One Ford F-150 Lightning owner was charging his truck at an Electrify America fast charger a few days ago when he reportedly heard a “loud pop” after which his vehicle would not move. It apparently happened in Newport, Oregon (according to the decals on the tow truck that came to pick up the bricked Lightning), which is some 1,000 miles away from the owner’s home, when he and his family (including two dogs) were on holiday.
Eric Roe explains that he did not do anything out of the ordinary, following the standard procedure to get one of these vehicles to fast-charge. In a tweet he notes that he “plugged the Lightning to the EA Charger, started to charge, heard a loud boom, and the charger went dark and the Lightning threw up a bunch of error codes and wouldn't start. Couldn't even shift into neutral” and “the tow truck driver had to drag the car out of the spot.”
MotorTrend reached out to Electrify America for clarification on this situation and got a reply back from the charging network operator that it was “investigating the unfortunate issue experienced by Eric Roe and have reached out to him.” Apparently, when Mr. Roe reached out to Ford about his issue, they told him nothing could be done before December 9, but then a Ford spokesperson found out about the story and “was escalating to the engineering experts quickly" to speed things up.
Interestingly, Ford got back to Mr. Roe after taking the truck from him to say that it first needed to have its 12-volt battery replaced, otherwise they would be unable to diagnose the problem. He mentioned this in another tweet when he said “the dealership got it in the bay, and are now saying the 12-volt is dead, but it was working when we were sitting in it after the issue. They won’t do anything until they get the replacement 12-volt.”
According to MotorTrend, Electrify America did not provide a timeline for when its investigation into what happened would conclude, but it was actively working on it. At first glance it sounds like the charger supplied more current than the vehicle was able to handle and it may have gone into a protection mode to keep the battery pack from getting damaged.
We will update this story when when Electrify America has news about the matter - we have also reached out to both Ford and EA, but so far have not heard back.
