nanohead
Well-known member
- Thread starter
- #1
Well, owning the 23 Lightning ER has been a pleasure... mostly. We do love driving it, its an F150 to the core, and its been dead nuts reliable (except Android Auto of course). Incredibly comfortable, and now that they installed our beloved heated steering wheel, its just super warm in the winter. FWIW, we also own a Mach E which has been excellent as well.
We've figured out how to optimize range, and use the truck for all sorts of things, some trucky things, other family things. For the record, the Lightning is the single BEST SKI CAR ever. The Frunk, with its AC outlets, is a fantastic hiding place for heated ski boot bags, I kid you not. It can haul lots of people and stuff.
And credit to Ford for actually continuing to improve the truck, doing tons of updates, not nickle and diming us, etc.
But the public charging debacle has ground us down. Its so horrifically bad, unreliable and borderline dangerous I might add, that I just can't do it anymore. This is not the fault of Ford or the Lightning. But with the range problems in the winter, regardless of how much we all try and optimize, not being able to reliably charge even on a 200 mile trip in dead of winter is just way too much of a compromise.
Home charging is great, works every time... But having the winter range limitations that we're all dealing with, has basically pushed me over the edge, even though I love the Lightning in almost every way. For the Lightning to work for us at least, public charging needs to actually be widely available and reliable. Heck, I don't mind spending 20-30 minutes to throw 50-100 miles into the truck, that's fine. But each time we go to a public charger, its a 30% chance we'll get at least 1 charge station to actually work....
In the winter, when we really need reliable public charging critically, and its freakin cold outside, fiddling around with 3-4 charge points, all the garbage mobile apps, broken payment systems, etc is just not fun.
So knowing I'll get my arse kicked on the value of the Lightning when the Ramcharger comes in, I'm going to make the change. But at this point, having onboard charging makes the actual range terror go away.
We've figured out how to optimize range, and use the truck for all sorts of things, some trucky things, other family things. For the record, the Lightning is the single BEST SKI CAR ever. The Frunk, with its AC outlets, is a fantastic hiding place for heated ski boot bags, I kid you not. It can haul lots of people and stuff.
And credit to Ford for actually continuing to improve the truck, doing tons of updates, not nickle and diming us, etc.
But the public charging debacle has ground us down. Its so horrifically bad, unreliable and borderline dangerous I might add, that I just can't do it anymore. This is not the fault of Ford or the Lightning. But with the range problems in the winter, regardless of how much we all try and optimize, not being able to reliably charge even on a 200 mile trip in dead of winter is just way too much of a compromise.
Home charging is great, works every time... But having the winter range limitations that we're all dealing with, has basically pushed me over the edge, even though I love the Lightning in almost every way. For the Lightning to work for us at least, public charging needs to actually be widely available and reliable. Heck, I don't mind spending 20-30 minutes to throw 50-100 miles into the truck, that's fine. But each time we go to a public charger, its a 30% chance we'll get at least 1 charge station to actually work....
In the winter, when we really need reliable public charging critically, and its freakin cold outside, fiddling around with 3-4 charge points, all the garbage mobile apps, broken payment systems, etc is just not fun.
So knowing I'll get my arse kicked on the value of the Lightning when the Ramcharger comes in, I'm going to make the change. But at this point, having onboard charging makes the actual range terror go away.
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