Share Your Pipeline to F-150 Lightning. G'on. It's Thanksgiving...

[Tom M]

1972 Toyota Corolla Wagon
2002 GMC Sierra
2014 Honda Accord
2016 Mazda 6
2017 Honda Ridgeline
2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

Note: these are “my” cars. Our family first EV was a 2022 Kia EV6. I loved driving the EV6 so much that I wanted an EV as my own car. We also have a 2025 VW ID.Buzz.

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[Ford Motor Company]

Do these all live together in a garage or is one traded for the next?

Switching one out for the next.

I believe Ford employees switch them out. It's both a blessing and a curse, based on what I've heard

Ha, correct - very much a "first world problem". I love my Rally, but I LOVED my green GT with bronze pack.

 

[ZeusDriver]

Great question! Especially for a bloviator such as me.

1960's: Started my electric propulsion journey by hopping up electric industrial carts to use on semi-public roads, before I could drive legally. Some thrilling rides, using plugging (throwing it into reverse) to slow down. Stunningly simple speed controls. One battery charger had a vacuum tube rectifier!

1970's - 2000: Owned various electric boats and a lot of ICE cars, some exotics, etc... motorcycles... an airplane. The airplane was aerobatic, and when inverted, would spill fuel into the air. Probably polluted more in one hour than a years worth of car driving would.

2000 - 2010: Built an ultra-efficient streamlined plug-in hybrid three wheeler. It's now in a museum, but I may resurrect the business plan. It went 10 miles per kilowatt hour. The proof-of-concept had a crude gas engine, and it would do about 100 miles per gallon when running on only gasoline. A production version, with Atkinson cycle and injection would do much better.

2010 - 2020: Bought a Chevy Volt, and started building a boat powered by electric motors and a rigid wing. The Volt was a fabulous car, far better than the Tesla that would later replace it. 330 days per year, it operated on electricity alone. 30 days a year, it operated on gasoline, getting about 40 mpg. Never experienced range anxiety. Perfect reliability record, with just one 12v battery replacement and some tires. When I sold it, it was 10 years old, and the electric range was still slightly better than originally advertised.

2020 - Now: Replaced the Volt with a 2024 Tesla Model Y. By far, the lowest quality car I have owned, with ergonomics designed by video gamers instead of automotive engineers. Having to look to the right into a complicated central screen just to see my speed was fundamentally unsafe, as was driving using FSD, unless one used exceptional care to avoid the full page-worth of faults enumerated in the owner's manual. Voice control was laughably bad -- about five years behind "Hey Google". The wipers never worked as advertised, despite several requests to have them fixed... the excuse each time being that they would probably work with the next software update. Learning that key suspension members were falling off of Models 3 and Y was the last straw: I sold the car at a loss, and bought my F150 Lightning, which is every bit as good as the Tesla was bad.

The "Calm" driver display mode is brilliant, giving me just the info I want and nothing else. Everything works -- very refreshing after the Tesla -- and it is quieter and rides much better than the Tesla. The utility is also light years ahead of the Tesla, with, for example, the towing hitch not having to be down-rated if the geometry is less than ideal. (The Tesla had a pretend tow rating of 3500lb... only with the ball positioned at just the right point in space. ) I use Android Auto, which avoids the Ford connectivity fees, and provides better and more usable voice recognition. Great sound system, supportive seats -- it is just a really nice vehicle to drive, with real steering feel instead of the connected-through-oatmeal feel of the Tesla.

Sad to think that the Lightning is no longer being produced. It is such a nice truck. I charge at home all the time, other than on the occasional long trip. Costs less to drive than a Prius, but it can do so much more.

 

[Lightningwaiter]

Been thinking a lot about how people end up with a Lightning, and I would love to hear everyone's stories.

I started driving EVs back in 2006 - my first (non electric bicycle) EV was so small It could have fit in the bed of the Lightning. Mine was the yellow one...

Since then, I've gone through quite the list, including a super-rare 1984 Volkswagen Golf City Stromer (a VW factory conversion - it now lives in a museum in the UK). I've had embarrassingly bad EVs (G-Wiz that to my credit, was free), historically significant EVs (a RAV4 EV) and a bunch in between.

