F150 Lightning

[Badbart56]

It certainly seems like EV's have become the mantra for left leaning politicians. When the state (blue states that is) go so far as to initiate legislation to outright ban the sale of diesel fuel and/or diesel trucks virtual light years before EV's are developed enough to even crudely take the place of the vehicles they're to replace. If you think the supply chain is a wreck now.....?!

And hardly a word addressing the needed multi billion dollar infrastructure to supply the power to put said vehicle in every home (as it seems to be the goal of an unnamed administration).

I'm hearing echos of "a chicken in every pot".....

[sahively]

Like many things it's possible that they're a good idea but not as good an idea yet as some make them out to be. �� We did get our daughter a plug-in and it's the greatest decision we ever made. To and from school daily for two years and we've filled her tank three times. But this truck seems like a really bad investment for most. I chalk the hype up to bragging rights that owners want. Shiny new stuff and such.

[Hblick48]

I own (and love) a Tesla model S. It's great around town since I charge at home. I've taken it on one longer trip that required SuperCharging. By the time we got a bite to eat, the car was charged enough to get us home.

According to Tesla, a long range Model X can get 300 miles per charge. Tow max is 5,000 pounds, however range is decreased about 50% when towing. Cybertruck supposidly can tow 14,000 pounds. Range will probably be 150 to 200 miles when towing. Not ready for prime time....yet!

And that's why I just got rid of my '05 F250 6.0 and got a 2017 F350 6.7 to tow our fiver. All of our long trips are with the fiver, so Tesla relegated to stay home.

[notanlines]

Let's look at this from a different perspective. A LARGE percentage of members here are, well, old. Yes, I said it, OLD. We are old in our thinking, our actions and our buying habits. There are few things we hate more than 'change.'
The only things companies are researching for our generation is more comfortable riding lawn mowers, better replacement hips and potions to remove liver spots.
Change is all around us in this world. Ford and GM have taken this bull by the horns and are hell-bent on bringing it to the real world. Ford alone has started construction on the 'Blue Oval City' right outside Memphis where the electric F-150 will be built. 5800 white and blue collar jobs, 6 billion dollars. The battery plant in Louisville, 4500 new jobs, 5 billion dollars. GM has close to matching numbers, more in the Michigan area.
FedEx and USP have plans to deliver by drone or by a robotic device. Seem far-fetched? Only to those of us looking for better liver spot removers.
And for those who might doubt the Ford plant will come about? DW and I took a drive a few days ago, had lunch at Gus's fried chicken in Mason, and then drove by the site. Almost 5,000 (yes, 5,000) acres of nothing but earth movers and tree removal/grinding in progress.
Ford, GM, and Tesla don't care what we think. We aren't their market.
But, in closing, I for one am thrilled to have lived during a time of all the advances we've seen. I love the team that invented the modern GPS!

[German Shepherd Guy]

I think the concept is great. And all advances in technology from humankind have been questioned. I can hear the folks now who said, "Iron?? you can't reasonably make iron from those rocks. It will require too many trees burning up and its not any better really than the copper we use now. No way am I gonna spend 8 times more for an Iron sword."
Concept is the key word here. Batteries are still the kicker as I see it. The materials to make them are RARE and controlled mostly by countries that hate our guts. Do we need an alternative to dead dinosaurs to move us around? Absolutely. Are EVs the answer? Personally I am not so sure. The amount of energy used to create all those batteries plus to create all the electricity to charge them....are we really solving the problem? I am still thinking energy cells or hydrogen as the solution, whose time is not yet here either.

[sourdough]

The entire problem with going "green", when the entire planet is say "yellow", and the only color in the box is yellow, is trying to make everything "green". Batteries IMO are not the ultimate solution due to the reasons that have been listed along with several more. They are the product of "mandates" that left industries with no other recourse as they grasped for ways to achieve the mandated goals while suitable technologies had not been developed and weren't even on the horizon, so, you grab a yellow crayon, rub it in some dirt and call it green. Nope, it's not green and never will be.

