My Electrifying Life

 Here’s another for my collection of automotive / machinery geek posts.

I have a post from a decade or more ago listing all the cars I’ve owned in my lifetime—which list is getting rather lengthy. I have another couple vehicles to append to that list, and it’s my current daily driver that is the focus of this post.

Many of my 40+ vehicles over the years have been pickup trucks—off the top of my head, at least 5 Toyotas, a couple Fords, and a Ram. (While I like what everyone else likes about full size pickups, I additionally use the truck to carry stuff to and from our lake house, such that I don’t know if we could actually get by with a more traditional SUV / station wagon.) The Ram was the last gas vehicle I owned, traded off now in 2023 for the subject of this post, a 2023 Ford F150 Lightning. 

The Lightning is an all-electric truck, I believe the first such truck from a mainstream manufacturer on the market (The Rivian R1T came on the scene around the same time). I’ve always been interested in EV tech, but my long drive to work from WI to KY seemed a heavy lift for existing models. But after a couple years’ encouragement from my EV-driving brother, I took a test drive and was hooked. And I have to say of all the vehicles I’ve owned, I have a keener interest in and love for this one—bordering on mania—than for any other. My concerns about regular long cross country drives were not misplaced (more on that later), but I find my enthusiasm for this tech easily trumps my concerns for its penalties. (And there are some penalties.)

When perusing old posts on this blog, I ran across a post about the steam locomotive and the railroad industry’s transition from the crude miracle of steam power to diesel-electric power. Whatever else one may say about the technology and the industry’s upheaval at its hands, the superiority of the diesel tech was so overwhelming—fuel cost, ease of maintenance, dispatch reliability, the prospect of easy redundancy—that its adoption was rapid and overwhelming, inevitable. I recall reading that the maintenance staff needed to run a fleet of steam locomotives could be reduced by some 90% by transitioning to diesel-electric motive power. Bad for careers on an individual scale, but a figure too overwhelming to ignore industry-wide. (This reality must have held sway for nautical propulsion as well, and there's surely an analog in the aviation industry's shift from piston power to turbine / turbojets.)

The world’s present move to electric automotive power is another of those moments, I'd wager. The forces resisting the change seem mostly coming from or funded by industries trying to hang onto their huge share of public spending, but I feel pretty confident these forces will not stop the transformation (tho they could sure slow it up and screw up the details of its adoption. This tech is just so superior to internal combustion that the shift is inevitable (I suspect our use of millions of little thermo-dynamic plants powered by tanks of liquid explosive to move our cars around will shortly seem quaint and antique.)

What won me over initially, apart from the fascination of a truck that looks like every other F150 on the road (and Ford sells 700,000 of them a year, virtually all of them gas-powered) but under the skin is *completely different,* is the driving experience. The truck is so quiet and so stupidly fast, the acceleration so free of fuss and so enthusiastic and so instantaneous, that any normal ICE car can only dream of such performance. Even a fast car requires a wind-up and a series of downshifts to get its engine up into the proper range to accelerate sportily. Not so the EV: just put your foot down and with a silent whoosh you’re doing 90 mph. (My wife, who doesn’t love driving anything this big, is always complaining that she’s regularly driving about 30 mph above where she thinks she is. There’s just no audible cue.) Electric propulsion features “instant torque,” and electric motors produce their maximum torque from a dead stop, so getting started from a stoplight can be instantaneous and a little shocking. But even at highway speeds the truck can accelerate to pass with seemingly no effort whatsoever.

Some of this is the inherent way electric motors make their power, and some of it is the lack of mechanical complexity between that motor and the driven wheels. The EV has no transmission, no transfer case, no locking hubs, no turbochargers, no cylinder deactivation, no variable valve timing, no fuel injection, none of the literally thousands of parts needed to make a modern gas engine work. The electric motors themselves are basically a big rotor with a couple bearings (tho of course they need to run thru a differential and half-shafts and CV joints, etc.). Anyway, the proof is in the pudding: my Lightning just drives like a dream, super-quiet and quick and utterly without fuss or drama.

