What's it like to take a road trip in a truck like the Terra (F-150 Lightning)?

[oldgeeksguide]

We’re considering a 5500 mile trip that would to take us from northern AZ to Seattle, Vancouver, Banff, Calgary, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, and back to Northern Arizona.

While in the US, we would likely drive for 4-6 hours and then stop to do half a day’s remote work. This would mean maybe one DCFC stop per day and the rest would be done on hotel or RV L2 charging. We would likely also stop for a few days once every week or two just to explore the area. The drive back home from Chicago would probably be more “go-go-go” because by then we’d be pretty tired.

One of the benefits of traveling by EV is the flexibility of how to acquire energy for the next leg of the trip.
We’ll likely pay significantly less for energy on this trip than we would if we were driving a gas vehicle, despite the fact that DCFC charging has reached a cost that’s similar to that for gasoline.

What are some good places to visit along this route? What diversions from this route are worthwhile?


View attachment 11442

Looks like the town of Vulcan, Alberta won’t be too far out of your way. Never been there, but saw it on the Canadian series “still standing” : https://www.vulcantourism.com/

 

[THil08]

Here's a question,

So far how much have you saved in gas? Like real number, non of the bogus stuff i've been seeing. And include price when charging at DCFC, and at home, and any other charger. Because I've seen a-lot of fake numbers out there. And you seem to be the only person stating the obvious that DCFC prices are raising and are close to gas prices.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Here's a question,

So far how much have you saved in gas? Like real number, non of the bogus stuff i've been seeing. And include price when charging at DCFC, and at home, and any other charger. Because I've seen a-lot of fake numbers out there. And you seem to be the only person stating the obvious that DCFC prices are raising and are close to gas prices.

I haven’t tracked every fill-up for gas in a long, long time, and I’ve stopped paying attention to the cost of gas, so I can only estimate. I estimate that we’ve done about 50% road trips and 50% local driving, but I’m not certain of that—I’d have to go back through my logs. This is not perfectly specific to my experience, but your local cost of electricity, cost of gas, etc., will have an impact on whether you see similar results.
The tl;dr is that we have saved around $10k in fuel costs since going EV in early 2022.

----

Lightning miles: 23,686 miles
Mustang: 52,709 miles

The Lightning replaced a Tacoma. I was getting 16 mpg on the freeway and 12 around town, about 14 mpg combined. I got 8 mpg when I towed, but I won’t count that even though many of the miles we had driven in the Tacoma were towing a travel trailer—we sold that before we bought the Lightning.
We would have purchased something like a Rav4 if we didn’t get the Mustang. Let’s use the Rav4’s combined mpg from the EPA: 30 mpg. I don’t believe we would get anywhere near that, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Tacoma: 23,686 miles / 14 mpg = 1691 gallons.
Rav4: 52,709 miles / 30 mpg = 1757 gallons.

Local average cost of gas over the past years (estimated): $3.50
Road trip average cost of gas (estimated, but most of our road trips were in CA where prices along the highways can easily top $6.00/gal): $5.00
Average cost of gas (assuming we did 50% road trips and 50% local driving): $4.25/gal.

Cost to drive the Tacoma would have been: 1691 gallons * $4.25/gal = $7,186.75
Cost to drive the Rav4 would have been: 1757 gallons * $4.25/gal = $7,467.25
Total to drive ICE vehicles since early 2022 would have been: $14,654.00

Our average efficiency in the Lightning is 2.3 miles/kWh.
Our average efficiency in the Mustang is 4.1 miles/kWh.
Lightning: 23,686 miles / 2.3 miles/kWh = 10,298 kWh
Mustang: 52,709 miles / 4.1 miles/kWh = 12,856 kWh

Until this year, we were paying $0.32/kWh for DCFC. The last several road trips were at the higher prices of about $0.60/kWh. But not all of them were at that price. We get lower prices at EA and we prefer EA. But let’s say the past year or so (20%) of road trips have been at $0.60/kWh, which is higher than reality, but that’s okay. The total energy use for higher-cost road trips was about 2,315 kWh. At $0.60/kWh, that’s $1389.24

The rest of our road trip miles were at the $0.32/kWh or less (these have been free: hotels, friends and family giving us “free charge,” RV parks and campgrounds, and a tiny bit of solar during boondocking). Let’s just use $0.32/kWh for simplicity. That’s about 9262 kWh at $0.32/kWh = $2963.71.

