Cars

Ford F-150 Lightning review: three weeks of farm errands

The range held up better than we expected. The charging map did not.

By Rosalind Two Bears · August 8, 2026

Three weeks with an F-150 Lightning, 1,140 miles, most of it the kind of driving a truck actually does around here. Feed runs to Hadley Farm Supply. Two loads of fence posts. A trailer of brush to the transfer station in Whately. One long day hauling seedling flats between a greenhouse in Sunderland and a farm stand in Belchertown, loaded one way and empty the other.

Our truck was the Flash trim with the extended-range battery, 131 kilowatt-hours, rated at 320 miles. Ford's number and the truck's own guessometer both held up better than we expected. The charging map in this part of the state did not.

Range, empty and loaded

Unloaded, in 60 to 78 degree weather, mixed valley driving with a third of it on I-91, we averaged 2.05 miles per kilowatt-hour. That is 268 miles on a full charge, well short of the sticker and roughly what everyone who owns one of these will tell you they get. We ran it to 6 percent once, on purpose, coming back from Greenfield, and the truck's estimate landed within four miles of what we measured. It does not lie to you, which counts for a lot.

With about 900 pounds in the bed, eighteen bags of grain and a pallet, consumption went to 1.70 miles per kilowatt-hour, so 223 miles. That is a 17 percent hit for a load a half-ton truck should not notice.

Towing is where the number falls off a cliff. We pulled a 3,400-pound utility trailer, tandem axle, loaded with brush and stacked high enough to be a wall. On that day the truck did 1.05 miles per kilowatt-hour, which is 137 miles of range, and the highway portion at 62 miles an hour was worse than the back roads. If you tow every week, this truck will change how you plan your days.

The extended-range Lightning is rated to pull 7,700 pounds with the tow package fitted. We believe it can. We would not want to be 40 miles from a charger while doing it.

Charging, which is the problem

We charged at home most nights on a 48-amp circuit, 11.3 kilowatts, which takes the big pack from nearly empty to full in about eleven and a half hours. That part is boring and good. Ford sells a heavier wall unit that will do 19.2 kilowatts on an 80-amp circuit, so price the panel work when you price the truck. Overnight at the off-peak rate the electricity for the whole three weeks came to about $71, against roughly $210 of gasoline for the same miles in a gas F-150.

Public charging is a different story. The fast chargers at the Hadley plaza are four stalls, 150 kilowatts each. Two of them were out of service the first week and one of those two was still out when we handed the truck back nineteen days later. On a working stall we went from 18 percent to 80 percent in 43 minutes, peaking at 141 kilowatts and tapering hard after 60 percent.

Greenfield has a bank of three on the north end, and one of them would start a session, run for about ninety seconds and then quit. The other two worked fine and gave us 18 to 80 in 46 minutes. There is nothing between Greenfield and the Vermont line that we would count on.

Denise Marchetti, who runs a small hay operation in Whately and drove the truck for one afternoon while we were there, said the math is not complicated. "It is a good truck and I would have to build my week around where it can drink," she said. "I have got two hundred bales to move in September, not a charging plan."

Cold mornings

We did not get a real winter with this truck, but we got four mornings under 42 degrees and one at 34. On the 34-degree morning it showed 11 percent less range at the same state of charge than the previous afternoon, and about 4 points of that came back once the pack warmed up. Owners here tell us to expect a third of the range gone in January.

Cabin heat took 3 minutes 40 seconds from a cold start without preconditioning and about 40 seconds with it, and preconditioning from the phone while plugged in costs you nothing in range. Use it. The heated steering wheel is quick and the heated seats take a slow 90 seconds.

The bed, and the frunk

The bed is 5 feet 6 inches long, 50.6 inches between the wheel wells, and 21 inches deep. A sheet of plywood lies flat between the arches with the tailgate down. Payload on our truck was rated at 1,952 pounds, which is real and which we used most of on the grain day.

The generator built into it is the reason to buy this truck instead of a gas one. The extended-range trucks carry 9.6 kilowatts of outlets, four 120-volt plugs in the bed wall and a 240-volt outlet next to them, and that ran a borrowed compressor for an afternoon and then a tile saw without a stumble. Somebody in Sunderland is going to run a sugarhouse off one of these.

The front trunk holds 14.1 cubic feet, takes 400 pounds and has two more outlets in it, and we used it as a cooler for a day of deliveries. Leave the drain plug out in a hard rain and it collects standing water, so put the plug back after you hose it down.

Our truck had the plain tailgate. It drops flat, it is damped so it does not slam, and there is no step and no grab handle, so getting into the bed with a bag of grain on your shoulder is a hop and a knee. Ford will sell you a tailgate with a step in it. Order that.

Price

The Pro trim starts around $55,000 with the smaller 98-kilowatt-hour pack and a rated 240 miles, and it is the one fleets buy. The Flash, our truck, is about $68,000 and buys the big pack, the larger screen and the 9.6-kilowatt outlets. Lariat is roughly $77,000 and Platinum is up near $86,000, at which point you are paying for a stereo and quilted seats on a farm truck. Before incentives, and incentives on these move around.

Route 9 Auto in Hadley has been servicing these for about a year and says brake work is nearly nonexistent on them, because the regenerative braking does most of the stopping. Tires are the opposite. The truck weighs 6,500 pounds and eats them. Expect 30,000 miles on a set, at $1,320.