When products are not driven by consumer demand but initiated and pushed by a "decree", by folks that have no idea what their mandate entails nor what the proper solution should be, that product will not be the best solution - or even a good one. Consumers will be slow to accept a "make do" product forced upon them to appease some fringe groups until they eliminate all other options....as they will try.

As for me and some others in my particular "group", we are working on a process far, FAR more advanced and green than batteries. Been working on it for decades now and the end product is getting closer everyday - quantum teleportation! Might be tomorrow, next week or maybe a year or 5 but our goal is almost complete - then Whoosh! - right up into the sky. Instantaneously zip from place to place, star to star and....with no emissions!! Yep, we've almost got it perfected and there ain't gonna be no batteries!!

[rhagfo]

Originally Posted by sourdough

The entire problem with going "green", when the entire planet is say "yellow", and the only color in the box is yellow, is trying to make everything "green". Batteries IMO are not the ultimate solution due to the reasons that have been listed along with several more. They are the product of "mandates" that left industries with no other recourse as they grasped for ways to achieve the mandated goals while suitable technologies had not been developed and weren't even on the horizon, so, you grab a yellow crayon, rub it in some dirt and call it green. Nope, it's not green and never will be.

When products are not driven by consumer demand but initiated and pushed by a "decree", by folks that have no idea what their mandate entails nor what the proper solution should be, that product will not be the best solution - or even a good one. Consumers will be slow to accept a "make do" product forced upon them to appease some fringe groups until they eliminate all other options....as they will try.

As for me and some others in my particular "group", we are working on a process far, FAR more advanced and green than batteries. Been working on it for decades now and the end product is getting closer everyday - quantum teleportation! Might be tomorrow, next week or maybe a year or 5 but our goal is almost complete - then Whoosh! - right up into the sky. Instantaneously zip from place to place, star to star and....with no emissions!! Yep, we've almost got it perfected and there ain't gonna be no batteries!!

Danny, it is all about the PLAN!

https://web.mnstate.edu/alm/humor/ThePlan.htm

[Badbart56]

Originally Posted by notanlines

Let's look at this from a different perspective. A LARGE percentage of members here are, well, old. Yes, I said it, OLD. We are old in our thinking, our actions and our buying habits. There are few things we hate more than 'change.'

Ford, GM, and Tesla don't care what we think. We aren't their market.
But, in closing, I for one am thrilled to have lived during a time of all the advances we've seen. I love the team that invented the modern GPS!

Yeah, I truly understand. No doubt EV's are in our future. Not sure that they are the end all, fix all solution though, as the current political administration touts, but yes, they are coming. And although change is inevitable, we don't always embrace it. A perfect example is the automatic transmission. Met with much disdain, us naysayers would agree that they weren't up to the task of pulling a load, weighed more than a manual transmission, didn't get the fuel mileage a manual would get, were an expensive option, an even MORE expensive repair when they broke, were practically GUARANTEED to break, etc.

Now I pull an 18K pound RV behind my 8K pound pickup truck. Can't even get a manual transmission if I wanted one.

And in commercial trucking we hear it all over again. While these trucks don't use a true automatic transmission, they do incorporate an auto-shift transmission. And many drivers today are quite vocal in their rejection. Although one of my associates said it best, "the only drivers out here that don't like these automatic transmissions are the ones that haven't driven them yet"!

In reality you can put them in manual mode and drive it much like the manual versions. It's not exactly the same but you still control it. The engine computer won't let you shift down if your rpm's are too high and won't let you come close to redlining the engine on upshifts either. But it certainly is the better option when you're in a traffic jam. My left knee is grateful!

But that's how progress is. Like it or not. But don't tell me that I HAVE to drive an electric vehicle. I seriously doubt that they will have the bugs worked out of electric commercial trucks in my lifetime. They are already cramming the self driving sensors down our throats every chance they get. My truck was thankfully ordered without all that crap but I did have to drive a rental truck when ours broke and the damn thing tried to kill us one night. It has an imminent collision sensor in the front bumper that picked up reflective DOT tape on overpasses on the interstate at night and three times it literally locked up the brakes while I was running 70 mph. Had it been wet or icy I probably wouldn't be here to type this right now. And I'm sure you've all heard the mishaps with the self-driving features on Tesla's and other vehicles with that sort of technology. I just don't trust these systems and it's doubtful I ever will.

