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I just returned from a 900 mile round trip Thanksgiving weekend, North bay SF area to LA area. I had plenty of range anxiety prior to starting out - not because of the vehicles range or performance, but because I was doing this on the busiest travel weekend of the year. Some observations and reports:
1 - The Lightning (Lariat ER) rode beautifully. It was comfortable, quiet, and a pleasure to drive. Home run.
2 - The Blue Cruise works well - where it works. No complaints here on a nascent technology, but it had plenty of times it asked me to retake control on divided highway. It may be my imagination, but it seems that it had the most trouble where the paint marking the lanes was somewhat faded. On newer sections of road, it worked like a charm. The potential is there, and I imagine this will only continue to improve.
3 - In each direction, we made our first stop at Harris Ranch and grabbed some lunch. It looks like they are building out a MASSIVE bank of Tesla chargers. There were nine EA chargers and we were able to grab the one remaining open charger each time. They are fast. In each case, the truck returned to >80% charge before we finished lunch. Range anxiety cured.
4 - On the way home, my GOM had me pulling into my driveway with 11 miles left. I live up a several miles long hill, and this caused me some heartburn, so I decided to make a 15 minute charge stop. Using the Ford nav app in the vehicle, it picked out a bank of EA chargers in Livermore CA. It looked perfect: 8 chargers, with 7 available. As I got closer on the highway, the nav told me it was 1 mile ahead up on the right, but did not provide exit directions from I-580. I exited anyway, and ultimately found the chargers UNDER the elevated highway which is what confused the app. Unfortunately, they were all blocked by several police cars that appeared to be making an arrest, so it was back on the highway for me. I was able to find some open EA chargers at the Petaluma Outlet mall a bit further on.
5 - So far, I am most impressed with EA. Simply connect the plug and charge. It works. Over the weekend, I tried EVGO several times, and although I got them to ultimately work, they are wonky. One started up and gave me 6 minutes of charge and stopped and had to be restarted. Another took 3 attempts to get it to work. I tried two Chargepoint chargers and neither would work at all. While grabbing lunch in LA, I came upon a Volta charger and was able to grab 10 miles of range while we ate. Not a lot, but it was free and paid for the "fuel" to the restaurant.
Overall, it was a great trip and I am very happy with the truck. I got a lot of second looks, questions, and complements along the way.
1 - The Lightning (Lariat ER) rode beautifully. It was comfortable, quiet, and a pleasure to drive. Home run.
2 - The Blue Cruise works well - where it works. No complaints here on a nascent technology, but it had plenty of times it asked me to retake control on divided highway. It may be my imagination, but it seems that it had the most trouble where the paint marking the lanes was somewhat faded. On newer sections of road, it worked like a charm. The potential is there, and I imagine this will only continue to improve.
3 - In each direction, we made our first stop at Harris Ranch and grabbed some lunch. It looks like they are building out a MASSIVE bank of Tesla chargers. There were nine EA chargers and we were able to grab the one remaining open charger each time. They are fast. In each case, the truck returned to >80% charge before we finished lunch. Range anxiety cured.
4 - On the way home, my GOM had me pulling into my driveway with 11 miles left. I live up a several miles long hill, and this caused me some heartburn, so I decided to make a 15 minute charge stop. Using the Ford nav app in the vehicle, it picked out a bank of EA chargers in Livermore CA. It looked perfect: 8 chargers, with 7 available. As I got closer on the highway, the nav told me it was 1 mile ahead up on the right, but did not provide exit directions from I-580. I exited anyway, and ultimately found the chargers UNDER the elevated highway which is what confused the app. Unfortunately, they were all blocked by several police cars that appeared to be making an arrest, so it was back on the highway for me. I was able to find some open EA chargers at the Petaluma Outlet mall a bit further on.
5 - So far, I am most impressed with EA. Simply connect the plug and charge. It works. Over the weekend, I tried EVGO several times, and although I got them to ultimately work, they are wonky. One started up and gave me 6 minutes of charge and stopped and had to be restarted. Another took 3 attempts to get it to work. I tried two Chargepoint chargers and neither would work at all. While grabbing lunch in LA, I came upon a Volta charger and was able to grab 10 miles of range while we ate. Not a lot, but it was free and paid for the "fuel" to the restaurant.
Overall, it was a great trip and I am very happy with the truck. I got a lot of second looks, questions, and complements along the way.