Everything else in the truck is the same as / similar to the analogous equipment in the regular gas F150: the radio, the heated seats, the sunroof, all that stuff. So it feels in a general sense like any other truck—at least until you push the “start” button and… nothing happens. The truck has to beep at you and swipe the wipers to let you know it’s turned on. But for the climate system blowing some air and the screens coming to life, you have no cues that the truck is running (Tesla goes a step further and there’s not even an on / off switch! The car is ON when you approach and open the door, and it’s OFF when you walk away.) But as an old-ish guy, I must say that this familiarity is part of the Lightning’s charm. While I might relish something utterly space-age after 43 cars or so (think CyberTruck), I can see that a familiar F150 with an otherwise-invisible powertrain upgrade is a smart move from Ford. And a gutsy one: the F150 is the best selling single vehicle in the US, and has been for a couple decades; how to you make big changes when that legacy is at stake? Answer: you do both; you keep the regular F150 line moving forward, and you do the Lightning as a small separate project.

Small, maybe, in terms of sales. But the engineering commitment from Ford must have been eye-watering, and it must still be. My understanding is that the Lightning (despite its high cost—more on that in a bit) does not make money for Ford, and the prospect of them recouping their billions in development costs must be doubtful, at least in the short term. But they can clearly see what is the thesis of my little review here: the shift to EVs is coming and is inevitable, and the engineering work is going to have to be done. Kudos to them for getting a head start on it, while GM and especially Fiat-Chrysler are behind to various degrees. VW, Kia, Volvo, Audi, and a host of Chinese manufacturers are all moving smartly towards EVs, and joining the bold newcomers—Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, these latter are EV-ONLY—and I believe we’re seeing the lead-up to a sink-or-swim moment for the industry that is going to see some big players fall.

Once I took my test drive I was hooked. Well, more or less. It was obvious to me that this was the future of the automobile, and I was eager to jump into the stream. But there was the matter of cost-vs-value. The 2019 Ram 1500 I was driving at the time was a $60,000 truck and it had been to that point the nicest and best vehicle I had ever owned: zippy enough and well-sorted, beautifully-made and with the nicest interior materials I had ever seen in a mainstream product. Glorious V-8 hemi noises. At the time of my Lightning test drive I had put 100,000 miles on the Ram, virtually trouble-free. The Lightning I test drove was a similar mid-upper trim level, but the initial sticker on the Lightning was just shy of $90,000. In the four years since I’d bought my Ram, prices had risen, so my $60,000 truck was probably close to $70,000 at this point, and maybe even a bit more. But that still meant a good $20,000 premium to buy the electric. There was a strong likelihood that the operating costs for the Lightning would be substantially less than the gas truck, but for me that $20K was just more than I was willing to spring for. Another few years, I thought, and the market would equalize a bit.

But of course three days after my test drive the sales guy called and said “Ford just dropped all their Lightnings by $10,000!” Bastard. My collapse was rapid and complete.

As far as operating costs go, my suppositions were mostly correct. We have very reasonable electricity costs in Wisconsin (about .10 per kWh), and I’d guess I drive my Lightning locally for about 1/4 of what I was paying for gasoline in the previous truck. I installed a high-power charger at my house (the charger came with the truck with its extended range battery, though I had to pay a pretty penny to have an electrician install it—my local utility happy pitched in to help with the install costs, so that helped a little), and I put in a charger at the cottage, so I’m able to drive around WI without using any public charging infrastructure at all—or very nearly so. I still occasionally use a public charger if I’ve strayed from my usual routine. But day-to-day, I love leaving my house with a “full tank” every time, and I haven’t had to go anywhere to get a fill-up in forever. Having to take Susan’s jeep out to get gas seems like a mild inconvenience, and will doubtless seem more and more so. However, when driving cross-country, the electricity costs very closely parallel what I would have paid for gas for the same distance. (Most high-speed DC chargers seem to run .35-.50 per kWh, so about four times my costs at home).

