Ford's F-150 Lightning, Once in Hot Demand, Lost Its Luster

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/business/fords-f150-lightning-electric-pickup-trucks.html

by gnicholas • 2 years ago

13 18 2 years ago

gnicholas5• 2 years ago

Once, after Mr. Puglia had driven 35 miles to an ice rink, his range fell by 73 miles. Another time, a 60-mile jaunt reduced his range by 110 miles.

I've found that the range estimate in my Ford CMAX (PHEV) is highly sensitive to recent driving conditions. For example, I drive one-pedal and am more conscientious about regeneration than my wife. When I drive the car after having been the last driver, the estimate is perhaps 20% greater than if I drive after she drove it.

The result is that the range can drop by a lot even with relatively short trips. In some ways this is bad — it would be better if the vehicle showed accurate range estimates from the time you turn it on. This could be optimized by taking temperature into account more aggressively (I imagine Ford already accounts for it to some extent). But in other ways, there's no way for a vehicle to know if you're going to be heading uphill or downhill on your next trip, or if you're taking the freeway or city streets. It sucks when range estimate swing wildly, but it's possible that this is better than the alternative — that it remains too rosy for too long, and then you're screwed.

ryandrake• 2 years ago

I wish cars would stick to measuring what can be accurately measured, and stop trying to be so clever, but it seems that ship has long since sailed. Heck, my 15 year old gas car even tries to estimate range in miles, when it can't possibly know future driving conditions, speeds, hills and valleys, brake usage, and so on. Just show fuel level--at least that can be semi-accurately measured. "Range" is such a misfeature but drivers have long since shown with their wallets that they are fine with being lied to.

Some might argue: Well, nobody cares how much fuel is in their car or how many amp-hours are left, they care about range. Sure, but these systems are not providing range. They're providing wild-ass guesses based on unreliable inputs and incomplete data. Better to not provide the value at all than to give what's essentially a random guess.

gnicholas5• 2 years ago

The variance in range of an EV is very different from in an ICE vehicle. My ICE doesn't seem to vary much based on temperature, whereas my PHEV really does. This is partly because of the way the battery is discharged itself, and partly because cold weather necessitates heating. ICE vehicles have a ready-made heat source, whereas EVs do not.

All this to say: I appreciate the mileage estimate in my ICE, but I've had to learn how my PHEV works to be able to interpret it fruitfully.

bandyaboot• 2 years ago

I disagree with this. I find the “range” to be a useful data point especially as the fuel level is getting low. As long as you have a general, realistic understanding of what it’s telling you. I don’t know specifically how the number is calculated, but my assumption is that it has got to be based on some sort of moving average of fuel consumption. With this I can keep an eye on the number and allow my human, good-at-pattern-recognition brain to do its thing and use it as an input to whatever decision I need to make. Personally, I find it a slightly better source of information than a simple fuel gauge that’s getting low.

photoGrant2• 2 years ago

Just lie to me and tell me the worst case scenario. If the customer focused lie puts you in a marketing bind because the truth is you can't meet what you're alleging to sell... That's your problem. As a customer, I don't need the anxiety of estimations being off by almost 100%. What use is that for me? It's only use is to minimally meet your marketing book of lies to sell technology that isn't quite there yet and put the onus, expense, and anxiety of this transition onto the customer.

Put it this way, I've never ended a journey and been annoyed I had more miles left in the tank than it promised. But you can bet the opposite would have be stranded and screaming on a highway somewhere instead. Why do you want your customers to retain that angst against your brand? Cars of all things are long term, emotional investments. Screwing one customer and they don't stay quiet.

Either way, we're car beta testers now.

schiffern2• 2 years ago

  >Just lie to me and tell me the worst case scenario.

What do you consider the "worst?" 99th percentile? 99.9th percentile? Worse than that?

The straightforward worst estimate is to assume you'll immediately climb the highest grade road on Earth, against the strongest headwind on Earth, in the coldest conditions and worst precipitation ever recorded on Earth, until you run out of battery. That's probably not the calculation you actually want, however.