In order:

1998 City El
2005 Prius (I converted it to a Plug-in hybrid)
2004 Reva (the pre-cursor to the G-Wiz, was not ever meant to be privately sold...)
1984 Volkswagen CityStromer (Sold back to Volkswagen in 2011)
2011 Nissan LEAF
2013 Chevrolet Volt (the super-rare UK spec of which only a few hundred were made - we preferred it to the Vauxhall Ampera)
2014 Renault Twizy
2014 Renault Twizy (I may have crashed the first, and Renault purchased it back to 'study it' because I twisted the frame LMAO)
--- Move to the U.S. in 2015

2013 Nissan LEAF (used)
2003 RAV4 EV
2017 Chevrolet Bolt LT
2017 Chevrolet Bolt Premiere (had these at the same time)
2022 F150 Lightning Lariat (replaced the Bolt LT)
2023 F150 Lightning Lariat (replacing the 22 which I wrote off)
2006 Vectrix VX-1 (restoration in progress)

---

Somewhere in there, I also had:

1965 Morris Minor 2-Door Sedan
1961 Morris Minor Traveller With K-Series Engine Upgrade (it did 70 in second and nobody else would drive it because it was a legitimate hot rood)
1992 MZ ETZ (because two strokes are fun)
2007 Prius (my wife's which we changed out for the smart car when she lost her job)
2008 Smart Fortwo TDI (don't judge, it was £99/lease a month back in the height of the 2008 financial crisis)
2009 Prius (the Smart Car went back before we were ready to buy the Volt)

But yeah, Haven't had a gas car in... 12 years?

What's your pipeline? Are you new or old to this?

I went from:
Prius
Prius
Maverick
Lightning
Lightning

 

[TaxmanHog]

2030 HD Electric Glide

I wonder if Rich still has this bike and I could acquire it?

 

[fhteagle]

80s and 90s: parents owned various cars, including quite a few VW TDIs, almost all manual transmission
1999 Dodge Neon, manual (ugh, learned a lot of valuable lessons from that pile of junk)
Circa 2001: really started to seriously ask where all the fuel for my chosen career came from, and really didn't like the answers I was getting
2003 Mazda 6, manual
Circa 2008: helped a fellow member of a maker space finish / troubleshoot his DIY VW Cabriolet EV conversion, which is where I got the bug for what electric can do and also learned about the limitations at the time
Circa 2011: switched the last TDI in the family to biodiesel, which was awesome in so many ways
2013: Chevy Volt (just sold a couple of months ago in great mechanical condition) ... Really wish GM corporate hadn't completely mishandled the marketing, dealership foibles, etc around this car, let alone failed to put Voltec in bigger cars, trucks, and SUVs
2023 Model Y LR, not going to keep much longer because Tesla hardware and software is aces and spaces, and the spaces are becoming unlivable
2022 F150 Lightning Lariat currently

(Skipped a few irrelevant gas only cars I ended up with not by choice)

Next: Not sure, possibly TELO MT1 if I want to go smaller, Sierra AT4X if ever that gets released, or possibly a higher tow rating EREV truck if anyone other than Stellantis makes one.

 

[Wendy]

@Farmford42 I was reading your post in another thread, noticed that your signature line says you had a 1969 Bronco with 3 on the tree ... reminds me of my first car ... 1967 Saab, it was a 2-cycle 3-cylinder front wheel drive engine. It has a "4 on the tree" , regular "H" 4-speed, pull the stick out and down into 2nd for reverse. Fun car, even had a lever to make it a free-wheeling clutch so you could coast without compression (like 1PD vs. not, and great in the snow preventing you from spinning around when the front wheels catch!)

 

[Bushwood CC]

My first car was a Ford fiesta which nearly always topped 40 mpg when that was really rare. I think every vehicle I’ve had since then has gotten just a little worse mpg. I waited 3 years for Ford to work out its lightning bugs. Realizing now that that’s probably never going to fully happen, I’m so glad to have my Flash. Easily the best vehicle I’ve ever had.

 

[BurritoGrande]

1969 VW Bug
1992 Chevrolet Cheyenne
2001 Honda Prelude
2014 Toyota Tundra
2015 Ford F150 Platinum EB
2023 Ford F150 Lightning

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