Welcome back to another towing video. Ford has loaned me a new electric F-150 Lightning,
and we're going to max it out by towing 10,000 pounds. Super brave of Ford to loan me the truck.
This video is not sponsored – they are just letting me borrow the vehicle. If you remember,
we did this exact same towing test with my Rivian about 3 months ago. And today we're going to get
the final verdict on which electric truck can tow better. My Rivian made it right on 100 miles with
the EV Humvee on its back. So let me know down in the comments how far you think we'll get with the
Ford Lightning. However, while both the Rivian and the Ford do have the same battery size underneath,
the Ford F-150 has a few perks that might help it while towing. The first of which
is that it has street tires instead of off-road tires. And the second thing is that instead of
4 electric motors underneath, the Lightning has 2, which already gives it more range than
the Rivian. We're starting this towing test with 310 miles of range, where with the Rivian we had
275. And of course, it's not freezing right now, which is also a big factor. So leave
your guess down in the comments before we get started. EV's have plenty of power for towing,
just not for super long distances. Time to see what happens. Let's get started.
[Intro]
It gets pretty scary towing a trailer that weighs more than the truck. Our
goal is 10,000 pounds back here and the truck only weighs about 7,000.
And technically Ford says that anything above 5,000 pounds on the trailer needs a weight
distribution hitch. A distribution hitch acts as a leaf spring, spreading out the load from
a single ball out to the frame of the trailer. Multiple points of contact spread out the load.
That's not going anywhere. Joke gets me every time.
However, that particular style of hitch isn't made for this style of trailer,
so I'm just precisely balancing my load instead. Ford does have a truck package that has a scale
built into the tongue. However, the Lightning I have today is only the pro model. Which “pro” in
the phone world means top of the line, but in the truck world “pro” means the most basic. So
I'm going to use the same Weigh Safe hitch we used in my Rivian video to get the correct load number,
making sure we don't have more than 1,000 pounds on the tongue. One thousand pounds is also 10%
of our trailer load. Thankfully Weigh Safe is sponsoring this video. I don't want to lose the
Lightning or the electric Hummer. And if this trailer is loaded wrong, we very well could.
As you can see, the trailer is level with the truck and most of the weight is over the
trailer axles, the weight being the batteries in the EV Humvee. The Weigh Safe hitch adds
a very nice piece of mind, visually displaying the exact tongue weight being applied. There's
a small hydraulic piston underneath the stainless steel ball giving us the reading.
The Weigh Safe hitch is made right here in the USA,
just down the road from me here in Utah. I'll leave a link down in the description,
and huge thanks to Weigh Safe for sending this out and keeping us all safe.
The truck can tow 10,000 pounds, the hitch can hold 12,000 pounds and we should only have
10,000 pounds behind the truck. It's going to be interesting.
[Music
playing]
So right now we are weighing 9,700 pounds. Now last time we forgot to calculate the tongue
weight of the truck, so if you add 9,700 to the tongue weight of 1,000, we end up with exactly
10,000 pounds...nobody tell Ford.
As we merge onto the freeway, just for kicks and giggles we did a 0-60 with the
Rivian and it was 12 seconds. We'll see what the Ford does. Three, two, one. It's
peeling out a little bit. The traction control is kicking on. 30, 40,
50, 60. And we are 12.3. That's the exact same as the Rivian. That's insane.
I thought having 2 motors might make it a little less powerful going up the on-ramp.
Very interesting. Very, very interesting. Last time we had a little bit of gravel peel out. This
time just the tires were spinning a little bit on the asphalt, but maybe that's why they're both the
exact same. But still, so much power I can barely feel the trailer behind me. So much fun to drive.
So as of right now it looks like we've gone about 38 miles, and the guesstimate on this
truck has been nearly spot on. We left at about 150 miles of range predicted,
and right now it's saying we have 100 miles left, so it's doing way better than the Rivian.
The Rivian calculations were way off. As far as how it drives and handles,
this...it does feel slightly more jerky. Like, I don't know if you can tell on camera,
but it's just a tiny bit more...I don't know, it's not as smooth and I think that has to do with the
suspension. The Rivian does have an air suspension which is slightly more cushiony than what we have
here in the Lightning. However, one place that the Lightning slaughters the Rivian is in the
display. There is so much more information on this dashboard than we have in my truck. Take a look.
