Is Anybody Happy With Their Lightning?

[Jseis]

Purchased our ER Lariat summer of ‘23, and 51K miles now. Best vehicle we’ve ever owned. Low maintenance, charge at home… saves thousands $$$ a year over ICE and then there’s ICE maintenance savings. Excellent road tripper. Several 2,000 mile road trips, no issues DCFC charging.

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[Lightning Bronson]

Happy with my Lightning, absolutely.

Only thing I'm not happy about is Software and bug fixes. They're very few and far in between. Outside of major software changes like the ones that differ the 22-23s to the 24s and 25s (that I believe Ford promised to backport to the earlier Model Years), it's just bugs that I really want fixed. Few off the top of my head that bothers me:

1) 24-Hour clock still not fixed after it broke a good while back now

2) Main phone seemingly stopped connecting to truck via Phone as a Key, so I removed it from truck and from FordPass settings and now my main phone can't connect to enable Phone as a Key again. Something about unable to share keys. Other phones I had laying about, and friends phones (iPjone and Android) tested and the pairing process works just fine for them.

3) Auto-theme light/dark mode is completely delayed. Sometimes it takes takes a minute or two to realize it's bright out for it to switch to light mode, and others it takes 30 minutes at *noon*, sun blazing, clean windscreen.

4) Instrument Cluster and Infotainment backlight auto brightness is also very hit or miss. Mostly miss. Night time, I like the lowest level set. During peak brightness hours, it flat out refuses to change brightness to max. Basically makes the cluster and infotainment screens unreadable.




Other than that, yes, close to 77,000km in and I'm more than happy with the truck and the ride experience

 

[Early777]

I have 2023 lightning lariat. It is a great truck. Comfortable easy driving cheap to operate. I probably paid too much but everything else about it is superb.

 

[Jseis]

I have a Maverick on order, but started having reservations about the size and utilitarian interior a couple weeks ago, so I started looking at the Ford Lightnings. I read about the tech and features and was pretty excited. But there are so many negative reviews online. There's maybe 1 positive review for every 9 that say "I hated my Lightning and sold it and a huge loss" reviews. Even here it seems like the majority are unhappy with their purchase. Am I making a huge mistake even looking at the Lightning?

We seriously considered a Maverick Hybrid when they first came out. If we could have lowered gas savings by 50% and last 200K… maybe. But the deal is I’ve hit two deer in the last 5 years and avoided several elk strikes. The S.O. wanted me in a bigger truck. So she wanted to buy me the Lightning. Who am I to argue? It’ll tow the boat, has on board generator, excellent road tripper plus more. It also cost nearly 3X-4X $$$ more than a Maverick…. And insurance is more. Bottom line is the Lariat Lightning is in the lux truck universe. We can afford it but if I was younger than 71, I’d buy the Maverick and sell the boat, keep the canoes.

 

[WXman]

Another epiphany:

There was a story in our local news today of a guy getting caught siphoning gasoline out of another person's car at a store downtown. This was a rampant issue during the fuel crisis of '08 and again a few years back during COVID.

Guess we don't have to worry about that anymore either!

 

[mr.Magoo]

Guess we don't have to worry about that anymore either!

Hopefully the crooks doesn't shift their desire from platinum (catalytic converters) to copper and lithium. Plus, given the spare part prices for lighting components (light bars, tail lights etc.) I'd be more concerned about someone stealing my $2,500 tail light vs. a $100 tank of gas.

 

[CJLightning]

I work in tech, and the Lightning can be easily described as an Android/iPhone on wheels. If people have HUGE trouble in simply sending a file, taking a screenshot, even saving a phone number; how are they going to react to a smartphone on wheels? They don’t understand the kWh math, and they barely can understand the charger. I was at a Tesla supercharger station and this other guy in a lightning was struggling with the Tesla charger. Only to find out he kept trying to push in the charger backwards, while yelling “This is a piece of shit!”

As for myself, I love my 25 Flash Lightning; easily the best car I’ve ever driven. Took maybe a week to adjust and get the hang of things. The reason it was a week was I was in the middle of the first week of college; those were all long intro assignments. I’m averaging 3.2 mph, super charging cost nearly $13 if I go at off peak. I have no charger installed in my townhome- the way it’s built will likely have my bill exceed 6k+, too much distance from point A to B, have to dig up concrete. However, the Tesla station is at a Wawa that’s 3 miles from me, all downhill, I’d need maybe 2% tops to make it.

However, its benefits most when you have an infrastructure around you that supports it nicely. If you’re into towing/camping/work truck under certain conditions, your likely better off with a ICE in those situations.

This is coming from a guy where the Flash Lightning is my first ever truck, really first ever truck driven, and first ever EV. I’ve had it since July 27th and I may only stick with Lightning’s from here on out, I love this truck!

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