Roadtripping An F150 Lightning, An EV Tale

I’m starting this post over 350 miles from home, having road-tripped here (with family) and a crapload of cold weather camping gear in our F150 Lightning electric truck.  We came to Yosemite to snow camp into the new year….but there’s no snow so it turned into just a very cold winter camping trip.  And despite the fact you see very few people our age (with teenagers) camping in tents in 25-35 degree weather, we did it anyways.  And I wanted to test the long distance road-tripping abilities of the F-150 Lightning, so we loaded it down with double rocket boxes full of cold weather gear and took off.

We were bound for Sequoia for a few days of camping then on to Yosemite to camp through the New Year holiday.  But first, we needed to get out of the high desert, down through the Tehachapi pass and up to Visalia.  I had no idea how long this would take in the truck, because we had never roadtripped more than a three-hour leg to San Diego, which never uses up a full 320 mile charge.  This trip would be different because we needed to go through the high desert, down the pass, north to Visalia and finally east up into the foothills to get to our Sequoia campground.  This part of the trip would tax our patience while serving up a reminder that Mother Nature still matters while driving.

The First Leg- Getting out of the desert

What I call the first leg of the trip went from our home near Joshua Tree, Ca to Bakersfield, Ca.  I had the truck charged to 100% (320 miles) but lost a few miles moving it around as I put on the rocket boxes and did the shopping the day before we left.  The morning we left, I left the house with 312 miles.  The truck was loaded with two full rocket boxes on my rack system, more gear in the back of the truck and a moderate pile of dry firewood.  I’m not under the impression that this was too much of a load.  After getting moving and getting breakfast in a nearby town, we took off through the desert toward Barstow, Ca.  I could tell right away there was wind, on our nose.  The wind had an immediate effect but we motored on, opting not to stop and charge in Barstow as I thought we could get all the way through to Tehachapi and charge there before heading down the pass.  I was wrong.  As we got into open desert between Barstow and Kramer Junction, the miles dropped steeply and the truck recalibrated the miles, dropping us to 140 miles as we went.  We knew there was charging in Boron and prayed it was working.  The Love’s in Boron has Level 2 & 3 chargers, so we plunked ourselves down at a 50kw (largest) charger and charged the truck to 80%.  But with the recalibration the truck had done, this only bought us to about 200 miles, so we took off again, knowing this was going to be a long day.  In the 40 miles between this stop in Boron and the town of Mojave, we lost 100 miles of energy due to the extreme high winds that were hitting us right on the nose.  I knew we might make up some energy coming down the pass after Tehachapi, but we really didn’t make up much, as we still had wind blowing against us….so we would need to stop again, soon.  This next stop came just down the pass and outside of Bakersfield.  We stopped at the Shell Station off Comanche Ave to take advantage of the Chargepoint fast chargers there, getting back to an 80% charge before we left again.  This time we were back to about the same mileage but the lack of a direct headwind made all the difference; as the drive between Bakersfield and Tulare on the 99 was fast and flat, with mileage leveling out and allowing us to make time.  In Tulure, we found a free Chargepoint super fast charger at a Walmart and charged to 90%.  We were ready to tackle two days of camping in Sequoia.

The Second Leg- Sequoia to Yosemite

The next couple days of driving proved fairly uneventful as we were in Sequoia National Park, tent camping.  We did tackle the very, very steep road up from Potwisha Campground to the General Sherman Tree and back down.  On the trip back down to the campground, I reclaimed a record number of truck miles, making nearly 20 miles back up in energy during the 17 mile drive.  It was steep.  After two days in Sequoia at Potwisha Campground, we took off to Fresno.  On the way, mileage was doing so well we didn’t stop, making it into Fresno with plenty of miles to spare as we found our way to another Chargepoint DC fast charger near the Macys and around the corner from the REI.  On this charging, I took the energy in the truck up to 91%.  Getting to the hotel and checking in….attempted to put the truck on the chargers at the hotel and the chargers at the hotel across the street but nothing would work.  My working theory is that these chargers were set NOT to charge anything over 90%, cause nothing would work to charge the truck.  The next morning, we took off bound for Yosemite, stopping in Oakhurst (Vons) to provision.  Here, I waited on another Chargepoint DC fast charger and again took the truck energy up to 90%.  That’s all the charger would do!  So we took off for Yosemite…happy to be in the mountains.  I had read all about how Yosemite has multiple chargers around the valley, but didn’t really know exactly how many or what repair they would be in….especially in the middle of winter.  What a pleasant surprise to find rows of gleaming Rivian Chargers….all working and ALL COMPLETELY FREE!  Needless to say, we took advantage of the charging!

