastructure on the highway while for my EV I have to go just outside the highway to a fast charger (wasting time), then I need to pay again (and waste a lot of time to go through the gate) to get back on the highway for example in Italy.
US was the first to make EVs mainstream
I disagree that EV-s are held back by misconceptions. More their price and range.
I can do a ten hour road trip with a family of four plus a dog in a used (2022) EV that I got for ~30k last year. I think the idea that price and range are problems is exactly the misconception that op was taking about. They are somewhat more expensive, although when I originally did the calculus, fuel savings made up the difference in monthly payments for a new vehicle, but that's going to vary a lot. The is a very small proportion of people for whom range is a legitimate concern.
Now do the range/time/stops calculation with a travel trailer.
Yes, if we're talking about normal family travel, an EV works fine for many trips (though there are still charging "dead spots" in parts of the country - looking at you WV).
But, "truck stuff" like towing, they aren't there yet. Maybe in a few years when we get the next generation of battery and charger tech.
3 replies →
I actually enjoy doing road trips in my tesla more so than in ICEs, because of the forced breaks. With ICEs, stops would be either for food or for bathroom breaks. A lot of times just eating in the car while driving. But for a 10 hour drive I am forced to take 4 20 minute stops - so once every 2 hours. This ends up making me feel a lot better at the end of the trip and also gives you "guilt free" time to enjoy a random park you've never been to, or sit down and have a meal. So, lets say 80 minutes of added time for a 10 hour trip, vs maybe 40 minutes that I would have added in my gas guzzler. 40 minutes extra on a 10 hour trip just isn't that big of a deal to me and especially so considering all the benefits from walking around for a bit or seeing some new places.
Obviously you could do that same thing in an ICE car, but I feel the pressure to keep moving so it hits different.
11 replies →
Range is the misconception, because people view range through the "sit and fill up then drive till empty" paradigm.
That is not how EVs work or how they should be used. They should be charged overnight/when you are doing something else, and on road trips should be charged to align with other stops even if those stops are 10 minutes. It's rare that I have ever done the "sit in the car for 40 minutes waiting for charge", and extremely common to do the "Put car on charger for 13 minutes while going into [insert any of the gazillion places with chargers in the parking lot] to use the bathroom, stretch legs, and get a snack, or see a landmark"
Also you usually structure it so you arrive at your destination with very low charge, because you fill up while there. I've yet to be at a hotel with a gas pump in the lot.
Again, EVs function differently than gas, and that change of paradigm really gets people ruffled up and confused.
I actually leased a Kia EV6 recently without too much research into the charging situation, assuming that in 2025 it was probably pretty well figured out, and I could just do as you propose and just charge in small bursts at the grocery store etc. But:
- It didn't come with a home charger at all. They're not cheap.
- It came with a J1772 adapter, but no CCS adapter. The car itself has NACS. So I'm limited to Tesla superchargers, which are expensive, unless I buy a new adapter (not cheap, or cheap, but suspicious Temu brands).
- The experience of using all of these different branded charging points is _awful_. You need to create 10 different accounts with a bunch of terrible apps. The maps to find charging infrastructure seem universally awful.
- Pretty common to arrive at a charging location to find that some nutjob has hacked off all the charging cables. The only reliably maintained charge points are the larger, more expensive high speed charging locations.
I think a lot of the issues would be solved if I was more committed to the car and the house that I'm living in, and installed a home charger to charge at night. But the charging experience out in the world is absolutely _dismal_ when compared to gas vehicles, even if you change your behavior.
That’s exactly the problem. I’d be happy to use an EV daily, as I drive short distances. But when I drive longer, then I don’t want to waste hours on charging.
The other day I drove 700km in just about 5.5 hours (German Autobahn). Few stops to pee. With EV that would be few hours more (!). If this doesn’t bother you, then it’s fine. It matters to me though.
Sometimes I also drive early in the morning 600km, and in the afternoon back, so I’m home until 22:00. With EV, that’s just impossible.
7 replies →
The big problem here is we need a hybrid stage in between.
I have a hybrid now, it's still a conventional powertrain, and it's not chargeable. That's not exactly what I want, but it's what I could get.
I want a fully electric drive train hybrid with around 100 miles capacity on the battery, then a generator that's big enough to keep it running if the battery is drained.
100 miles gets you through the average day without having to use gas.
An electric drive train turns your engine to a generator that runs at a fixed speed and is more efficient. It also massively reduces the complexity turning into a system more like an EV.
And, if I go on a long trip, the car still gets me to where I'm going without charges (unless I choose to so I can save gas).
> They should be charged overnight/when you are doing something else
This is fine if you're a homeowner. For a huge chunk of people living in denser housing, this is not feasible, and at best impractical.
Depends a lot on the particular example. My Lightning was less expensive than the Powerboost I had been shopping for originally. And 250-300 miles is well beyond my typical daily driving range requirement (and Superchargers are pretty plentiful in most of the areas I ever find myself).
Resale value is starting to ward some people off.
You can buy 1-2 year old used Teslas and BYD's in Australia for ~30% below retail.
Meanwhile Toyota hybrids not just retain their value but there have been moments where used RAV4's are listed above retail because the waitlist for new was so long.
Tesla is a special case because they manipulate their pricing on a monthly, sometimes daily basis, and in the past they've changed the price quite significantly. In the US, the tax credits also really screw with the market dynamics. Lots of people think the car depreciates really quickly because they don't realize the original buyer didn't pay MSRP. I paid $20K under MSRP for my Lightning and in the just over a year I've owned it, the value has dropped about 7-8K. Pretty normal for the first year of a new vehicle.
