On a road trip, your bladder will probably need a break before the F-150 Lightning’s battery. But once you're stopped, you’ll be waiting a while.
There's a learning curve that comes with driving and owning your first electric vehicle, and the slope gets particularly steep when you push an EV's battery to its limits. The first time a new EV owner drives far enough that they need to charge in the middle of a trip, they face two hard truths: EVs almost never achieve their advertised ranges when it really matters, and even the fastest charging stations are slow compared to a gas pump.
However, if you plan to use a Lightning for long-distance highway trips, those figures paint an unrealistically optimistic picture. Electric cars and trucks are more efficient in low-speed stop-and-go traffic than at highway speeds, and the official EPA range figure is based on a combination of city and highway driving. If you drive extended distances at more than 55 mph in any EV, you're all but guaranteed to come up short of the range number listed on the window sticker.
To measure how long you'll be waiting, we charged a 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum from 5 percent to 90 percent using an Electrify America fast-charging station and translated the energy delivered into miles of driving range at highway speeds. The Lightning added 74 miles after 15 minutes of charging and extended that to 133 cumulative miles after 30 minutes. With 45 minutes on the clock, the Lightning had gained 189 miles of range, and after an hour of charging, the electric truck had put on 214 miles of range.That's good but not great. With a maximum rated charging power of 150 kW, the Ford can't suck down electrons as quickly as its main rivals, the Rivian R1T and GMC Hummer EV electric trucks.
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