When I'm on the towing screen it can tell me the tilt of the truck. But the screen I like
the most is the power distribution screen where I can see how much power is being utilized by both
the font motor and the rear motor. As well as the regenerative braking. Anytime I slow down,
the Lightning is taking the weight of the truck and turning it into energy
using the electric motors to recharge the batteries. I do feel like the regen in my
Rivian is slightly stronger and slows down the trailer more, but the concept is the same. And
at least here in the Lightning we have all that information visible on the display. 10
out of 10. I guess if we do run out of battery here though in the Lightning,
we can always turn on the Hummer and tow the whole package with that instead. Maybe.
Not only do we have power and regen, but we also have the temperature for the batteries
and the motors. Which is also not information that we would get on any other EV. For me,
more information is better. So I figured out why the regen doesn't feel as strong on the Lightning
as it does on my Rivian, and that's because when I let off the gas, the accelerator doesn't kick
on full regen immediately, but when I apply the brake, it first applies regen and then the brakes,
which is very interesting. So here we are accelerating like normal, letting off the gas, and
then applying the brake you can see the regen go crazy. All that power going back into the battery.
Well, well, well, we just hit 101 miles. So we've gone farther than the Rivian made it,
and we still have 28 miles left of our fuel. And we are 7 miles away from the
gas station. And by gas station, I mean charging station. So we should make it – fingers crossed.
The majority of the 112 miles we drove today were freeway driving. If I had to guess,
probably about 80% of them. The rest of it was just driving around town, stop and go, stoplights,
that kind of thing. But overall a pretty realistic test. If you're going to be hauling something long
distances you're most likely going to be using the freeway. Made it to the charging station, but
before we plug in I got to show you the wildest thing. Because I have to pull into this charger
and in order to back up I just wanted to make sure that I could do it. Anyway, the Ford F-150
Lightning has a button that automatically backs up for you and it's pretty wild. So this down
here is where you set up the trailer brake gain – like how much brake the trailer applies to your
truck. And then you can squeeze it right here to add the trailer brake as you're driving. So fully
squeezed...not squeezed...squeeze...kind of fun. Anyway, this is the backup assist where it backs
up the trailer for you. So if I go into reverse, it has the backup footage on the screen here,
like the rear view cameras and stuff. And then I let off the brake pedal and we start moving
back in a straight line. And if I turn the knob left, the trailer starts angling left...the back
of the trailer. And if I turn the knob right, the trailer starts angling right. I don't even
have to touch the steering wheel anymore, I just have to visually see what's going on with the edge
of the trailer. Wow, this is crazy. It's like self-driving but for trailer backuping. Wild.
Anyway, now I'm much more confident about going forward into a stall that I need to back out of.
That was really cool. Nice work.
Pulling up to the charger I might be taking up 2 stalls, but technically I do have 2 electric
vehicles. I definitely planned my trip this time around, you know, figuring out where the chargers
were at instead of winging it like last time. That was a fiasco and this time went much smoother.
And fun little tidbit, it looks like while towing my Humvee,
we got 1 mile per kilowatt hour, which is the exact same efficiency that my Hummer has
when driving all by itself. So Ford has done something pretty special here. The Lightning,
while towing 10,000 pounds, is just as efficient as my Hummer towing nothing.
Overall this was a pretty fun trip. We ended up going just about 112 miles with
18 miles left of “fuel” in the tank. Thirty miles more than my Rivian. Now,
that could be due to a couple things. I do like my Rivian. But I think it's either the street
tires and/or that it's not cold anymore. Today is a spring day and much, much warmer than it was 3
months ago when I did the previous test. Right now we're plugged into the charger at 150 kilowatts,
we should be able to get back up to 90% in just about 35 or 40 minutes. And 90% will
give me another 100 miles of range, give or take. As a bonus, I don't even have to pay for it since
any new Ford comes with some amount of free charging. But if I was charging at home,
a tank charging from empty to full would only cost about $13 bucks, which isn't that bad.
Anyway, let me know what you think. How close were you to your guess that you had
at the beginning of the video? Let me know down in the comments. And let me know if you want to
see this done to the Cyber Truck, if that ever comes out. If you have any questions,
leave them down there as well. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.