Ford F150 Lightning towing

When you start adding battery capacity to create a plug in hybrid they become somewhat compromised. You wind up with a heavier, more  expensive vehicle that gets poorer fuel economy than a regular hybrid but doesn't have a lot of  EV range  The best EV range of any volume manufactured plug in hybrid is the RAV4 Prime, with an 18kwh battery  giving it a  40 mile or so EV range.  I couldn't get to the grocery store and back without the ICE having to run. A plug in hybrid pickup would need a bigger battery (probably around 30kwh for roughly 300lbs extra weight and maybe $5k additional cost including charge port)   to have a similar  40 mile  EV range. For folks here whose primary use case is long distance towing it would be a bad deal compared to a straight ICE or hybrid. 

So I think the gasser F150 ICE is a great choice for a long distance  tow vehicle.  The electric  Lightning Pro (at the original $39k, not after all Ford's price increases and not the $100k version with all the luxury stuff) would have been a better fit for me and for other individuals and fleet operators who have a similar use case.  See  I could write ad script for Ford too.

If I had a Lightning  I'd still use the horse trailer frequently for hauling stuff. Easier to load, larger, covered,  more secure. Or a utility trailer for the occasional larger loads. But I don't  need to own one of those, I buy enough stuff at Tractor Supply that I always have a free rental or two. Gotta love their good neighbors program (ad copy for TSC). 

But a new pickup is outside my budget now, I have to save some dollars for the RV electrical upgrades. So I'm sticking with my Highlander and horse trailer combo for now. That combo does everything a pickup would do for me and more,  and I own them. BTW, I've never had a gas cap  lanyard break on one of my Toyotas, perhaps another testament to their reputation for reliability (more ad copy for Toyota). 

Now back to sorting out the rats' nest of 1990s contactors, isolation switches, boost switches, emergency start switches,  multiple batteries, and low voltage disconnects in the Chinook....

What I can't figure out is what's going on with the poor reliability report in CRs major engine category. I can find zero actual motor failures on any Bolt forums or other websites.  I suspect that it's a mis categorization of problems by owners surveyed. CR probably needs to clarify how to categorize problems with EVs in their surveys, not just try to use the same xategories they use with ICE vehicles. 

There have been numerous reports of drive systems shutdowns, gear engagement lockouts, etc over the Bolt model years. Those have apparently been corrected by software updates, but disappointingly they keep happening to some degree. Of course, similar software problems also occur with recent model ICE vehicles. People who think that software problems shouldnt happen haven't written any software. Just because it's easier to implement software fixes than hardware ones doesn't mean it's easier to get things right to begin with. 

Other issues have been mostly related to fit and finish problems. Those are to be expected. After all, Chevrolet has never been the go to brand for top material and build quality. That's got nothing to do with whether the car is an EV or not, and we should all expect there to still be a ranking of build and material quality in EVs from the various manufacturers as the electric transition occurs. None of them are anywhere near as awful as FR's rpod quality standards though...

So am I taking a risk of customer dissatisfaction buying a Chevy Bolt EV? Yep, for sure, especially as we're a long time Toyota family and so have been spoiled by owning vehicles which for decades  have had excellent reliability and build quality. 

Why take the risk? Because I can tolerate the risk, we are a multiple vehicle family, I'm retired and my wife works from home, and because I want to be part of this transition sooner rather than later, and to do it with a vehicle that is affordable by the average middle class American family, (about $30k max I think) not some overpriced luxury  vehicle like a Tesla that only the wealthy who want to make some kind of personal statement can afford.  Besides, I can't stand Elon.

If you arent rich and rely on a single vehicle  to get to work every day then I'd suggest a reliable affordable hybrid like the Prius rather than a budget EV at this point.

So I consider myself to be still an early adopter, not for EVs in general but certainly in the realm of budget EVs, of which there are really only two, the Bolt and the Nissan Leaf. The rest are either well above budget price ranges or are emmissions compliance vehicles with limited regional availabiity, like the Hyundai Kona EV. The Leaf was not under my consideration as it comes with a Japenese standard ChaDeMo charge port, not the US and Euro standard CCS port. I have no idea why Nissan has stupidly chosen to keep that charge port in what otherwise is by all accounts a pretty nice vehicle, although it too has had it's teething problems.

As for the Ford Lightning, I haven't researched customer issues with that because I'm not actually  considering buying one at this point  In reality it's the first model year for the Lightning and only the second EV from Ford ever,  so one should expect all sorts of new model intro problems to occur.