The Third Leg- Yosemite back to the desert

5 Days Later- Getting back to the desert was easier than getting out of the desert.  We left Yosemite with exactly 300 miles of charge.  Why it didn’t charge up fully to 320 miles is still a mystery, but I suspect the very cold nighttime temperatures may have influenced charging….very slow charging.  Coming out of Yosemite on the 41 is uphill with a bit of downhill for the first 30 miles or so.  This drive was slowed by the fact that rain/light snow had fallen the night before, making the roads just slick enough to want to slow the train down and take it really easy when driving.  And this part of the road out of the park is windy up and down, which actually helps EV mileage.  The BIGGEST drain to EV mileage….the car heater.  So, we didn’t use it but we did had to occasionally use the defrost….basically the same thing.  Past Wawona and then the park entry point on the 41…it’s downhill until the drive up and out of  Fish Camp…there’s a good uphill there.  By the time we cleared Oakhurst, we were well below 300 miles of range but the downhills allowed me to make up a few miles here and there.  I work for each of those miles.  We didn’t need to stop and charge in Fresno so we kept going.  The 99 freeway is only two lanes but it’s flat…with lots of trucks.  Hard to keep consistent speed but we moved along nicely, knowing we didn’t have enough miles to make it up the Tehachapi Pass, so we stopped where we had charged previously just outside (east) of Bakersfield at the Shell Station off Comanche Road.  This stop has a gas station, Subway and a Starbucks.  It’s clean and convenient to charge here and you’re out of the way of most of the other traffic.  We stayed here long enough to get the battery to an 80% charge then took off, knowing we probably would not make it home on that charge level after the inclines of the Tehachapi Pass.  Up the pass we went, down past Mojave, Kramer Junction and on to Barstow.  Pulling into Barstow, we were just shy of enough juice to make it home, so we stayed just long enough to get the charge levels we needed to get home with a 35 mile reserve.  We charged to about 150 truck miles to get about 70 miles home.  After about 20 min of charging, we took off from Barstow home, making it with our reserve + a few miles.

A few final thoughts on this first long road trip with an EV: 

-We have an F150 Lightning with extended mileage- 320 miles at full charge.

-I drive pretty conservatively, without the powered screens on and mostly without heat, A/C- never with heated seat or steering wheel.

-When we drive, we use cruise control as much as possible to stay at a steady, even speed.

-Environment affects EV’s.  Extreme heat, cold and wind can affect battery life and truck performance.  We were reminded of this on the drive out of the desert…in spades.

-The free charging in Yosemite was a huge piece of happiness.  Kudos to the partnership between Yosemite and Rivian for putting all the chargers in place, powering them and making them free!

-I had two rocket boxes on racks in the back of the truck.  They were too high (because the front rack legs hit the wheel wells.  The solution is to take a grinder and shorten them) and affected truck miles, especially on the outbound leg, in which we hit massive wind right on our nose.

Lemme say this right from the get-go.  I didn’t buy an EV for political reasons and I don’t have illusions about where the power comes from to charge my EV.  But the truck has great torque, towing ability, lots of safety features, AWD and is smooth and quiet.

This trip provided lots of lessons on EV roadtripping and allowed us to test the various systems. Our Lightning is not a garage king but my daily driver as I haul supplies for the ranch and various home remodeling projects, tow occasionally and take kids where they need to go.  We also use it for trips throughout Southern California and now we’ve successfully done this longer road trip. We knew we might have to stop and charge more often, it was ok.  We had lots of tent camping and cold weather lessons, but those are for another post.