Review: Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum

I come from a long line of F-150s. One of my earliest vehicular memories is bouncing around in the back of a red, late-90s step-side that my grandpa trucked around his cattle ranch in the Sierra Nevadas. That truck eventually gave way to a silver 2004 model that got passed down to me in 2014, then a blue-green 2015 model that I inherited when Gammy and Papa (as I still call them) sold the ranch a few years later. And I've been driving them hard around the Pacific Northwest ever since.

For myself and Papa Hall, now in his mid-eighties, trucks are tools. Despite the fact that he did shell out for extras like an extra-large tank (“so that I wouldn't have to pay for gas in California”), they were for hauling firewood, towing trailers, and driving a series of black and brown labs to go duck hunting. He banged his F-150s up so often that he had a dedicated bumper guy named Mort.

The new F-150 Lightning Platinum—a fully electrified truck with a giant touchscreen, heated and cooled seats, and a panoramic sunroof—would be unfamiliar to my grandpa. It feels, looks, and smells more like a German luxury car than the dog hair and dust any of our F150s ever did.

And yet, after actually using it to haul a trailer across town, my two muddy dogs from after the park, and a couple hundreds of pounds of apples to a cider press, I have come to see my future. These trucks aren’t posh facsimiles of the rough and tumble vehicles Papa and I owned and loved. The F-150 Lightning does everything I've asked it to do, in virtually all cases better than gas models.

Unless you’re a renter without access to a charging port, or a constant long-hauler who tows a travel trailer often, this is probably the most capable vehicle for any situation you'll ever face. For those who can swing the upfront cost, it's the Leatherman of cars.

Photograph: Ford

This isn't the first F-150 Lightning. A couple decades ago, Ford made a super-fast gas version of the F-150, still significantly slower than this newer electrified version, with the same name. Besides the fact that the new F-150 Lighting Platinum with towing package that I tested does 0-60 mph in about four seconds, the new Lighting and Ye Olde Lightning have nothing in common.

My review truck (the $92,000 Platinum trim) compares fairly directly to a high-end hybrid F-150 Limited with all the trimmings (about $83,000). Like the gas truck folks know and buy in droves (for those unaware, the F-150 has been the best-selling car in the United States since 1981), my crew cab review unit arrived with a massive array of other bells and whistles that you’d expect from any premium truck in 2023.

It has heated and cooled seats, adaptive cruise control, a massive sunroof, and a 360-degree camera. Like many EVs, it offers one-pedal driving that allows you to never touch the brakes, and it can steer for you on many roads. Ford's Blue Cruise functionality goes so far as letting you take your hands off the wheel during segments on major highways, provided you look out the front window. To do this, it has sensors that look at your eyes and make sure you’re watching. Yes, it feels as nuts to drive with no hands as it sounds.

The interiors between gas and electric trucks are near identical, but the F-150 Lightning has a massive front trunk where its engine should be. The “frunk” of this thing can fit, Ford claims, three sets of standard golf clubs. Said frunk also includes four 120-volt power outlets and two USB outlets (one USB-C, one USB-A), which means you can plug in your devices while you travel, or charge up your laptop or tools on the way between job sites (or fields on a ranch).

The rear of the truck has four more 120-volt power outlets, as well as a 220-volt outlet above it. Yes, you can use the Lightning with your full-size dryer, hot tub, or even charge another electric car off of it, with the ability to tell it when to stop so you have enough range to drive home. This is both epic and awesome. The hybrid truck can also do this in the Limited trim, but power generation caps out at 7.2 kWh of power compared to the Lightning’s 131 kWh. Standard gas models can be equipped with 2.0 kWh or 2.4 kWh, depending on trim and engine.

On the Lightning, there is also an option to let the massive 131-kWh battery of extended-range trucks (as opposed to the 98-kWh battery from standard-range models) act like a generator to your house, as long as you purchase a $1,300 wall charger from Ford. That charger and the extended-range battery sound a lot cheaper when you start pricing out whole-home generators, their maintenance, and the cost of gas.

Folks are already using this in states like Texas, where intermittent power has become something of a way of life in the face of climate change and their current electrical grid. It's not a small amount of juice, either. My house uses about 20-kWh power per day on days I don't charge my Polestar EV. The F-150 Lighting could support my home, totally off-grid, for six and a half days at normal usage. I desperately wish my Polestar could do this.