The poor resale market for EVs just means that people who actually have some understanding of the battery lifespans can get very good deals on 1-2 year old cars
Exactly, price is a huge problem. IIRC, the average selling price of F-150 is ~50k.
The extended range Lightning tended to be $60k and up. Sure, it had AWD, but lots of people didn't need that. The Cybertruck is even more expensive.
Both had huge preorders when they were announced at ~50k.
My 2024 Lightning Flash was just under 51K, FWIW. Extended range, plenty of toys, definitely not the base model.
I admit I was also under the impression they were expensive, and I was shopping for a Powerboost F150 first, until someone told me that MSRP was a lie.
A 600 mile trip can (theoretically) be done with 1 charge, because you leave home with full range, and arrive with 0 charge (and fill up overnight). That one charge is done while eating dinner, or spaced out in increments over the course of the trip, stops which you would take anyway. I know few people who want to bang out 10 hours without stopping for at least 1-2 hours over the course of the trip. And those who do, can be the edge case with gas cars.
So you need to go 600 miles, and you need 1 full charge worth of energy during that.
If that one charge takes 1 hour, you can also break it up into four 15 minute sessions at any time of your chosing.
I'm sorry, but almost no regular person does 10 hours without at least four 15 minute stops.
Range is not at all the problem people make it out to be.
My 10hr drives usually have 2 stops at 30mins-1hr each, for food. Unfortunately, stopping at a restaurant for a meal doesn't leave the vehicle in a location that has a charger, for the most part. Other parts of the world may differ, but the infrastructure to "just spend 15 minutes charging" whenever you want is not there.
Where can I find chargers on demand like that? There are a lot of slow chargers that won't give you much range in an hour. There are a few fast chargers that will, but they are much less common - enough to make the long trips possible but you need to stop where the fast charger is not where you are going to eat a meal or use a bathroom anyway. (gas stations are everywhere and so if you need a bathroom you can get gas at the same time)
Which EV can go 600 miles with one charge, or with so little charging?
How much does that car cost?
Are you assuming, that every charger on the way is 200kW?
6 replies →
Thanks for illustrating the point.
They have worse prices (higher) and worse range (lower, particularly for towing). These aren't misconceptions. (My only car is an EV that I'm happy with. But lying about EVs doesn't benefit advocates.)
7 replies →
An F-150 Lightning and Cybertruck weigh somewhere between 6000 and 7000 pounds, so I personally think of them the same way as if you replaced your horse with a hippo.
It's not hard to convince people to move to electric, just make it such a better economic proposition that it would be silly not to.
No pickup is light. A Lightning weighs about the same as a gasser F250, and less than a diesel F250.
I disagree. I really want a Lightning but live in a very rural place, weekend in an even more rural place, and need to pull a trailer pretty often.
I already have a plug-in hybrid that gets 40+ miles/charge and have opined all over the internet that the perfect car is one that gets 100+ miles/charge before firing any gas engine.
It sounds like the next Lightning will give me that though I don’t put much stock in their promises. Personally the Scout is too bougie but it does similarly.
I disagree along with you. EVs would work for 80% of the population, there is a long tail of people who an EV will never (well foreseeable future) work for.
Thankfully, the mass of humanity that should be transitioning lives in populated areas and never tows anything for more than 75 miles. There is no need to get bogged down in back and forths with the small subset of people who an EV will not work for.
Seems to me like the Chevy Silverado with the 200 kWh battery pack is the EV pickup to beat.
I don’t get plug in hybrids. All other engine types save you more money compared to the next less efficient alternative the more you use them, but plugins get closer to the less efficient alternative (regular hybrid) the more you use them. Add in the approximately 25% price hike over the hybrid version when there is one and it makes no sense to me.
> but plugins get closer to the less efficient alternative (regular hybrid) the more you use them.
As long as most of your drive cycle fits within the EV range of the plugin hybrid, they are cheaper to operate than a regular hybrid. The crossover point depends on the drive cycle and the cost of electricity vs gasoline.
I had a plug-in hybrid SUV that got 2.2miles/kWh in EV mode, which covered 75% of the miles I drove. The net savings were significant vs an equivalent plain hybrid SUV in my area, which would get basically the same gasoline miles/gal.
2 replies →
Depends on the car and driving patterns. I've got a friend with the PHEV Escape that he charges in his garage. It's the cheapest hybrid Escape that Ford sells, and he does all his driving on EV mode unless he has to do a longer trip outside of the city.
1 reply →
I drive it to avoid burning gas, while not being dependent on electricity alone - not to save money.
For three years my plug-in hybrid let me commute 50 miles daily on next to no gasoline.
1 reply →
...misconceptions and misunderstanding, rather than actual practical matters.
What's the range of an F-150 Lightning when towing a small travel trailer? The Rivian R1T is ~150 miles give or take. I assume the F-150 is similar.
At least for towing, the math isn't great. Especially when you add in the cost - my Honda Ridgeline was $42k in 2021. EV trucks are roughly double that amount.
> my Honda Ridgeline was $42k in 2021. EV trucks are roughly double that amount
My Lightning was <$51K in 2024.
of course your ridgeline has other ways to hurt you :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWyjfbS7MMA
Funny because it's true.
It's the most boring and practical vehicle I've ever owned. But, it does everything, so I'm having a hard time convincing my wife I need a Ranger Raptor or (used) AMG GLE.