Where I live, certain models of cars can be expected to usually travel under the speed limit, and others can be counted on to exceed it. But half ton pickups like the F150s are total wildcards. Some are driven slowly, some keep with traffic, while others are ridden like a bat out of hell. And there’s no telling until they either blow past you or start crawling along.
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I’m thinking this will change the way we camp. For a two week vacation, we’ll look for campgrounds that are about 115 miles apart. That should give us a nice leisurely loop around the state.
It will limit us to electric sites, of course, eliminating some of the pretty parks in the national forests; but all the state and county parks have some features of interest. (Except Kathio. Their only notable feature is the quantity and quality of their mosquito breeding ponds.)
You have plain old normally aspirated V6, V8, diesel V8 (?,) Turbo V6, Turbo Hybrid V6 and Super Charged V8 FACTORY models of the F150, I think. People who buy the Raptor and whatever the other Tremor or Ford performance packages are, are typically bought by folks who want to hoon around. Generally the hooning is done offroad.
I would figure on 1-2 short 30-45 minute coffee stops somewhere along the route, depending on how much electricity you intend to use at the campsites with the truck. If you are booking sites with electricity then you are golden, to an extent. IIRC my experiences with hookups at California state sites were 15amp circuits.
My most frequent road trip is the 400miles of Los Angeles to San Francisco. 300-mile range of the F150 suggests 1 stop for 45 minutes or so mid-way. I frequently will not stop. That prolonged driving time without stopping is very bad for my back. I doubt most of America has my lower back but I think a 45 minute stop every 3-4 hours of driving is probably pretty realistic. I understand the onboard system will guide you to drive to near 20% battery capacity and have you to charge up to around 80%, rinse and repeat.
I love the idea of this truck for that drive and the other daily uses I get out of mine now, just without gas.
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Yes, more small trucks please. Especially electric. I’ve been digging the Canoo concept of a generic “skateboard” platform that can have a car/truck/van chassis plopped on top - giving economies of scale to the underlying drive-train. Then - If they manage to get it to market, there’s this wild third-party design vision that dropped a couple days ago that’s sot of a 21st century (possibly martian) vanagon :
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Even as an electric I will hate these vehicles until they redesign the front end to not be such useful tools for pedestrian squishing.
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I think maybe we are too quick to give Ford a pass on being shaped for looks vs function. Pickups have evolved over the last maybe 20 years to have these ludicrously oversized, boxy engine compartments… trading visibility and aerodynamics for a rugged, masculine look. Likewise, the beds seem to sit higher and higher every year, making it harder to actually get stuff in and out of the bed. These are cosmetic decisions that negatively impact the utility of the vehicle.
A more utilitarian truck would set the bed at an optimized height for practical usage and would not have such a boxy nose. The frunk would be lower to facilitate access, improve efficiency by reducing drag, and improve visibility to make them safer for people, pets, etc. that happen to be in front of the vehicle.
So yeah, the options are to buy something optimized to appeal to the brodozer crowd or Elon’s shiny ode to triangles. I like the idea of an electric truck for weekend fun + hobbies, but I would prefer something more practical. Alas, practical doesn’t command premium prices, so I think I will be waiting for a while.
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Preface: I drove electric cars exclusively for six years (a Leaf and a Bolt) and I love them.
That said, this description is not the reality of an e-road trip. The problem is electric charger capacity out in the wild is about 10x below demand. Every where you go, every single public charger will be occupied, frequently for hours at a time. Unlike gas, you absolutely cannot rely on chargers being available anywhere you go. The best electric experience is charging at home at night and staying within round trip range of your house. Trying to do more than that right now will definitely strand you, potentially over night because some dude left his car on that charger that your navigation app says is the only one for 50 miles and never came back.
The charger occupancy information in the apps is frequently wrong, they often miss critical info like “this charger is in a car dealership that locks the gates at 5pm”, etc.
The infrastructure will get there, but it’s a long way from it at the moment. People need to think differently about electric car driving. You don’t drive them with the same patterns as gas. It’s not “go where ever I want and fill up on the way if needed”. It’s “fill up every night whether needed or not and always be back here at the end of the day”.
Again, I love electric cars and I’m seriously considering the Lightning myself, but it behooves people to have realistic expectations of what electric car ownership currently is. I rent gas cars for road trips because it’s still the only practical option for that.
The other takeaway though is that most people do a lot less “road tripping” than they think they do and it’s an unnecessary barrier to entry for most people.
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That is a shame. I would have hoped major corridors would have been made useful already.
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