The fact that you can tap into the big battery inside the F-150 Lightning to do nearly anything, anywhere the truck can drive, is, quite frankly, something no gas vehicle can compete with. I joked with friends and family about brewing a beer in the woods with my 220 V home-brew rig, but the reality of the battery being so large is even cooler than that.

You can start to think of this as less of a truck, and more of a rolling battery bank for off-grid homes. For those with solar systems who might otherwise have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars on an equivalent amount of home battery storage, this is a mobile battery 10 times the size of a 13.5-kWh, $9,200 Tesla Powerwall … one that you can drive. For a certain type of buyer, that makes the F-150 Lighting a subsidy simply by existing.

Photograph: Ford

Even with the speed and smoothness of Ford’s excellent electric drivetrain, and 300 miles of EPA estimated range for the extended battery models, buyers for F-150 Lightnings are not traditionalists. They’re largely new to the brand, and most haven’t owned a truck before, according to Ford representatives.

There seems to be a significant gap between folks who own and use ICE trucks and those who want electric ones. During my week with the Lightning Platinum, I wanted to investigate whether this could actually do, you know, truck stuff, the same stuff I'd do in my normal F-150 if I were out on the ranch or working around town.

Pulling up to a NW Portland job site to test the towing capacity of the F-150 Lightning loaner, I immediately felt the skepticism of my uncle, Rob, a contractor who tows tons of materials each month.

Uncle Rob has a diesel truck with a 60-gallon tank that gets him around 600 miles. It’s a beast that requires steps to get in and out of, but it (and models nearly identical to it) has been a part of his toolbelt, and my life, for decades—right down to the burgundy paint. The thing has plenty of power, and the weight needed to tow large trailers. His doubts that this smaller electric truck could fit his needs are understandable: He tows heavy things a lot.

That, it turns out, is something the F-150 Lightning does pretty well at. With a curb weight of 6,893 pounds (3,127 kg) and a rating to tow 8,600 pounds (3,900 kg), plus its staggering 775 lb-ft of torque, the Lightning tows a big trailer comfortably. In fact, for Rob's typical work day, it fits in shockingly well.

I left home with 90 percent charge, drove around east and southeast Portland for the morning, and after some brief hitch issues (I had the wrong size ball for the massive 5,000-pound dump trailer), I did a towing test. I started with about 77 percent charge, estimating that the morning's antics might equate to a very long commute to the job site, and towed the thing 65 miles, further than my uncle typically tows in a day in our metro area.

For our medium-size city and suburbs, it is more than capable as a daily driver for actual truck workers. I drove between the furthest suburbs of Portland west to east, then towed the trailer back to the job site in the middle of town. I ended up with 32 percent charge. That's enough juice, the truck said, to drive another 80 miles with the trailer off, or 30 with it on. That range would easily work for most people, as long as they could plug in at night and recharge for the next day.

This is the crux of what many truck owners complain about with the first generation of electric trucks: They can't go long distances with them reliably. They're not wrong in some cases. If I was towing a travel trailer, I'd only get about 150 miles between chargers that probably don't exist here in the US. That's annoying to the point where I'd buy a gas truck. Then again, the vast majority of us aren't towing a travel trailer—or any trailer. Most of us aren't driving more than 40 miles per day, truck owners included.

Another argument I hear is what I like to call the “occasional use case” problem. I live in the American West: To get anywhere notable takes hours of driving. I usually keep within 300 miles of home, but probably twice a year I road trip for longer distances. Until the infrastructure catches up, road-tripping in an EV is still logistically difficult in many parts of the USA.

That doesn't mean you can't save money owning an EV, though. When I ran the numbers on gas prices and how often I personally take a more-than-150-mile road trip (again, about twice a year), I’d still save money on running costs by renting a gas or hybrid car for those trips while owning the F-150 Lightning (and charging it at home every time else) in-between.

Electricity, thanks in large part to hydroelectric dams (which have their own environmental issues), is much cheaper than gas for me. That math changes entirely depending on your local grid, so you'll need to do it yourself to see whether it pencils out (or borrow a friend's gas car for the week). In places such as Hawaii or parts of California, where energy costs are much higher, an economical gas vehicle might still beat an electric one on running costs, unless you have solar panels or some other off-grid energy generation system.

For me up in Portland, it's comically cheap to drive an EV like the Lightning, outside of the significantly higher upfront cost. A full fill-up for 300 miles of range, at my off-peak hour cost of 7 cents per kilowatt hour, comes to $9.17. That compares extremely favorably to a full fill-up for $160 and 600-ish miles of range in my 2015 model F-150 with a V-6 and oversize 36-gallon tank.