Locally, we charge our EVs at home at a price of $0.035/kWh. That's 11,577 kWh * $0.035/kWh = $405.20

Total electricity cost: $1389.24 + $2963.71 + $405.20 = $4758.15

Since going EV, we’ve saved $9895.85 in fuel costs. More to be sure, because I’m not discounting our road trip costs by the “free” or lower cost charging at hotels, RV parks, campgrounds, or friends’ or family's homes.

Let’s say the next 75,000 miles will also be about 50% road trips and 50% local, but that the price of DCFC is all the way up to $0.60/kWh. And let’s say we get the same average efficiency.
DCFC: 11577 kWh * $0.60/kWh = $6946.20
Local: 11577 kWh * $0.035/kWh = $405.20
Total: $7,351.40

That’s still only half the cost of gas.

Even if all the charging was done on DCFC, the cost of charging would be less than our cost of fuel:
$0.60/kWh * 23,154 kWh = $13892.40

And I’m not counting the time saved every week we used to spend to go refuel. I’m not counting the convenience of always having a “full” or nearly full tank every morning.

I’m not counting the cost of maintenance. We’ve paid a total of about $350-$400 for maintenance on the EVs, and that includes me buying a software subscription to do some updating for things I wanted to have that wouldn’t be considered part of regular maintenance. The local Toyota dealer was charging me $200-$500 per maintenance visit every six months. I didn’t have time or desire to do my own maintenance, so I would have continued to pay that. With two ICE vehicles, we were paying at least $800/year in maintenance and more when it was a major maintenance event; we would have had several with the miles we’ve put on the EVs.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Note that I’ve been very generous to the ICE calculations here:
We had a Golf Alltrack before the Mustang and it got 22 mpg.
I assumed low gas prices.


We have had a LOT of free DCFC or other very cheap road trip charging; it’s only in the past nine months or so that the prices of DCFC have started climbing. If we were only using EA, we’d still be paying only about $0.32-$0.42/kWh. But we’ve been trying out all the new DCFC charging stations. We’ll probably go back to sticking to EA for many of our trips. The only real benefit for these new charging stations is that some of them are located where there are clean restrooms not inside of a Wal-Mart.

 

[THil08]

I haven’t tracked every fill-up for gas in a long, long time, and I’ve stopped paying attention to the cost of gas, so I can only estimate. I estimate that we’ve done about 50% road trips and 50% local driving, but I’m not certain of that—I’d have to go back through my logs. This is not perfectly specific to my experience, but your local cost of electricity, cost of gas, etc., will have an impact on whether you see similar results.
The tl;dr is that we have saved around $10k in fuel costs since going EV in early 2022.

----

Lightning miles: 23,686 miles
Mustang: 52,709 miles

The Lightning replaced a Tacoma. I was getting 16 mpg on the freeway and 12 around town, about 14 mpg combined. I got 8 mpg when I towed, but I won’t count that even though many of the miles we had driven in the Tacoma were towing a travel trailer—we sold that before we bought the Lightning.
We would have purchased something like a Rav4 if we didn’t get the Mustang. Let’s use the Rav4’s combined mpg from the EPA: 30 mpg. I don’t believe we would get anywhere near that, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Tacoma: 23,686 miles / 14 mpg = 1691 gallons.
Rav4: 52,709 miles / 30 mpg = 1757 gallons.

