Blocking Spaces and Busting Frunks at Tesla Superchargers in Our F-150 Lightning
Road tripping our long-term Lighting via Tesla Superchargers isn’t faster, but it is much more convenient
MotorTrend photo department manager Brian Vance is one of our most dogged road warriors. He goes by “KOTH,” or King of the Highway, and lately, e-KOTH, as he’s taken our various yearlong-review EVs on road trips from Los Angeles to his hometown of Reno, Nevada.
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We’ve written previously about our struggles in road tripping our company-owned Ford F-150 Lightning, and we were curious about what Brian learned on his most recent road trip, during the July 4 holiday, one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.
As EV sales have trended upwards, we’ve seen, heard, and experienced some of the charging frustrations on road trips during high season. Even in California, which leads the country in both EV adoption and charging infrastructure, we've had issues finding working chargers and then waiting for them to become available.
In the last six months, a couple of car makers have started adopting North American Charging Standard (NACS) chargers, giving their EV owners access to Tesla Superchargers. Ford was first, and it sent us a prototype NACS adapter (we’re still awaiting our ever-delayed production version—now expected in September), which gives our 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning the ability to charge at Tesla chargers. We verified that it works at local Tesla locations—but would a 1,000-mile road trip during the busiest holiday weekend ever be the one that breaks eKOTH? Let’s find out. – Ed Loh
Road Tripping a Ford EV on Tesla Superchargers
I took my partner Desi and our two young kids on a journey from Los Angeles to Reno to visit my parents and bring back a chest of drawers handmade by my father. We took California State Route 99 and stayed overnight in Merced, California, on the way up, charging at Tesla superchargers at the popular Tejon Ranch outlet shopping center and at a BP charging station in Merced. The next day, we drove the final 250 miles north on the 99 freeway to Sacramento, charged at a Tesla supercharger in Loomis, California, and made it to Reno later in the day, after about 450 miles of driving. The return trip was pretty similar.
Holiday traffic wasn’t that bad; we went up on July 1, which was early for the long weekend, so traffic actually wasn’t an issue. Charging wasn’t an issue either, thanks to the Tesla supercharger network, which is expansive in both number of locations and charging stalls, so even on busy days there were plenty of chargers available. We came back a day before the holiday weekend ended, on Saturday, which also helped us avoid return traffic. Chargers were plentiful and we only had an 8-unit Tesla supercharger next to a Raley’s supermarket.
Busted Frunk
Though we didn’t have any problems with the chargers themselves, our F-150 Lightning gave us one.
All Tesla vehicles have the charging port at or near the left-rear corner of the car, so owners can back in and drive out, but Ford put the charging port on the front-left of the Lightning, just ahead of the front door. This means that to use most Tesla chargers, you have to park the truck nose-in, very close to the charger, and sometimes need to access the charger in the next space when the cable doesn’t reach.
Once pulled in, I hit the frunk release button, and the frunk automatically opened upwards, hit the Tesla charger, and reversed course to close. But then it wouldn’t latch completely, no matter how many times we tried to close it, automatically or manually. Pulling the manual release in the footwell didn’t do anything either.
We then tried various solutions, including ratchet straps, to keep it closed, thinking we could drive it to a nearby Ford dealer to have it checked out; this was on the way up to Reno, and we were still hundreds of miles away from home. But after driving around the parking lot with the ratchet strap holding the hood down, I realized this wasn’t going to work. When the Lightning senses the frunk is not properly secured, it emits loud and constant warnings inside the truck, making even a short drive impossible, especially with small kids.
After 45 minutes of futzing with the frunk's latching mechanism using the blade side of the tire iron while pulling the manual release cable, we managed to reset it so that the frunk would completely close. Most important, the truck recognized its closure.
Blocking Spaces
Our Lightning’s size caused some issues for Tesla drivers, too. At one charging location, we had to park our Lightning in one Tesla charger spot but use the charging handle in the spot adjacent to us because the cable at our charger couldn’t reach our Ford’s charge port. This charging location only had eight stalls, and was busy, so we got some puzzled looks and stink-eye from folks waiting to charge. Sorry.
