It's hard to imagine that a Ford F-150 Lightning out there already has nearly 100,000 miles on its odometer. Especially since they've only been on the roads since late May of 2022. That's less than two years ago, yet here we have a Ford F-150 Lightning owner reporting on his electric truck with 93,000 miles on the odometer.
He's owned this F-150 Lightning for 21 months now, so that works out to an average of 4,429 miles driven per month or about 53,000 miles yearly. And while that's certainly a lot of driving, what's perhaps most interesting is the battery health of the electric pickup truck.
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Battery health at 100,000 miles for this Ford F-150 Lightning is impressive.
This Ford F-150 Lightning has 97% battery health at nearly 100,000 miles. The owner offers tips to preserve battery capacity and prolong its life.
The F-150 Lightning owner opened up by posting this on the F-150 Lightning Forum:
No one, and I mean no one really wants to sit behind the wheel of a Lightning for 93,000 miles in 21 months. What can I say, it doesn’t seem like it has been that long or that far. But alas it has been. This time the thrills were cheap, the charging even cheaper, highs were mile high and salty while the lows were at sea level. Fasten your seat belt and hang on to your hat because we are about to get started.
Consider us intrigued. Here are some highlights and lowlights (in abbreviated form—for the full rundown, click here) from his 21 months behind the wheel of the Ford's electric truck.
Tires
I still hate the tires as I continue picking up nails and/or screws here and there. They have about 47,000 predominately expressway and secondary highway miles on this second set.
Paint
The paint is holding up better than I expected. No real signs of wear and tear as you might expect of a vehicle with this many miles on it.
Charging
Keeping all of the apps (EV Connect, Charge Point, EA, Tesla, Plugshare, etc.) on my phone and perusing them every so often looking for free chargers has really paid off. I’ve got a circuit that is about 195 miles long where I only pay for about 7kwh ($0.53).
Looking forward to getting access to the Tesla network. Having that as a backup will put pressure on EA to get their chargers to a state where I can depend upon them.
Battery
I probably need to remind you, gentle reader, that I predominantly charge at home using a slightly derated Ford Charger (60 amps) 15.9 kW to the battery. I’m pretty confident that I have charged it around 600-700 times in the past 21 months. Normally capped at 90% but over the past few months I’ve reduced that further to 70% though I’ve come home twice now below 10% which rarely happened before the change.
Battery Health
The high-voltage battery's state of health (SOH), according to CarScan, is 97% and it is 21.19 months old.
That's impressive when you consider that a typical lithium-ion battery degrades more quickly at first and then usually tapers off over time.
The owner of this F-150 Lightning offers up these tips that he has used, which may have contributed to the battery's strong SOH:
- Charging to 100% should be avoided.
- Never ever let it sit at 100%.
- Letting it run down below 10% should make you feel as guilty as when your wife catches you looking at that new hot neighbor.
- Slow charge whenever possible.
- Temperature, temperature, temperature. Heat kills lithium-ion batteries
- I used to charge 90% daily at home but have now lowered that to 80%
- Also note the vast majority of my miles are highway so there are not ten million little charges like in the city
Though his tips are given in regard to his F-150 Lightning, they are mostly universal and will help extend the battery life for most EVs. For more on battery degradation and preservation, check out these articles:
Are you a Lightning owner with high mileage? If so, chime in and let us know how your truck is holding up in comments below.