Local average cost of gas over the past years (estimated): $3.50
Road trip average cost of gas (estimated, but most of our road trips were in CA where prices along the highways can easily top $6.00/gal): $5.00
Average cost of gas (assuming we did 50% road trips and 50% local driving): $4.25/gal.

Cost to drive the Tacoma would have been: 1691 gallons * $4.25/gal = $7,186.75
Cost to drive the Rav4 would have been: 1757 gallons * $4.25/gal = $7,467.25
Total to drive ICE vehicles since early 2022 would have been: $14,654.00

Our average efficiency in the Lightning is 2.3 miles/kWh.
Our average efficiency in the Mustang is 4.1 miles/kWh.
Lightning: 23,686 miles / 2.3 miles/kWh = 10,298 kWh
Mustang: 52,709 miles / 4.1 miles/kWh = 12,856 kWh

Until this year, we were paying $0.32/kWh for DCFC. The last several road trips were at the higher prices of about $0.60/kWh. But not all of them were at that price. We get lower prices at EA and we prefer EA. But let’s say the past year or so (20%) of road trips have been at $0.60/kWh, which is higher than reality, but that’s okay. The total energy use for higher-cost road trips was about 2,315 kWh. At $0.60/kWh, that’s $1389.24

The rest of our road trip miles were at the $0.32/kWh or less (these have been free: hotels, friends and family giving us “free charge,” RV parks and campgrounds, and a tiny bit of solar during boondocking). Let’s just use $0.32/kWh for simplicity. That’s about 9262 kWh at $0.32/kWh = $2963.71.

Locally, we charge our EVs at home at a price of $0.035/kWh. That's 11,577 kWh * $0.035/kWh = $405.20

Total electricity cost: $1389.24 + $2963.71 + $405.20 = $4758.15

Since going EV, we’ve saved $9895.85 in fuel costs. More to be sure, because I’m not discounting our road trip costs by the “free” or lower cost charging at hotels, RV parks, campgrounds, or friends’ or family's homes.

Let’s say the next 75,000 miles will also be about 50% road trips and 50% local, but that the price of DCFC is all the way up to $0.60/kWh. And let’s say we get the same average efficiency.
DCFC: 11577 kWh * $0.60/kWh = $6946.20
Local: 11577 kWh * $0.035/kWh = $405.20
Total: $7,351.40

That’s still only half the cost of gas.

Even if all the charging was done on DCFC, the cost of charging would be less than our cost of fuel:
$0.60/kWh * 23,154 kWh = $13892.40

And I’m not counting the time saved every week we used to spend to go refuel. I’m not counting the convenience of always having a “full” or nearly full tank every morning.

I’m not counting the cost of maintenance. We’ve paid a total of about $350-$400 for maintenance on the EVs, and that includes me buying a software subscription to do some updating for things I wanted to have that wouldn’t be considered part of regular maintenance. The local Toyota dealer was charging me $200-$500 per maintenance visit every six months. I didn’t have time or desire to do my own maintenance, so I would have continued to pay that. With two ICE vehicles, we were paying at least $800/year in maintenance and more when it was a major maintenance event; we would have had several with the miles we’ve put on the EVs.

Okay. Seems a lot more reasonable than the numbers I’ve seen from other owners. I’ve seen friends who have owned EVs for legit
five seconds, try to show me that they have saved $50k on gas since going electric. And I just walk away and nod my head.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Okay. Seems a lot more reasonable than the numbers I’ve seen from other owners. I’ve seen friends who have owned EVs for legit
five seconds, try to show me that they have saved $50k on gas since going electric. And I just walk away and nod my head.

A more true estimate would be closer to $15-$20k in savings, but I don’t have the receipts at my fingertips.

 

[THil08]

A more true estimate would be closer to $15-$20k in savings, but I don’t have the receipts at my fingertips.

Still more reasonable than what my friends are saying who have owned their teslas for 2 months.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Still more reasonable than what my friends are saying who have owned their teslas for 2 months.

