What Happens When Your Ford F-150 Lightning EV Battery Runs Out of Range?
We ran our F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck’s battery to zero so you don’t have to.
EVs are like snowflakes; no two are identical. That’s why we’ve been subjecting our electric yearlong test vehicles to a run-out-of-battery test. Our Detroit-based 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning XLT Extended Range is our sixth such test, so we reckoned that by heeding lessons learned and starting from a lower state of charge, we could easily knock this one out in a morning with proper planning. Not quite.
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Last 10 Miles Are Most Interesting
Most EVs give drivers ample warning when the juice starts to run low, but these don’t make for compelling photos, so we made note of them as they happened. The Ford's first “Driving Range Low” warning appears with 50 miles remaining, and it recommended reducing our HVAC use to extend range at 22. We arrived at the office on the morning of the test with 9 miles of remaining range showing and the cabin warmed up. Our plan was to head to the freeway to document the point where the legal 70-mph limit was no longer achievable. By the time we’d driven the 3.5 miles to I-75 north, we were already unable to top 67 mph, and the instrument cluster’s left dial power/regen meter was grayed out to indicate just 19 percent—or just 110 hp—of our truck’s 580 hp was available. Note there was no “turtle” icon, just this grayed-out power meter. We passed the first available exit thinking the next one might still be within reach at 55 mph or better, but halfway there our top speed dropped to 45 mph, so we lit the hazard flashers and grabbed the shoulder. The 45-mph street we landed on seemed within our safe operating range, so we drove another 1.2 miles, pulling into a large parking lot when V-max dropped below 30 with 4 miles of range still showing.
Reserve Range?
Consider the last 10 miles the Lightning’s “reserve” range, and don’t count on safely driving with the flow of traffic after that. That said, we managed to drive around in circles, back and forth behind the mall, observing the max available power fluctuating between 2 and 7 percent, with max speed correspondingly varying between about 16 and 35 mph. Starting with 9 miles of range indicated, we ended up driving 16.5 miles, about half of which were in this mode. In city traffic with more regenerative braking, you might even squeeze a mile or two more. Even at this point, being in a metro area, we probably could have safely limped the Lightning to a charger, but trying to limp a few more exits down a rural freeway after arriving at a dead charger with near-zero range would certainly result in a Ford Roadside Assistance charging tow.
Full Stop, 7.1 Miles Past 0
In anticipation of needing an imminent tow, we drove the Lightning in an open, unused area of the parking lot, and were able to shift to neutral and let the truck roll backward, steering out of the lane of travel, then we put it in park and switched everything off, after retrieving items in the power-operated frunk. We opened our FordPass app and quickly requested an EV Charging tow at 10:33 am. Text messages and messages in the FordPass app confirmed the towing company and contact number, providing a link to a map that showed the truck’s location as if it were an Uber.
Save the 12-Volt Battery!
Our West Coast colleagues have learned this valuable lesson by continuing to use accessory power while awaiting a tow in our Rivian R1T and Hyundai Ioniq 5, only to then find themselves unable to open charge ports, shift, etc. We did note that turning the ignition on did not allow us to shift back into neutral. We did some light phone Googling but figured the tow truck driver would know what to do.
How to Engage Neutral in a Dead Lightning
Our driver first opened a panel on the bottom of the dash that conceals a park-interlock defeat on combustion F-Series trucks. When that failed, we grabbed our laptop, tethered to our phone, downloaded the owner’s manual, searched, and found the emergency towing page (FordPass includes an owner’s manual, and scrolling to page 14 of the table of contents would have directed us to p 429—but that’s a lot of scrolling). The procedure: in accessory mode, navigate to Settings, Vehicle, press and hold the “Emergency Tow” button, engage the brake, shift to neutral, and switch off the ignition.
First Charger Fooled Us
We chose the DC fast charger nearest our office, a brand-new bank of EVgo units ranging from 100 to 350 kW. Our driver did an amazing job of dropping the truck right next to the charger, 90 degrees from the direction his truck was pointed. We plugged in, saw the communication initiate, inserted our credit card, waved goodbye to our driver, and then … nothing. We disconnected, reconnected, and reinserted the card multiple times before calling EVgo support. When I mentioned that I couldn’t move the vehicle to try another one because it was completely dead, the rep declared that the Evgo charger couldn’t charge a dead battery—I needed a Level 2 charger for that, and she provided two nearby options. We’ve never heard any such story, there’s no such warning in the owner’s manual, and in fact we have photos recharging a dead Ioniq 5 at an EVgo fast charge station in California. But we were still sitting dead with no means of resuscitation. So at 12:48, we called Ford roadside assistance, requesting a tow 1.1 miles south to our office L2 charger.
Waiting Game
We received similar text messages, but the Ford Pass app had no info about this roadside assistance call, so there was no Uber-like map to consult. Halfway through the predicted ETA wait, we called the towing company three times with no answer. Ford initiated a new request, restarting the 90–120-minute ETA. At 4:28, a driver from a different tow company arrived (having been given instructions about how to engage neutral). Just 20 minutes later, our Lightning was back where we’d begun seven hours earlier, plugged in and charging. Neither tow truck driver reported having towed many dead EVs to chargers, because this doesn’t happen in the real world much. The battery data gurus at Recurrent report that among its 30 million-plus battery state-of-charge queries, fewer than 0.46 percent are below 10 percent, and only 0.05 percent report discharge below 1 percent. Recurrent’s battery science team cautions that total discharge stresses a battery at the chemical and physical level, but it’s only harmful if it happens frequently. Rest assured, 100 percent of MT’s EVs will hit 0 percent charge once.
MotorTrend Range Depletion Test - 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning
For More on Our Long-Term 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning XLT:
- Off to a Bumpy Start
- Navigating Midwest Charging
- Forestry Service
- Range Strategies
- Offroad Adventure
- Understanding Range Prediction White Lies
- We Gave Our Ford F-150 Lightning a Fastback Roof
- The Coolest EV Range-Extending Tech at CES 2024
- AeroX Road-Trip Range Results Are In
I started critiquing cars at age 5 by bumming rides home from church in other parishioners’ new cars. At 16 I started running parts for an Oldsmobile dealership and got hooked on the car biz. Engineering seemed the best way to make a living in it, so with two mechanical engineering degrees I joined Chrysler to work on the Neon, LH cars, and 2nd-gen minivans. Then a friend mentioned an opening for a technical editor at another car magazine, and I did the car-biz equivalent of running off to join the circus. I loved that job too until the phone rang again with what turned out to be an even better opportunity with Motor Trend. It’s nearly impossible to imagine an even better job, but I still answer the phone…
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