How well does the Ford F-150 Lightning tow? | Live Thread | News

Since Ford dropped off an F-150 Lightning last Thursday, we’ve been putting it through its paces doing normal truck stuff. It picked up a 75-inch TV, hauled some landscaping accessories, and delivered people to places they were going.

Well, we’re about to find out. As my wife forgot her laptop this morning and has apparently been amusing a class full of third graders by doing that thing where you tuck your thumb under your index finger and make it look like you’re sliding your finger off, I need to make a short highway trip to deliver her missing computer so she can actually teach. And what better vehicle for the function that a 6000-pound electric pickup truck hooked to an 8000-pound enclosed trailer.

I’ll take her usual rout to school, then take a bit more mixed route back which will combine some surface highway and some residential streets. That should give me about a 45-mile loop, which I’ll then extend either by reversing and repeating, or taking a similar mixed route from there, based on how range calculations look at the time.

Here's what we know so far: The truck charged fully on our home level 2 charger, and was showing a range of 270 miles when we started it up to hook the trailer.

The act of hooking the trailer cost us a mile of range, between idling and raising and lowering the electric trailer tongue jack to hook up the load leveling hitch.

We then put the truck in tow mode, input the specs on our trailer, and range dropped to 162 miles, with an asterisk on the center console that we wouldn’t really know the true range until we got some miles under us.

So stay tuned to this thread and we’ll update whenever it’s safe and we have new info. We’ll stick to speed limits, use the cruise control where safe and applicable, and keep the a/c set to 69 degrees.

Comments

yupididit GRM+ Memberand UltimaDork
10/31/22 12:56 p.m.

Do you have any hills or inclines?

Keith Tanner GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
10/31/22 1:02 p.m.

In reply to yupididit :

Have you been to Florida? ;)

I would expect the Lightning to suffer less towing in an urban environment or when there are hills because it can recapture energy that an ICE cannot. Florida interstate at a constant speed is probably the worst case.