They may be including the huge discounts on used Teslas since nobody’s buying them.

 

[THil08]

They may be including the huge discounts on used Teslas since nobody’s buying them.

Well used teslas are problematic. I would say they are more problematic than a used BMW with 100k miles

 

[J Alynn]

if you go to the Museum of Science and Industry, I hope they still have the fighter simulators. I went a few years ago for Pittcon and they let us do those and it was amazing. I am NOT a pilot and my gunner was not a gunner so we gave up on trying to shoot down anyone and just did continuous barrel rolls. It was great!

I’ve done an MRAP simulator but never a plane. Was about half motion sick after that but my buddy threw everything he could at me

 

[J Alynn]

Well used teslas are problematic. I would say they are more problematic than a used BMW with 100k miles

WOW! That says a lot but I personally wouldn’t own a bimmer outside of the warranty period.

 

[J Alynn]

Note that I’ve been very generous to the ICE calculations here:
We had a Golf Alltrack before the Mustang and it got 22 mpg.
I assumed low gas prices.


We have had a LOT of free DCFC or other very cheap road trip charging; it’s only in the past nine months or so that the prices of DCFC have started climbing. If we were only using EA, we’d still be paying only about $0.32-$0.42/kWh. But we’ve been trying out all the new DCFC charging stations. We’ll probably go back to sticking to EA for many of our trips. The only real benefit for these new charging stations is that some of them are located where there are clean restrooms not inside of a Wal-Mart.

As usual thank you for your time and insight. I’ve been trying to figure that type of thing for a while

 

[Logan]

Okay. Seems a lot more reasonable than the numbers I’ve seen from other owners. I’ve seen friends who have owned EVs for legit
five seconds, try to show me that they have saved $50k on gas since going electric. And I just walk away and nod my head.

FWIW, I’ve had my EV for about 3 months now. We’ve done 2170 miles so far.

Our vehicle is an Ioniq 9, which is really quite similar in dimensions to the new Hyundai Palisade, or the Toyota Grand Highlander.

We’ve charged 100% at home so far. Our electricity is cheap here ($0.10263 per kWh), and our gas is relatively expensive ($4.50).

Assuming EPA efficiency/range numbers, here is the comparison for how much it would cost to drive our 2170 miles.

2026 Hyundai palisade AWD 21mpg combined: $465

2026 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid AWD 34mpg combined: $287

2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 AWD, rated for 38kwh per 100 miles: $85

We have actually been getting better than EPA efficiency, and according to my charger and the tracking app, we’ve actually spent about $70.

So, compared to alternatives, we’ve saved $200-400 in 3 months. Definitely not $20k .

 

[THil08]

FWIW, I’ve had my EV for about 3 months now. We’ve done 2170 miles so far.

Our vehicle is an Ioniq 9, which is really quite similar in dimensions to the new Hyundai Palisade, or the Toyota Grand Highlander.

We’ve charged 100% at home so far. Our electricity is cheap here ($0.10263 per kWh), and our gas is relatively expensive ($4.50).

Assuming EPA efficiency/range numbers, here is the comparison for how much it would cost to drive our 2170 miles.

2026 Hyundai palisade AWD 21mpg combined: $465

2026 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid AWD 34mpg combined: $287

2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 AWD, rated for 38kwh per 100 miles: $85

We have actually been getting better than EPA efficiency, and according to my charger and the tracking app, we’ve actually spent about $70.

So, compared to alternatives, we’ve saved $200-400 in 3 months. Definitely not $20k .

I wish the electric by me was cheap. Since I live in a small, coastal town, they upcharge us. It’s .16 cents rounded up per kWh. And we aren’t allowed solar, due to the look of it on the roofs. And gas is about $2.85 a gallon. I would like to swap electric prices with you please.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

FWIW, I’ve had my EV for about 3 months now. We’ve done 2170 miles so far.

