A friend bought a Ford Lightning recently and I had a chance to ride with him on a long ride yesterday. We were over the range of the battery and had to do a recharge. On the plus side, it rides quiet, is quite solid and its built in range meter seems to be quite accurate. I did see a lot of downsides some annoying and some would keep me from buying one. The built in car navigation software was not google maps or Waze quality. Even getting it to recognize a voice search is difficult and using a keyboard when driving is locked out unless its overridden. Even if I, as a passenger overrode it and used the keyboard, it only searches for street addresses. A search for the "nearest Sams club" that is integrated with aps like google maps does not work. It does seem to locate charge stations and gas stations on the screen but no information is available on charge type of capacity. Charger type is very important, a level 1 or level 2 charger will be way to slow for an on the road charge.
My friend knew where there was a Ford level 3 charger location. There were several open charge stations with one EV Mustang parked in a station not charging with the cord not plugged in. Despite it being a Ford vehicle and a Ford charger, there was no electronic handshaking so he had to enter credit card info. He tried a couple of times unsuccessfully and then a employee came out and after a few tries it recognized his card. It sure wasnt smooth. The other issue is that there really were not facilities nearby. I expect if someone needed a restroom they could go into the car dealer.
BTW he has had his truck for more than a month and no ETA on the Tesla adaptor so he is unable to access the Tesla Supercharger network. The Superchargers tend to be located near places with facilities as even with a high speed charger it takes 30 minutes (longer if multiple vehicles are sharing a charger). This would get old very quickly.
The Lightning's have a lot of driver assistance features, IMO excessive, but I guess they need to pack on the tech. What turned me off and would prevent me from buying or renting one was what I consider a large bug. There is a lane assistance feature linked into cruise control and a system that detects if the driver's hands are on the wheel that is also tied into a "hands free" driving mode on limited access highways that was borderline dangerous. In actual use, despite my friend having both hands firmly on the steering wheel, the system goes into alarm mode that the driver is not holding onto the steering wheel. It alarms for a few seconds and then goes into warning mode and then aggressively hits the brakes twice, if someone was following too close they may be eating the bumper. The system then disengages to normal driving mode, it makes using the cruise control not worth the effort and I regard cruise control as essential for long highway drives . We tried multiple iterations and finally came to the conclusion that most of the time, the system regards the driver holding the steering wheel at any other location than on the lower portion, that an internal sensor mounted in the center of the dash regards holding the steering wheel in any other location for more than a second or two as not holding onto the steering wheel. Once we realized the connection, when it went in alarm mode I would watch where my friend's hands were located and inevitably he had shifted his right hand grip to 2 clock. It did not seem to regard the left hand at 10 o'clock as a threat. I do realize that with air bags that the lower 4 and 8 o'clock position is recomended due the potential for breaking an arm if holding at the 10 and 2 position but if they want to enforce the lower grip position they should redesign the steering wheel to make it uncomfortable to hold it at the higher position. Had it been another person driving, I expect that cruise control with hands free was not going to be used again. Maybe there is way around it by my guess is its just an execution bug.
Given the price, its a swing and miss for me unless it is used as a local truck only where highway features are not used. Luckily my friend has an alternative vehicle to use but at 70K I expect everything to work.
My friend knew where there was a Ford level 3 charger location. There were several open charge stations with one EV Mustang parked in a station not charging with the cord not plugged in. Despite it being a Ford vehicle and a Ford charger, there was no electronic handshaking so he had to enter credit card info. He tried a couple of times unsuccessfully and then a employee came out and after a few tries it recognized his card. It sure wasnt smooth. The other issue is that there really were not facilities nearby. I expect if someone needed a restroom they could go into the car dealer.
BTW he has had his truck for more than a month and no ETA on the Tesla adaptor so he is unable to access the Tesla Supercharger network. The Superchargers tend to be located near places with facilities as even with a high speed charger it takes 30 minutes (longer if multiple vehicles are sharing a charger). This would get old very quickly.
The Lightning's have a lot of driver assistance features, IMO excessive, but I guess they need to pack on the tech. What turned me off and would prevent me from buying or renting one was what I consider a large bug. There is a lane assistance feature linked into cruise control and a system that detects if the driver's hands are on the wheel that is also tied into a "hands free" driving mode on limited access highways that was borderline dangerous. In actual use, despite my friend having both hands firmly on the steering wheel, the system goes into alarm mode that the driver is not holding onto the steering wheel. It alarms for a few seconds and then goes into warning mode and then aggressively hits the brakes twice, if someone was following too close they may be eating the bumper. The system then disengages to normal driving mode, it makes using the cruise control not worth the effort and I regard cruise control as essential for long highway drives . We tried multiple iterations and finally came to the conclusion that most of the time, the system regards the driver holding the steering wheel at any other location than on the lower portion, that an internal sensor mounted in the center of the dash regards holding the steering wheel in any other location for more than a second or two as not holding onto the steering wheel. Once we realized the connection, when it went in alarm mode I would watch where my friend's hands were located and inevitably he had shifted his right hand grip to 2 clock. It did not seem to regard the left hand at 10 o'clock as a threat. I do realize that with air bags that the lower 4 and 8 o'clock position is recomended due the potential for breaking an arm if holding at the 10 and 2 position but if they want to enforce the lower grip position they should redesign the steering wheel to make it uncomfortable to hold it at the higher position. Had it been another person driving, I expect that cruise control with hands free was not going to be used again. Maybe there is way around it by my guess is its just an execution bug.
Given the price, its a swing and miss for me unless it is used as a local truck only where highway features are not used. Luckily my friend has an alternative vehicle to use but at 70K I expect everything to work.