So that’s one downside vs gasoline: the truck is less convenient to drive long distances, and there’s little cost savings to offset the inconvenience. The “fuel tank” in the EV is about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of a gas vehicle, and it takes about three or four times as long to fill up, so it’s a double-whammy. This isn’t a factor of course when you’re filling up at home while you sleep, but driving cross country you need to be thinking always about your energy state and plan accordingly. There are far fewer EV chargers than there are gas stations, and each stop takes you 20-40 minutes versus 7 minutes for a gas fill up. Now, as an old man, I make more stops than I used to, and by the time I pee and get a snack, I’m really only inconvenienced by a few minutes—call it a penalty of 60-90 minutes on my 8 hour drive to KY. But that’s a hassle. Realistically, I’m driving about two hours between charges, maybe closer to three hours in summer. And that increase in total trip time—which I anticipated and which gave me pause before moving to an EV—is a real factor and one which has made me drive this commute less than I have done for the last 24 years. I either bid trips now that begin with a commercial flight to where the trip begins, or sometimes I just buy myself an airline ticket to KY. It’s more expensive than the electricity would be, but not stupidly so. And I just don’t have to do it very often. So there’s a compromise. 

Additionally, the experience of public charging is quite variable. Chargers come in a wide range of strengths, and not all chargers are suitable for all vehicles (there are different plugs involved). With a battery as big as my Lightning’s, you need a high-power charger when on the road to avoid making a 4 hour stop for your recharge. But even among high-powered chargers, there’s quite a variance. Each EV has a maximum charging current it can accept, and you pick your charging stops according to this limitation. But it’s not uncommon for a charger to be out of service or to fail to deliver its rated power. This all means that planning your cross-country drives involves more thought: you need specific chargers, which are fewer in number, and you must plan for chargers that don’t behave properly. There are a bunch of EV-specific apps to help with this, which are a godsend. The overall public charging situation is improving over time, but it’s definitely a factor that must be considered (tho, again, only for public charging. 90% of my driving is within WI, and these things just don’t come into play. Charging at home is quick and painless and easy and cheap.)

And though I never tow anything, the EV is really not suitable for towing except in very narrow circumstances. It’s not a power thing: the Lightning can pull just about anything. It’s a total energy thing. The truck will easily pull your 10,000 lb. boat, but you’ll need to recharge about every 100 miles. So towing a big load cross country is pretty inconvenient (tho I’ve watched several videos on YouTube where the Lightning owner did exactly that and they got by fine; you just have to plan accordingly). This isn’t a factor for me, but it IS a limitation of EV ownership that must be acknowledged.

(As an aside, I’m always amazed at how well-versed people are by our MSM about all the reasons they’re supposed to HATE the technology, despite knowing virtually nothing about EVs and not ever having driven them or talked to someone who actually owns one. YOU CAN’T TOW, says the guy who never tows. Or they decry The Rapaciousness of LITHIUM MINING, as they celebrate ROLLING COAL and “drill, baby, drill” in the Arctic National Wilderness.  I guess this is what corporate ownership of the media gets us: Sell The Controversy.)

Another downside, and one where I think improvement can be made, is information about your energy state. Whereas your ICE car has a gas gauge and you pretty quickly learn its quirks—whether the last half of the tank goes more quickly, how much time you have from E to a dead car, etc.—the EV is a different kettle of fish.  In place of a gas gauge is of course a battery gauge showing charge remaining, typically displayed as a percentage. Second, there’s a corollary display showing miles of available range before you’re out of charge. This is what most people naturally fixate on: how long can I go before I need a recharge? But unlike an ICE car, this figure is a moving target and not terribly reliable, both because energy usage is more variable in an EV based on load and temperature, and because the size of the “tank” is so much smaller. So a small variation can deprive you of some miles you think you may need. The third thing we look at is the miles per kilowatt-hour, kind of the analog to an MPG gauge in your ICE car. If, for example, I’m showing current usage as 2 miles per kWh, and I have a 131kWh battery, that would translate to 262 miles of range.