Is the Lightning Experience Better or Worse With NACS?
Overall, this thousand-mile road trip was way more convenient with the ability to charge at Tesla superchargers. Charging time wasn’t any faster, so having a NACS adapter to use Tesla chargers with our Ford didn’t dramatically reduce the time of the road trip. There was, however, a time benefit of almost no waiting, and it was much easier for route planning to have so many more charging options. On one stretch, I was even able to comfortably drive until the battery was down to 1 percent because I had so many options.
You do pay a premium of about 5 cents for the convenience of using the Tesla Supercharger network. We paid an average of $0.56 per kWh at each of the five charging stops at Tesla Supercharger stations during this road trip. For five other stops at third party chargers, including BP, Electrify America, and EVgo, we paid $0.51 per kWh.
Is NACS worth 5 cents more? Yes—the value is that there are so many more charging location options to choose from, and each location typically has more charging stalls, which means you’re less likely to have to wait to charge. Time does equal money.
More on Our Long-Term 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat:
I used to go kick tires with my dad at local car dealerships. I was the kid quizzing the sales guys on horsepower and 0-60 times, while Dad wandered around undisturbed. When the salesmen finally cornered him, I'd grab as much of the glossy product literature as I could carry. One that still stands out to this day: the beautiful booklet on the Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX that favorably compared it to the Porsches of the era. I would pore over the prose, pictures, specs, trim levels, even the fine print, never once thinking that I might someday be responsible for the asterisked figures "*as tested by Motor Trend magazine." My parents, immigrants from Hong Kong, worked their way from St. Louis, Missouri (where I was born) to sunny Camarillo, California, in the early 1970s. Along the way, Dad managed to get us into some interesting, iconic family vehicles, including a 1973 Super Beetle (first year of the curved windshield!), 1976 Volvo 240, the 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic station wagon, and 1984 VW Vanagon. Dad imbued a love of sports cars and fast sedans as well. I remember sitting on the package shelf of his 1981 Mazda RX-7, listening to him explain to my Mom - for Nth time - what made the rotary engine so special. I remember bracing myself for the laggy whoosh of his turbo diesel Mercedes-Benz 300D, and later, his '87 Porsche Turbo. We were a Toyota family in my coming-of-age years. At 15 years and 6 months, I scored 100 percent on my driving license test, behind the wheel of Mom's 1991 Toyota Previa. As a reward, I was handed the keys to my brother's 1986 Celica GT-S. Six months and three speeding tickets later, I was booted off the family insurance policy and into a 1983 Toyota 4x4 (Hilux, baby). It took me through the rest of college and most of my time at USC, where I worked for the Daily Trojan newspaper and graduated with a biology degree and business minor. Cars took a back seat during my stint as a science teacher for Teach for America. I considered a third year of teaching high school science, coaching volleyball, and helping out with the newspaper and yearbook, but after two years of telling teenagers to follow their dreams, when I wasn't following mine, I decided to pursue a career in freelance photography. After starving for 6 months, I was picked up by a tiny tuning magazine in Orange County that was covering "The Fast and the Furious" subculture years before it went mainstream. I went from photographer-for-hire to editor-in-chief in three years, and rewarded myself with a clapped-out 1989 Nissan 240SX. I subsequently picked up a 1985 Toyota Land Cruiser (FJ60) to haul parts and camera gear. Both vehicles took me to a more mainstream car magazine, where I first sipped from the firehose of press cars. Soon after, the Land Cruiser was abandoned. After a short stint there, I became editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Sport Compact Car just after turning 30. My editorial director at the time was some long-haired dude with a funny accent named Angus MacKenzie. After 18 months learning from the best, Angus asked me to join Motor Trend as senior editor. That was in 2007, and I've loved every second ever since.
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