Ford F-150 Lightning early adopters eager to travel in new EVs
For Nick Schmidt, the biggest news of the summer came in a low-key call from the Ford dealership. His new $100,000 Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup had arrived.
“I realized, ‘I think I’m the first one – holy crap,’ ” said Schmidt, 38, who lives in Standish, Michigan. “Ford PR reached out and kind of confirmed.”
Public response to the Lightning was so overwhelming that Ford had to stop taking reservations in late 2021 after some 200,000 were placed since the electric version of the nation’s bestselling truck was revealed in May 2021. Then, reservation holders were able to convert their $100 refundable reservation to official orders by invitation in waves. Now people all over the country await the email notice or call that their truck is ready and compare notes on social media.
How much does the electric F-150 Lightning cost?
Schmidt was the first customer to get a Lightning, on May 26, Ford has delivered 284 of the pickups to dealerships through June 6, Ford spokesman Martin Gunsberg told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network. The starting price is $39,974, but many of the early orders are of packages that add considerably to that base.
Schmidt and his wife, Alicia, planned to buy a BMW or Audi for their family of three. They were intrigued by electric vehicles. Once the range on the Lightning reached 300 miles, Nick Schmidt said, that was the tipping point.
“When I get back from London, we’re going to Frankfort (Michigan) to a campground,” he said from his international business trip this week. “We’ll do a 300-mile round trip with the Airstream.”
Schmidt planned to buy either the Ford truck or a Tesla Cybertruck, but Ford beat Tesla to market. So Schmidt sold his 2017 Ford F-150 to his father-inlaw and traded in the Tesla Model 3 that he picked up in 2019 and bought a Lightning. He canceled his Cybertruck order.
If both the Lightning and Cybertruck had been available, Schmidt would’ve “leaned toward” the Tesla because the charging network is so good, he said. “Hopefully, by the time there’s an option, Ford will have fixed their charging issues.” Schmidt reserved a Lightning Platinum F-150 on May 20, 2021, with a long-range battery and “every bell and whistle available.”
He converted the reservation to an official order on Jan. 7, 2022. The truck was built on April 18 and delivered on May 26.
Goodbye, Tesla
These days, Schmidt tweets from his @oneguynick account and blogs about his travel experiences with the new Lightning.
The family uses the Lightning to camp and haul wood, he said.
“Just all the things you’d use a pickup truck for up north,” he said.
When he’s not writing about Lightning life, Schmidt is a chief technology officer at BluePrint power, a company that connects buildings to the power grid and helps them optimize their energy and usage.
“We basically turn buildings into power plants,” he said.
$83,000 and 320-mile range
Joe DeLong, 31, of rural Chillicothe, Ohio, is a certified arborist who uses his Lightning for his tree care company, hauling fertilizer and towing a wood chipper. He picked up his second Ford and his second electric vehicle on May 31. He has driven a Mustang Mach-E for a year.
“It’s gotten to the point where I would have to have extra time because I’d go somewhere, come out and people had swarmed around it. I go on vacation to Put-In-Bay (island in Lake Erie) and I’m trying to have a vacation and I’m just talking to people,” DeLong said laughing. “Honestly, I think it’s gained me business. I talk more about the vehicle and people say, ‘That makes sense, you’re in the tree business.’”
Sustainability is one selling point, he said. Gasoline cost savings is another.
His Lightning Lariat F-150 with an extended range battery gets up to 320 miles of range on a charge and costs about $83,000 after taxes, DeLong said.
“We didn’t think it was coming this soon,” he said. “We got the email but it was going to be another month. I kinda
forgot about it, honestly. I get the phone call from the dealership and, oh crap, it’s here. It was like a shock. I said, ‘Don’t even wash it.’ I took it right off the transport truck. It even had the stickers on it.”
Groceries in the frunk
The other day, DeLong and his fiancee went to the grocery store and popped open the front truck, called a frunk, to load bags of food.
“This guy in an old Ford (truck) is looking at me real weird,” DeLong said. “He says, ‘Hey, man, you can’t put stuff by your engine compartment. That’s not safe.’ I said, ‘Dude, it’s all-electric. It’s a frunk, storage.’ He says, ‘Get the hell outta here.’ ”
The passerby told DeLong, “My truck only gets 200 miles to a tank.” He had a gas-guzzling V-8 engine.
As a kid, DeLong remembers his father talking about the General Motors EV1 electric car, which was produced from 1996 to 1999 and predicting America would one day pivot to electric cars.
“My dad has been an electric car enthusiast his whole life,” DeLong said, noting that his father is looking forward to upgrading in the future.
The DeLong family watched the Lightning debut in May 2021, noticing that UAW officials were part of the event and it would be built in Michigan.
“As a blue-collar family, my God,” DeLong said. “Dad calls and says: ‘You see this right now? When you see the union and the company together, it’s just good.’ ”
‘Floats down the road’
Ken Stepps, 42, of Wheaton, Illinois, is a sustainable landscape designer and handyman who picked up his Lightning on May 28, two days before his birthday.
“It was a surprise,” he said. “We had our (Tesla) Model 3 packed to go out of town for the weekend. We got our notice that morning from Ford that the truck had been delivered, we called our dealer and they weren’t open. So we left a message for the dealership and kept packing.”
Stepps, his husband, Damon Lindsey, and their dogs were on their way out the door, headed to their cottage not far from Benton Harbor, Michigan, when the Ford dealer called. So they unloaded the 2018 Tesla at the dealership on trade-in and took the pickup on its maiden voyage.
They had sold their 2017 Ford F-150 to the in-laws when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“I suffered from seller’s remorse the day we sold it,” Stepps said. “But the dogs love the space in the F-150 Lightning. And it has a new independent rear suspension so, just driving it on the expressway, it kind of floats down the road.”
The Tesla autopilot experience is different than Ford’s hands-free Blue Cruise, and he said he prefers the truck because its system is more comfortable in situations such as lane changing. The Tesla tried to center itself in the lane even when approaching a merge lane “so there was a lot of swerving,” whereas the Lightning holds off to the left side of the lane, he said.
Stepps used to drive a Ford C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid.
“My dad owned an auto repair shop when I was growing up. He was a Ford guy. I became a Ford guy,” he said. “We do a lot of road tripping. We went to six national parks last year alone in the Tesla. And we have a trip planned for the end of this month” in the Lightning Lariat with an extended battery.
‘Wouldn’t it be funny?’
Meanwhile, Lindsey, 34, a product manager for a financial technology company, is waiting for the delivery of his all-electric Rivian R1S SUV any day now.
“We didn’t plan to get two brand-new very expensive vehicles at the same time,” Stepps said. “When Ford announced the F-150, I jokingly said to my husband, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I get the Lightning before you get the Rivian?’ He’s been waiting since 2018.”