Self driving tractor trailers? No way. How many people must die in this quest? I know the trucking company owners are drooling over the notion as it would save them over a hundred grand a year just in my salary but I think they would just exchange that money with the insurance companies once the payouts begin.....if they will even insure them at all!

And as for the GPS!@##%$

We depend on our GPS daily. As a matter of fact our truck has one built into the radio and it is run by a computer. It crashes at random times. When we first got it last year it crashed about every twenty minutes. So we don't even use it. It's a known issue with PACCAR trucks (Peterbilt, Kenworth) and they tell us a fix is on the way. But they've been saying that for well over a year now. They do a reflash and it may help, for a while.....anyway we use a Rand McNally Pro OverDryve 8 and back that up with a Garmin DEZL 780 but still they give us erroneous routes almost daily and can't tell if the destination is on the right or left side of the road. And we can go to the same destination week after week and yet it will give us a different route each time!? Each of these units cost between $400 and $600. I have said it before and I will say it again, I would gladly pay over a thousand dollars for a GPS that actually worked as advertised. It's very odd but occasionally we will use Google Maps on our iPhone to go somewhere and they are better updated than our live wifi linked GPS's. Now, if they just offered a commercial truck app.....

[travelin texans]

Originally Posted by sourdough

The entire problem with going "green", when the entire planet is say "yellow", and the only color in the box is yellow, is trying to make everything "green". Batteries IMO are not the ultimate solution due to the reasons that have been listed along with several more. They are the product of "mandates" that left industries with no other recourse as they grasped for ways to achieve the mandated goals while suitable technologies had not been developed and weren't even on the horizon, so, you grab a yellow crayon, rub it in some dirt and call it green. Nope, it's not green and never will be.

When products are not driven by consumer demand but initiated and pushed by a "decree", by folks that have no idea what their mandate entails nor what the proper solution should be, that product will not be the best solution - or even a good one. Consumers will be slow to accept a "make do" product forced upon them to appease some fringe groups until they eliminate all other options....as they will try.

As for me and some others in my particular "group", we are working on a process far, FAR more advanced and green than batteries. Been working on it for decades now and the end product is getting closer everyday - quantum teleportation! Might be tomorrow, next week or maybe a year or 5 but our goal is almost complete - then Whoosh! - right up into the sky. Instantaneously zip from place to place, star to star and....with no emissions!! Yep, we've almost got it perfected and there ain't gonna be no batteries!!

Beam me up Scotty! I mean Danny!!
I watched a utube video just yesterday of about 6 Tesla charging stations in a shopping center parking lot, all 6 are full with about a dozen waiting in line. The person filming said they ask how long it took to charge & the answer "about 30 minutes, but due to the current high demand about an hour per car!". No way would I be sitting there all afternoon, I'd be headed to the nearest car dealer for a car I could fill up.across the street from there in 5 minutes.
People are a strange bunch! They get very upset having to wait in line at the grocery store for a couple minutes, sighing & pacing behind you, but apparently will sit patiently in a parking lot all day to charge their EV.

[Ddaddyo]

All the Manufacturers Mileage Figures are based on 35 MPH on a Closed Course. "Your Mileage May Vary"! Highway Speeds cut it in Half, lots of Start/Stop Driving kills it to.

[KeystoneKal]

Several YouTube videos address the EV towing issue. All say towing cuts the range by half.
TFL Trucks is one site that does a road test of towing using the F150 Lightning.

[skunked again]

Lots of good points on this thread! And some humor!!

My commute to work is 6 miles, round trip, 5 days a week. Wife’s commute is 60 miles round trip, 3 days a week. She’s still trying to figure this retirement thing out! We did consider an ev, for one of us. Knowing we can still take either vehicle, anywhere, at any given time, is partly we didn’t get one.