[Ch-EV-y]

It's been a rough couple of weeks for this F-150 Lightning owner who had his truck break on him after only 80 miles.

Failed - Electric Platinum Lightning F150

I took delivery of my new $95k Electric Platinum Lightning F150 on June 25th, Drove it for 80 miles and parked it. Charged it on my charger for three hours and then drove another 8 miles. Parked it and then went back to drive it two hours later and it would not start. Had a message that said...

www.lightningowners.com

 

[HawaiiEV]

Unfortunately these are the sorts of problems Tesla owners have dealt with the whole time. I’m sure there will be plenty of teething issues while they figure out EV’s, it’s really just a rolling computer system and there will be bugs. My hope is the big manufacturers will figure out the long term reliability of them.

 

[BZZZZT_Maine]

Tesla, Ford, Chevy....have all had problems with EVs.

Hopefully with the Silverado NOT being the first vehicle on the platform, Hummer owners can go through some of the bugs for us, but don't hold your breath. There will be bumps. That's the nature of EVs at the moment, unfortunately.

 

[tsuintx]

Sucks to be that dude to have spent $100K or what ever on one, but definitely not something completely unexpected. Same will happen with the Silverado.

 

[aldaran]

I do agree that most new models have all sorts of production problems. When I got my 2016 Camaro it ate through torque converters and no one could figure out why. Eventually they said the transmission had to be replaced. I worked with them as long as I didn't have to spend any of my money. The powertrain warranty took care of it. I'm sure there will be some issues but hopefully they will be addressed quicker than the poor lightning guy who still has his truck in the shop for a month.

 

[SilverDan]

Tesla, Ford, Chevy....have all had problems with EVs.

On GM's part not really. We own a Bolt, the battery issue was LG's fault, otherwise we've had a few small issues. GM handled everything with aplomb in my view. I posted elsewhere about GM, they appear to be an Engineer first company, and being an engineer I can see all the care and thought they put into these vehicles. I'm not expecting significant issues with the Silverado. GM has been at this since the EV1, and their research arm has been pumping out papers ever since.

Don't know how Ford is with this, other than they don't have BEV in their DNA yet, which makes me very wary. All they had is the stupid Ford Focus, the Mustang is maybe their first serious BEV? On the Lightning the team had to sell it to mgmt, they weren't really sure about it, whereas basically GM has bet the farm on EV's and have the longest track record.

Tesla is great on marketing and design and poor on engineering architecture.

 

[BZZZZT_Maine]

On GM's part not really. We own a Bolt, the battery issue was LG's fault, otherwise we've had a few small issues. GM handled everything with aplomb in my view. I posted elsewhere about GM, they appear to be an Engineer first company, and being an engineer I can see all the care and thought they put into these vehicles. I'm not expecting significant issues with the Silverado. GM has been at this since the EV1, and their research arm has been pumping out papers ever since.

Don't know how Ford is with this, other than they don't have BEV in their DNA yet, which makes me very wary. All they had is the stupid Ford Focus, the Mustang is maybe their first serious BEV? On the Lightning the team had to sell it to mgmt, they weren't really sure about it, whereas basically GM has bet the farm on EV's and have the longest track record.

Tesla is great on marketing and design and poor on engineering architecture.

I don't think it was that hard of a sell job to get Ford to go BEV, especially considering A: which vehicle was their first SERIOUS one (Lightning) and B: how similar they kept it to the ICE and Hybrid models.

Ford is making serious in-roads, and I don't think they "bet the farm" like GM, but they are trying to be fairly aggressive with it.

I hope Chevy/GM continue to go down-market on trucks, as well. Ford is rumored to be working on the Maverick and/or Ranger as EVs. GM needs to drop a Colorado EV or something similar. The small pickup market is hot right now.

 

[SilverDan]

I don't think it was that hard of a sell job to get Ford to go BEV, especially considering A: which vehicle was their first SERIOUS one (Lightning) and B: how similar they kept it to the ICE and Hybrid models.

The marketing head said as much, he told the story that to get it approved it had to run a good profit, which basically they only pulled off by leverging the 150 scale as much as possible (which hurts the BEV platform, being legacy ICE). And now Ford jacked up the price of the Lightning. Compare this to GM who sold the Bolt at a loss for most of its history, and maybe still are, but even at that designed a treat of a car.

Ford is making serious in-roads, and I don't think they "bet the farm" like GM, but they are trying to be fairly aggressive with it.

They are, but I work in a company that is similar (hardware/software platform) and it looks to me that they are mainly following the money. They didn't have a vision for EV's - quite the contrary - but got pushed into it late due to proven demand.

 

[aldaran]

I was following this story on the Lightning forum and the owner hasn't given an update. The last thing he wrote was they were replacing batteries but it still didn't work.