The Frunk is awesome for sure! The cargo/storage possibilities for the Lightning are fantastic. Between the bed, Frunk, and crew cab, holy cow can you pack some gear!

Can't wait to check one out in person!

 

I can't wait to put one in my garage.

I finished building a new house a few months back and the one thing I made sure was set up right was the ability to charge at full capacity. Just wish it would have been possible to do 3 phase....

 

Just remember payload limits!

 

So out of curiosity how much will running heat in the Winter and AC in the summer reduce the driving distance on a EV ? two things i could not do with out lol

And are the charging stations universal or are they stickily proprietary?

 

You can cut roughly 20 miles when using AC.... for the winter I suggest using the Heated Seats for efficiency depending on how the temp is outside. I know for my Model 3 I keep it on Auto Climate roughly 68-72 degrees all year round and see a loss of anywhere between 10-20 miles of range depending on how fast I'm going.

 

...and it gets a lot colder than 20 around here.

 

First of all, having an EV in a cold environment will already dramatically impact range. Then, putting on the heater will make it worse. However, the solution is to set the vehicle to pre-heat in the morning (or pre-cool in summer), so it uses the house current to get the cabin temperature to your setting BEFORE you unhook. Our Fusion Energi PHEV has a range of 21. In the summer it will say 19 or 20. In the winter it will say 12 or 13.

Heated seats and steering wheel are better than turning heat on. On our PHEV that will kick the engine on real quick.

Charging stations are not universal. Tesla's Superchargers for example are proprietary. However, people are working on adapters. As far as other charging stations, you can set any of the software to only select compatible charging stations, so you don't pull up and realize you have an issue.

 

AC isn't too bad, heat in the winter beats up range quite a bit UNLESS they use a heat pump vs. traditional resistive heaters. In my old Bolt I'd loose like 30% range when the temps dipped below freezing. With a heat pump that could be more like 5%, similar to running the AC in the summer.

Charging gets a little wacky. There are 4 different types of plugs in the Americas, and they can each deliver different levels of charge depending on what type of power they're connected to.

J1772 - Everyone can use these (Tesla w/ an adapter), and it's called "Level 2" charging and delivers power from >1kwHr to 11'ish kwHr. For lightning this is probably a 10 hour charge from 0-full. This is what you want in your home, apartment, or business, and what you might use if parked overnight at a hotel

Tesla "Supercharger" - High power DC charging from 50-300 kwHr, Tesla only
Tesla "Destination Charger" - Same plug as above but basically uses J1772 with a different plug, so you can use an adapter for "regular" EVs to use a Tesla destination charger. There is no way that any adapter will work with a supercharger however since there's also a software handshake

CHADEMO - High power DC charging for primarily Japanese EVs (Nissan, Kia). Generally fading towards irrelevance in the US
CCS - High power DC charging from 50-300 kwHr. Uses the J1772 and two extra DC pins below that. Probably 10-30 mins from 0-80% (charging slows dramatically after 80%). This is what you'll use on a long-distance trip.

There are also different networks. Think of these like Exxon vs. Shell, but you can only "pump" at an Exxon station if you have their account. So (with some exceptions) if I have a ChargePoint account I cannot use it at an Electrify America station. This nonsense is slowly being worked out, partially due to network "roaming" agreements and things like Fordpass where they take care of all the nonsense behind the scenes and you can pay just by plugging in your car.

EDIT TO ADD: If you want to check out what chargers near you look like, use the Plugshare app/website and filter out the Tesla stuff.

 

I tried this in my Lariat a couple of years ago. A buddy of mine with a PHEV claimed that you didn't need forced air heat, that you could run with just heated steering wheel and seat. So in the dead of winter I tried that. By time I arrived at work that morning in the dead of winter my feet were popsicles. And that was even cheating every few minutes to defrost the windshield.

 

It sure do.