When Michael Puglia first bought his Ford F-150 Lightning in July, he loved it. “It’s unbelievably fast and responsive,” Puglia told reporters. “The technology is amazing.”
But as summer turned to fall and then to winter, Puglia changed his tune. He noticed that a 35-mile trip to an ice rink dropped the estimated range on the truck’s dashboard by 73 miles. Another real-life 60-mile trip cost him 110 miles in estimated range.
“People say ‘range anxiety’ like it is the driver’s fault,” Puglia said. “But it’s not our fault. It’s actually they’re not telling us what the real range is. The truck says it’s 300 miles. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that.”
For all their other faults, at least our combustion cars never lied to us.
And weather is not the only obstacle that can negatively affect an electric vehicle’s range, especially an electric pickup truck. Rain, hills, mud, and heavy loads also decrease an electric pickup truck’s advertised range, sometimes by as much as half!
“The minute you put a trailer on it, the mileage drops,” business owner Mike Kochav told reporters. Kochav owned six combustion F-150s and bought one Lightning to add to his fleet. It didn’t last. The 45 minutes it took to charge the truck every time it failed to haul a load with the advertised range was slowing him down. “It was too many delays in my day,” Kochav said, explaining why he traded the Lightning in for a combustion F-150.
Puglia and Kochav are far from the only consumers finding that electric pickups just can’t perform as advertised. In 2023, Ford sold 24,000 F-150 Lightnings, 54% more than in 2022, but not even close to the 150,000 Ford had planned to sell. For the sake of comparison, Ford sold more than 750,000 combustion F-150s in 2023.
With so many unsold Lightnings on the lot, Ford took a huge $4.7 billion loss on its electric vehicle division in 2023 and is expected to take another $5.5 billion loss in 2024.
And it’s not just Ford that is suffering. General Motors, Toyota, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and even Tesla are all cutting back on electric vehicle production. Consumers just don’t want them, even with the generous subsidies provided by President Joe Biden.
Americans have always had a unique relationship with our cars. They are not just how we get to work or run errands, but they are part of our identity. They are part of us.
Which is why when electric cars can’t even tell us the truth about their limitations, it feels like such a betrayal. It feels like a friend has lied to you.
Until electric vehicle manufacturers can make their products more honest, they should expect more rejection from consumers.
