Journalists Plug Ford Electric Truck in at Campground, Find Out It Will Take 5 Days to Fully Charge
Two journalists with TFLEV decided to drive the Ford 150 Lightning EV truck from the lower 48 states to Alaska and learned some of the recharging challenges they would face. Having made that drive from Pennsylvania to…
Two journalists with TFLEV decided to drive the Ford 150 Lightning EV truck from the lower 48 states to Alaska and learned some of the recharging challenges they would face.
Having made that drive from Pennsylvania to Fairbanks in 2013, I can tell you it certainly required some planning driving a gas-powered SUV, much less an electric truck.
The towns and gas stations once you get north of Whistler, British Columbia, become more and more sparse and when you hit the Yukon Territory, there’s Whitehorse — a nice little city — and not much else to the Alaska border.
Things may have changed in the last nine years, but you really had to be careful about filling up your gas tank when you had the chance.
Making the trip in an EV truck takes a lot more planning.
Tom and Andre with TFLEV realized finding charging stations along the way would be spotty, so they wanted to see how long it would take to charge their F-150 at a campground.
They stopped at Carter Lake, outside of Loveland, Colorado, and rented a campsite. The site included a standard 120-volt outlet — Level 1 in EV parlance — as well as a larger 240-volt option used by recreational vehicles and fifth-wheel trailers to run air conditioners, refrigerators, etc.
What Tom and Andre found when they hooked into a standard 120 outlet, it would take them from Wednesday night until Monday morning — about 5 days — to get the truck fully charged, with their battery starting at 22 percent.