Ford Lightning Efficiency While Towing 5,000 lbs is AMAZING!

I was all in buying a Lightning. Then, I figured out pulling my camper could leave me stranded halfway back to the last charging station. In two of the four campgrounds I frequent, it would be SERIOUS range anxiety. I had to take a pass. Loved the truck and it was a give-away price these days. Either a bigger battery than the 131kwh, a charger at the campground - or range extender.

Hello from a fellow Lightning/Mustang owner. On a recent road trip we discovered a bit of a "hack" for the Lightning. Instead of taking the main highway, (in this case I-41) we took the old highway (175) which runs parallel. We got 3.2 miles per kWh, which extended the time between charging stops and actually ended up being faster overall.

Thank you James, this is great news for me as I just bought a 2023 Lightning two weeks ago, and I will be renting UHauls to pick up large logs for milling. 2.0 mpKw is not bad at all, in fact I probably average less than that without a trailer...but that's mostly highway speeds. This is very encouraging.

Great video! Towing is all about aerodynamic drag, which exponentially a function of speed. Slow down from 70 to 65, or 60 or even 55 mph and your range goes up dramatically! The U-haul car carrier is low, so it nearly disappears in the truck's slipstream without a car. With your Mustang, it increased wind drag, but not las much as a tall and wide trailer. Thanks for posting this, good info!

Thank you for the video. This info you gave and shots of your dash tell me there's not as much to worry about on towing range with this truck as many others would have you believe. I was seeing people get .7 to 1.1 miles/kwh. That's nuts. I could see that with a full height RV of course no matter the speed you go. I have a 16' flatbed, 6x10 enclosed and a 21' travel trailer. Having plenty of experience driving hybrids for 13 years, and an electric Nissan Leaf for 3, pretty sure I can hit the numbers you're getting with technique and not going crazy on speed. It's actually helpful to have bicycling experience for getting high mpg while driving. You learn real fast that accelerating uphill leads to being wiped out, or constant swerving, riding the brake, high speeds, etc. Thanks again.

Nice video! I’m sure the good aerodynamics played a big part in your good mileage results vs a camper trailer. Thanks for posting!

I towed a low profile trailer at 60 mph to the dump, I noticed a very small drop in efficiency- hardly noticible.

Great job! Beautiful car. I loved the video.

Silverado EV will have 200 kwh battery and up to 350kw charging .... Sounds like what you need brother !

I wouldn't call towing for 150miles with a light load and then having to stop at least 30minutes to charge a win. That sounds awful. If a normal truck had that kind of performance everyone would say it can't tow.

I have a 66 Mustang Coupe too. I am planning to get an electric vehicle (either a Tesla or a Ford). I've been curious about towing experiences with an electric. Thanks for sharing!

So 40 minute charge, very small amount of distance when towing and having to charge, amongst other things these are many of the reasons and more that yes, do I love the lightning? Yes, I would love one, but the pure truth is that these vehicle types are not even close to what gas or diesel trucks can do

Regen capcity was significantly reduced by the hydraulic surge brakes on the trailer. Upon regenerative breaking the inertia of the trailer acting against the vehicle will activate the surge brakes automatically, effectively wasting the net energy as heat into the brakes. The significance of the surge brakes is that they operate independently from the systems of the truck, and in a perfect world negate the entire mass of the trailer in a braking event until the brakes are unable to dissipate the energy as heat. The excess would be transferred to the tow vehicle.

Try pulling an RV through hills and mountains, like the typical camping trip. My F150 has about a 400 mile range towing an RV, and over 700 miles lightly loaded.

Big plus it did not cost a shit load in gas. 😂

sorry if i missed this, but did you compare the total charging cost against an equivalent Gas f150 model? i would expect around 1/4?

Hey James, can you just test out using maybe a 4500 or 9500 W pure sign inverter generator to see if it would also work the same way yours T-Rex does?

What mode do drive in? Regular,sport or one pedal

Curious if max tow package gets same efficiency?

I get a kick out of the "but it can't tow" people... these are the same people who tow trailers doing 10 under the speed limit with their big jacked up coal rolling diesels. I mean, if that diesel is so big and bad, wind it up to the speed limit at least..