Our vehicle is an Ioniq 9, which is really quite similar in dimensions to the new Hyundai Palisade, or the Toyota Grand Highlander.

We’ve charged 100% at home so far. Our electricity is cheap here ($0.10263 per kWh), and our gas is relatively expensive ($4.50).

Assuming EPA efficiency/range numbers, here is the comparison for how much it would cost to drive our 2170 miles.

2026 Hyundai palisade AWD 21mpg combined: $465

2026 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid AWD 34mpg combined: $287

2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 AWD, rated for 38kwh per 100 miles: $85

We have actually been getting better than EPA efficiency, and according to my charger and the tracking app, we’ve actually spent about $70.

So, compared to alternatives, we’ve saved $200-400 in 3 months. Definitely not $20k .

Assuming no road trips and prices stay the same...
$200 saved per 2170 miles.

When you get to 75,000 miles:

$200 * (75,000/2170) = $6,912.44

 

[shutthefrontdoor]

Maybe they are trading in the Teslas. Q3 sales were their best to date, globally.

I used to save about $5k/year driving a Model 3 but I have a pretty long commute. So about $35k over my 7 years of driving an EV. Less if comparing to a highly efficient ICE sedan. I came from a Hybrid SUV so that's what I compared to. And my overnight rate is very good. It's a great commuter car but otherwise and especially these days, there are so many more appealing choices.

My next EV won't see anywhere near this as it won't be a Model 3 but will at least be charged from Solar at home.

$20k/year would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

 

[THil08]

WOW! That says a lot but I personally wouldn’t own a bimmer outside of the warranty period.

Extended warranty, dealership maintenance and repair packages are something new that BMW is trying out. Which are pretty cheap, just set up one for the Mini which is completely a BMW at this point. It was about $245 and it covers oil changes every 6k miles for 3 years. As long as the dealership isn’t a scam, it’s not that bad. Considering and oil changes now days is 150 alone, minus all the air filters, and other fluids they top off.

BMWs aren’t known for being a long term car. lol they are the type of car you either lease, or trade in once it hits 100k, maybe even 80k depending on how many miles are on it when you buy it.

 

[Logan]

Assuming no road trips and prices stay the same...
$200 saved per 2170 miles.

When you get to 75,000 miles:

$200 * (75,000/2170) = $6,912.44

This was why when I saw we could buy the Ioniq 9 for the same price as a grand Highlander or Palisade, it was a no brainer to go with the EV.

Our combination of cheap electricity and pretty expensive fuel is like the perfect situation.

And a used 3 row suv like a Honda Pilot or a Palisade or Nissan pathfinder would have been cheaper. But after you account for the 18mpg those get, after a few years you end up more than making up the purchase price difference.

 

[J Alynn]

I wish the electric by me was cheap. Since I live in a small, coastal town, they upcharge us. It’s .16 cents rounded up per kWh. And we aren’t allowed solar, due to the look of it on the roofs. And gas is about $2.85 a gallon. I would like to swap electric prices with you please.

But 2.85 is great for gas Ours in Lancaster area is 3.35-3.40/gallon. Every scenario I’ve tried to run (have the hybrid now) I will save about 25-35% in fuel costs annually. That said, my daily commute is only 7 miles round trip, I work from home 2-3 days a week. I will start doing more of our long distance rather than using the Pilot so I’ll be curious of actual but this type of experience info is very helpful

 

[J Alynn]

This was why when I saw we could buy the Ioniq 9 for the same price as a grand Highlander or Palisade, it was a no brainer to go with the EV.

Our combination of cheap electricity and pretty expensive fuel is like the perfect situation.

And a used 3 row suv like a Honda Pilot or a Palisade or Nissan pathfinder would have been cheaper. But after you account for the 18mpg those get, after a few years you end up more than making up the purchase price difference.

Out of fairness we average about 20.4mpg on our pilot