Our Last Ford F-150 Lightning EV Pickup Road Trip Was a Nightmare

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I've learned quite a few things driving MotorTrend's owned 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat extended range pickup for the past year. For starters, my ABCs: Always Be Charging. If there's an open plug nearby, our Lightning is hooked to it so as to not waste the downtime. Lesson two: As my colleagues running our 2023 F-150 Lightning XLT in Detroit have learned, speed matters, and 70 mph is the frustratingly low sweet spot between maximum speed and range. And lastly, the 20 minutes or so spent route planning via the FordPass app and third-party sources like PlugShare can save at least twice that time on a road trip. Unfortunately, that last one went out the window when my wife and I got the call Labor Day afternoon about a family emergency nearly 600 miles away. Without hesitation, we grabbed our suitcases, stuffed them with clothes, and piled into the Lightning. That's where things almost immediately went awry.

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We pulled off I-5 with 37 miles of range and a 14 percent charge, navigated through the 98 Tesla Supercharger stalls, dodged the holiday crowds stopping for dinner, and found the distinctive green glow of Harris Ranch's six Electrify America towers. Two were occupied by charging vehicles, one was completely offline with its screen dark, and one showed a "Charger Unavailable!" message, but the final two appeared to be online. We plugged into the first open tower, yet despite futzing with the connector a few minutes, the charging session wouldn't start. I reached over to grab the cable from the adjacent charger to try that. No dice.

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After waiting on hold for about 10 minutes, I finally got an agent on the line and explained the issue. She told me that the Harris Ranch chargers were "tagged for maintenance" and apologized for the trouble. She tried a reset, but the four broken towers were unresponsive. My best bet, she said, would be to turn tail and double back 45 minutes and 30 miles to Kettlemen City, where the chargers were online.

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Nearly two agonizing hours later, I was finally able to get our Ford plugged in and charging at the absurdly low rate of just 33 kW. It was now almost 8 p.m., and our midnight arrival now looked more like 2 a.m.

After nearly an hour on the charger and without much to show for it—64 percent state of charge and just 182 miles of range—we cut our losses and planned on stopping again at another Electrify America station the route planner added for us, 100 miles up the road. Once there, we charger surfed to find a working one (the first 350-kW tower we plugged into was barely pushing 40 kW) and watched our estimated arrival time creep up to past 3 a.m.

We were tired and angry. Angry at the situation. Angry at Electrify America for being so historically and uniquely awful at its one job. Angry at the Ford Nav system for sending us to a charging station that, given available data, it could have known was, at best, a huge gamble on a holiday weekend.

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