Ultimately the question is like tuning sensitivity vs. specificity in a medical test. There's a simple answer that can eliminate one class of error (set the tuning threshold to one extreme), but despite that appeal actually it's not the correct answer most of the time.

With the tuning set to the 99th percentile, the computer will underestimate range 99 times for every one instance where it overestimates range. That's not the absolute worst, but is sufficiently worst for you? Or do you want it even more pessimistic?

IMO the answer is cars should simply decline to provide any range estimate at all (just a battery percentage) until the user inputs a destination. None of this (fundamentally intractable) "guess if they're gonna drive up that nearby mountain or not" problem...

unethical_ban• 2 years ago

Just how sensitive is range to demand, and why isn't it better defined?

It's known about how much a gas car will take if someone has a lead foot vs. an eco driver. Is the difference for EVs both that wide, and that unpredictable?

travisb• 2 years ago

There's a few things happening here, but it boils down to EV range being just barely adequate so people are dependent on the range estimate and a 10% error is sometime a serious problem. This is especially true if you need to drive in conditions which disfavour an EV.

To start with, if you are driving a significant fraction of the ideal range, then unexpectedly short range is a problem. Most ICEs have so much range this is never a concern except on long road trips, where refueling is easy and quick.

Then EVs are relatively sensitive to temperature changes. ICEs mostly don't care because they don't have a battery to heat and cabin heat is free. EVs pay for cabin heat with range.

EVs have a negatively proportional efficiency curve with respect to speed and load. That is, the faster you go the less efficient an EV is and the higher the load you are drawing from the battery the less efficient they are. ICEs have a positive proportional efficiency curve. That is, as you increase load to 80% throttle at the given RPM they get more thermally efficient. This makes the net efficiency loss due to high highway speeds less bad as a percentage of 'normal' consumption for ICEs than EVs.

This latter also comes into play if you live somewhere very windy. If you sometimes drive into 80 KM/h head winds, that's relatively a better case for ICEs than EVs. Similarly, if you live somewhere hilly the consumption for driving uphill rises slower in an ICE than an EV. EVs regen on the way down which helps, but only if you have sufficient empty battery capacity on the way down the hill.

If you consider all these and other more minor properties, like the fact that EVs are heavier and often need heavier tires as a result, then EV range is less predictable because it's so efficient already. If an EV is already 95% (of theoretical) efficient, then losing a straight 5% efficiency (95% -> 90%) because it's windy is a big deal. In a 60% (of theoretical) efficient ICE, losing a straight 5% efficiency (60% -> 55%) isn't so bad.

gnicholas5• 2 years ago

The increased variability is due partly to temperature, which doesn't affect ICE vehicles much, but makes a big difference for EVs.

consumer451• 2 years ago

https://archive.is/tAV03

nubinetwork• 2 years ago

While I can't speak to overall sales, I saw one of these driving around just last week.

gnicholas5• 2 years ago

I was surprised there wasn't more emphasis on how Ford raised the price by $10k or something. It was super popular at the originally-announced price, but when they jacked it up that undoubtedly dampened demand.

RocketOne• 2 years ago

That, plus interest rates jumping and run away inflation have cooled all auto sales.

jdeibele• 2 years ago

My neighbor the surgeon has one, along with a Porsche Boxster. He seems happy with it but he has a choice of what to drive.

For me, it's too big. I'm charging on a 120V circuit as we slowly move to the new house, which has a 240V EV charger. That works OK for my Chevy Bolt EUV but the Lightning would need a lot more time on the outlet.

There are devices on Amazon that combine two 120V plugs into one "240V" outlet that's supposed to charge faster but I would be concerned about it burning my garage down.

If they were making a Maverick-sized EV truck, I would be a lot more interested than in the Lightning.

A neighbor has a Rivian 1T. That's more the size I'd like, except it's wider than my Honda Odyssey mini-van.

There are definitely trade-offs with an EV right now. My wife was concerned about taking the Bolt into Olympic National Park. I did several hours of research on where to charge and things worked out fine. That still meant there were times where I was watching and waiting for the shared 240V connectors in the park to open up.

Ford's F-150 Lightning, Once in Hot Demand, Lost Its Luster

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