In practice, you kind of need to juggle these three figures, maybe supplemented with some seat-of-the-pants intuition based on past experiences, to know where you are, battery-wise (and then figure in where the chargers are on your present journey and of what strength and reliability). This is kind of a pain in the ass compared to your ICE car and its gas gauge—especially with a gas station every 15 feet and the refueling experience being almost completely uniform.

My last word on this topic is a story from my rich trove of firsthand EV lore: A year ago I was driving home from the cottage to Appleton with a friend and Susan and the three dogs and a truckload of cottage stuff—this was before I installed my charger at the cottage—and I needed to stop in Green Bay for a quick top-up. Well, I cut it to the very last second and then MISSED MY EXIT on the freeway to the charger (I was blabbing and not paying attention). I had to go about 4 miles down the freeway to get to a turn-around, and I did not have 8 miles of energy left. The truck took a second before telling me (with alarm-colored messages and chimes) “You ain’t got the energy needed to get to an available charger” and began to slow down. Within a minute or two I was driving 30 mph on the freeway shoulder with my flashers on as the truck continued to slow. I managed to make it to the exit and to turn off into a residential section before I came to a mandated stop.

Luckily, the truck came with free roadside assistance, and a flatbed truck was shortly dispatched to my location (I assume in the future it will be a battery truck for a quick 15 minutes of charge). Interestingly, when the flatbed arrived, the Lightning had found enough juice to drive up onto the truck, and again to back off the truck and into my garage when we got home. So, no harm done (except to my ego).

Thus did I learn that zero is ZERO, and at least for highway driving there is NO RESERVE. My display of miles-to-empty was, I found out, quite accurate. And I don’t expect to ever see this situation again, but the lesson needed to be learned.

I’ll finish with a rant. America at this moment is in a crisis, entirely self-inflicted and by the same people and the same mentality that put us in civil war 150 years ago. Many books will be written about this moment and our response to it, and nobody needs my two cents’ worth. But from the perspective of this little blog post, I’m concerned about the administration’s childish hostility to anything they deem “environmental,” which includes an angry defunding of anything related to EVs and the country’s response to a changing world. Indeed, they’ve vowed to return to BIG COAL (we'd all chuckle if it were an SNL skit; but these very unserious people think they're serious). All moneys for green energy are withdrawn. My dog can see the ludicrous folly in this. This hostility will mean no public dollars to improve public charging infrastructure or to strengthen the grid, no assistance to American automakers for the very daunting and expensive transformation they must undergo (a transformation which, as I said previously, I'd wager they don't all survive--and maybe none of them will), no dollars for energy research at the moment that battery technology is undergoing intense engineering initiatives—indeed, our universities are under attack and funds are being cut if they dare to enroll women or nonwhites. Other nations—China primarily, but also Europe—are not under the yoke of such mandated stupidity, and they will forge ahead on the path that we OBVIOUSLY must tread, only we will be left in the coal dust. And while this falling-down incompetence won’t greatly affect me personally—as Republicans like to say, “I’ve got mine!”—it will discourage people who are sitting on the fence, and that serves nobody (or none of US).

So tho I really adore my Lightning, the future looks pretty hazy. Ford has made only small changes to the Lightning in the last four years, and Ford CEO Jim Farley has said publicly that the future of Ford’s EV programs cannot rest on trucks and big SUVs as they maybe initially intended. Lightnings are selling, but not at the numbers needed to transform Ford, let alone the world. From the moment I bought the truck I’ve said that if it gets ripped off I’d take the insurance check out and buy another exactly the same STAT. And that remains true. Whatever happens at Ford, I fully expect my next vehicle will be another EV. I’m a convert. But exactly what shape that will take remains to be seen. For the moment, there are no changes in the Lightning to warrant making an upgrade (though the addition of a heat pump to improve winter range is certainly welcome and a good idea), and all indications are that my truck should last for years. (Whether it’s wise to have an old EV, especially if Ford distances itself from this program in the future, remains an open question.)