Add in the fact that in the F-150 Lightning there are no oil changes, and that batteries in electric cars have now been shown to last a long time with very little degradation, and these trucks become investment buys with a higher upfront cost but much lower running costs and maintenance. You even change brake pads and fluid less regularly, because EVs largely use regen breaking to slow down.

Before we get carried away, the F-150 Lightning isn't all rainbows and unicorns: I dislike Ford's touchscreen interface. I wish it had better UI and was faster, and I want to split-screen different apps on the massive center display. I wish I could further customize the driver display. Then there are some physical gripes: An electric truck doesn't need a massive shifter in the middle of the console, and I would like physical buttons for climate control.

Even so, the charm of the Lightning is hard to miss. Every time I took a drive I found a new feature: It has places to attach clamps on the tailgate, alongside built-in measuring sticks in both centimeters and inches. You can plug up the frunk and fill it with ice and a few cold ones, thanks to a hidden lower compartment with a removable top. There are easy switches for lights in the bed—not to mention the aforementioned plethora of outlets, and a built-in step stool inside the tailgate to let you get up and down easier. There's a locking safe under the rear seat I'd use for shotguns when hunting.

It echoes such thoughtful engineering in its driving experience. The dual motors are smooth and powerful, jetting you to that 60 mph in four-ish seconds with traction control that's instant and confidence-building. Floor it in the corners, and you (usually) won't spin the wheels. Choose between three drive modes (Eco, Normal, and Aggressive) that change the driving style and feel; the truck drove smoothly and evenly in all of them, as it's essentially just remapping the throttle response and steering for each.

The teenager in me has to note that it's really, really fun to scare people with how fast it is. You simply can't comprehend beforehand how weird it feels to get to 60 this quick in a vehicle this size. It's miles faster than the beloved F-150 Raptor that truck nerds drool over, fast enough to spin up the Cheshire cat smile of my sportscar-owning brother in the passenger seat, apples rolling everywhere in the bed behind us.

It's not perfectly taught, and it shouldn't be. Even when driving it like a race car, there is some trucky body roll over speed bumps, the soft suspension clearly there for actual truck uses. Because the weight is slung so low—Ford's battery bank is in the floor below you—it settles down faster than my older trucks. The weight distribution and power make it feel refined and smooth—almost, one imagines, like a Rolls-Royce with a bed in the back.

When you want to forget you're driving a truck on the highway, it does that too. Whisper-quiet, it feels, as my wife put it while we listened to jazz radio while it drove us handsfree down the interstate, “like riding in a personal train car.”

I'd still entirely trust it on my grandpa's ranch. The flat bottom is essentially a giant skid plate, and it has a heat pump to keep the batteries cozy and full of range in winter while it charges my tools in the weather-protected frunk.

You also don't have to spring for all these bells and whistles. Folks can buy a more basic Pro model, with less range and towing capability, for around half the price of this fully loaded one, and it's still a miles better work truck than my beloved 2015 FX4, much as it pains me to admit.

Ford seems to have non-truck owners convinced, but the rest of the market remains unsure. Chevy has recently backed a year off the release date for its own truck, and Tesla’s Cybertruck is notoriously in the bardo. Yet, if my time with the Lightning tells me anything, it's going to be tough to deny EV truck superiority for much longer.

As Rivian remains one of the most sought-after EV brands, Ford is finally making its way through the preorder list, and will soon have, according to the company, "meaningful inventory" on dealer lots around the United States. Some take this as a sign that the market has softened, with Ford cutting a shift at the plant that makes the F-150 Lightning, many speculating due to lack of overall demand. This, not to mention the ongoing auto workers strike in the United States throwing a wrench in things for corporate planning industry-wide.

I think that the infinite preorder era being over means we’re about to see a lot more electric trucks in the hands of folks who aren’t early adopters, but who might want to test-drive a new model and see what all the fuss is about.

With new special-edition models like the Platinum Black Edition (an extra-blacked-out version of the Platinum) coming to market, they might also appeal to folks who otherwise would have bought a gas F-150 Raptor, the largely-overkill offroad truck that was previously Ford’s fastest F-150.

Regardless of the trim level, it’s seems impossible that demand won’t grow the more folks actually see and drive these in the wild. It’s just hard to deny the clear benefits to people increasingly tired of high gas prices who simply don’t drive more than a few hundred miles a day.

With that in mind, if you're in the market for a new truck—or any large-capacity vehicle for driving in a 150-mile radius—I highly suggest you take a test drive.