Special: Ford F-150 Lightning winter towing tests and Engineers interview

Ford has been taking some hits in the media on the F-150 Lightning towing range, so we thought it would be good to test it ourselves and then get the background from the people who built the Lightning, especially as we head into winter. Along with Ford’s PR team, we were joined by:

 Dapo Adewusi, F-150 Lightning Engineering Manager Gitanjli McRoy, Chief Engineer, EV Energy Management Systems

Here’s the discussion along with firsthand towing impressions below in both New York and Detroit.

I wanted to see how much range I’d lose while towing because there have been some recent videos showing only low double-digit-mile ranges coming out of the Lightning.

It is hard to quantify how much range you’d lose because of a ton of significant factors, like trailer weight, aerodynamics, and efficiency as well as normal EV range factors like elevation, climate, speed, etc., which are magnified while towing a trailer.

So I did two different tows: one with an open hauling trailer with a friend in New York and one with a closed trailer in Detroit – both very different experiences.

F-150 Lightning towing in the New York hills

After receiving the F-150 Lightning loaner, I immediately went to a friend’s place to try some towing. He’s got a tiny house Airbnb north of New York City, which requires hauling loads of firewood into the mountains. As the weather gets colder, the tiny house mini split heating requires 240V power, and we wanted to see if the Lightning could power it.

His trailer is about 7x5 feet and weighs about 5,000 pounds loaded. Using the rear and above camera views makes hitching the trailer a breeze.

Without any outside instruction, we were able to enter the info into the Lightning’s towing configurator and were off in a matter of minutes.

The trip was mostly uphill, and after about six minutes, our already dropping fast range dropped by about half, which was initially very scary. I had started the trip with about 180 miles of range and within a few miles of uphill road, we were at about 140 miles of range. The truck recalibrated us down to 68 miles of range, which was a bit scary since we had planned to try powering the house while we were there and had to make it back as well.

The truck continued to lose range quicker than we were using it until the top of the mountain where it equalized with the range. That gave us a lot of confidence to try powering the house since most of the return trip was downhill and we would be without the load of wood.

Lightning powers a tiny house, including heating, easily

This exercise doesn’t really have to do with towing, but while we were at the Tiny House, we decided to try to power the whole house, including mini split heating, using the F-150 Lightning’s Pro Power on board and 240V generator plug.

https://twitter.com/llsethj/status/1582764128397328386

It just works. Usually, this requires a generator or a very large solar/battery setup, but not only can you tow a Tiny House (or Airstream/camper) to the middle of nowhere, you can also power it and heat it with the F-150 Lightning. I think I may have sold a few F-150s on this alone.

With the heat on full blast, the two power outputs stabilized at just over a kW, meaning we could have powered this thing for a full day using about 25kWh of battery.

The interesting thing about the trip back is that we ended with just about the same range as we’d started with, so we must’ve regenerated close to the 10 miles of range of the trip going downhill.

F-150 Lightning towing on flat ground

In Detroit, we drove an 8,000-pound trailer, 8x8 feet front end, about 15 miles on the highway, with about five miles of city driving, then 15 miles to return. Initially, while on the highw…