F-150 Lightning takes a 1,000-kilometre round trip into B.C’s Okanagan mountains to test the range and charging capabilities of this all-electric pickup truck
North Vancouver to SilverStar Mountain
One of the challenges of taking a pickup truck on a winter trip from the Lower Mainland of B.C. to the Okanagan is keeping the gear in the box dry. Yes, a box cover does the trick, but many pickups are not equipped with these. The Lightning wasn’t, but the only gear we had to put in the box were skis in ski bags. Why? All our luggage, ski boots, and cooler fit into the 400-litre (14.1 cu.ft.) frunk. For those summer trips, that converts to two sets of golf clubs and carry-on luggage.
All loaded and sitting in our driveway with 329 kilometres of range showing, I punched our final destination into the Nav system, the Vance Creek Hotel in the heart of SilverStar village. The trip computer quickly calculated a 522-kilometre route, and two charging stops that would require a total time of 55 minutes plugged in topping up electrons. That struck me as optimistic. And, interestingly, the range had dropped to 313 km without turning a wheel. More on that later. Just over two hours into the drive we went off the charging schedule, stopping at Britton Creek rest area on the Coquihalla Highway instead of the prescribed first charging stop in Merritt, which was about 64 kilometres up the road.
As it would turn out, we wouldn’t need to do that. During the Kelowna stop at a Flo DC fast charger in a shopping centre parking lot, we picked up some groceries and took the dog for a small walk. An hour later we pulled into the Vance Creek Lodge with 64 kilometres of range left, but with three days of skiing ahead of us and no reason to drive the Lightning, we’d deal with that later. The trip computer displayed a driving time of 6 hours and 49 minutes, a total distance of 468 kilometres and an efficiency rating of 35 kWh/100 km.
What is Intelligent Range in the Ford F-150 Lightning?
I’ve often wondered if the growth of electric vehicles we’ve seen in the past 15 years would have occurred had it not been for the ubiquitous satellite-based technology that provides real-time glimpses into such things as traffic congestion, weather conditions and elevation gain, to say nothing of the cloud-based navigation systems modern vehicles come equipped with. Without all this wondrous technology, an electric vehicle’s range would be far from exact, and without the ability to locate nearby charging stations (i.e. the days of paper maps in the glovebox), doing any kind of road trip would be fraught with uncertainty.
Does the Ford F-150 Lightning have battery preconditioning?
Battery preconditioning is also another great technology that the Lightning comes standard with, and one that certainly shaved time off our charging sessions in the sub-zero temperatures we experienced in the mountains. Here’s how it works: when I programmed the round trip to SilverStar into the Nav system, the prescribed route included suggested DC fast-charging stations along the way. When we were just over 30 kilometres from the charging station the vehicle preconditions by warming up the battery, allowing it to accept a charge faster in cold weather, thus getting us back on the road quicker. In hot weather, the system cools the battery pack.
SilverStar Mountain to North Vancouver
As smart as the Lightning’s trip computer is, it’s not foolproof, so a little human AI was in order. Despite all the benefits of the Intelligent Range system, it did not show that there are four public Level 2 chargers in the daytime parking lots of SilverStar Resort. That is why it directed us to have 62 kilometres of range when we arrived, enough to get us back down the road and into Vernon where there are several DC fast chargers. Instead, during one of the early morning dog walks, we drove the Lightning and plugged it into one of the Level 2 chargers, and by the time we retrieved it as darkness fell, we were back up to 81 per cent range, more than enough to get us to the Electrify Canada fast charger in Merritt.
A few hours later we pulled into Merritt to find no vehicles plugged into the four-charger station, meaning we would be able to get an excellent rate of charge. We did, hovering around the 124-kW mark, and by the time we’d walked over to the nearby Tim’s for a bathroom break, did a walkaround with Sherlock, and polished off some great leftover sourdough pizza from Pizza Gratta in SilverStar (I can’t recommend it highly enough!), we had gone from 98 to 346 km of range, or 90%, meaning we could make it back home to North Vancouver without any more charging stops. We arrived home with 86 km of range left, a total drive time of 6 hours, 35 minutes and an efficiency rating of 29 kWh/100 km. That was 6.0 better than the trip up to SilverStar, so you can see how elevation change and cold temperatures affect an EV’s efficiency.
Final thoughts about EV pickups and the Ford F-150 Lightning
EV charging – Everything you need to know
And finally, about those grilled cheese sandwiches. We’ve done many ski trips up to the Okanagan mountains over the years, pretty much annually before our two ski-mad kids moved on, and typically we’d stop once: a 15-minute gas up in Merritt which included a fast Subway lunch. Mentally, I was always just in such a rush to the get to resort. Sort of a twist on the ‘it’s the journey, not the destination’ line. But that stop in Britton Creek was better. Yes, the stop took almost six times as long, but we made some great memories there, from walking the dog in the snow to grilling in the bed of an F-150 Lightning. So yes, an EV road trip does require longer stops to charge than to simply gas up, but if you approach that not as an inconvenience but as an opportunity to get creative and have some fun, arriving a little later is a small price to pay, in my opinion.
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