Ford F150 Lightning owners tackle blackout concerns

Car makers are grappling with the effect that rapid uptake of electric vehicles will have on electricity grids. But there are some encouraging signs.

Ford’s F150 Lightning has been a huge success for the brand. Picture: Supplied.

Americans have come up with an innovative hack to deal with increasing power blackouts in the country.

They are powering their house with their pick-up truck.

The latest Ford F150 has the ability to feed power into the grid via a simple plug attached to the car.

Ford’s global head of electric vehicle programs, Darren Palmer, said the battery in the F150 was big enough to power the average house for between three and ten days.

The battery on the long-range F150 has a 131kWh capacity, almost ten times the size of the commercial Tesla powerwall sold in Australia.

Palmer said F150 owners were also using the truck to store their solar, allowing them to use free power when the sun isn’t shining.

The Ford F150 Lightning can power a house for between three and ten days. Picture: Supplied.

Black-outs in the United States can last for several days as the nation struggles to cope with weather events and high energy loads at peak times.

Palmer said there was a danger that a surge in sales of electric cars without innovative charging solutions would overload the grid and exacerbate existing energy infrastructure weaknesses.

“When all the neighbourhoods start getting electric vehicles, for a start the infrastructure will have to be upgraded, because they’re going to run out of power for that neighbourhood,” Mr Palmer said.

That would put pressure on energy suppliers.

The Lightning can charge power tools and camping equipment. Picture: Supplied.

“Will they be able to keep up? Will they invest the money? I do not believe they will. So what happens is you start to get to scenarios where on a Wednesday afternoon on a hot summer day, when everyone comes back from work and plugs in and turns the airconditioning on, it’s going to overload that area,” he said.

But smart energy providers could use large capacity electric vehicles to boost capacity.

Ford was trialling programs where multiple large pick-ups were hooked up to the grid and ready to provide auxiliary power when energy providers needed it.

It was also working on products for storing solar power collected during the day, using it at peak periods and then recharging the truck in the off-peak.

In Texas, where the state has so much wind-generated energy it can’t use all of it, off-peak electricity is free.

The F150 Lightning’s battery is roughly ten times the size of a Tesla powerwall

Palmer said the key to increasing EV take-up in the United States was to make the vehicles as desirable as possible.

“Our strategy for electric cars is to make vehicles that do things they could never do before,” he said.

That included vehicle-to-grid technology and vehicle to load, which allowed people to power their campsite or worksite from their car. The F150 Lighting electric truck has ten household power-points and ten USB ports. It also has a “megafrunk”, a dry front storage space where the engine used to be that can fit two sets of golf clubs or a week’s worth of groceries.

Another advantage was the thrilling driving experience.

“I mean if you don’t want an EV after trying it you haven’t got blood in your veins, right? It’s exhilarating in a different way to a gas coupe,” he said.

The response to the F150 had been dramatic. Ford thought it would get 40,000 orders for the Lightning but it received 220,000 before it had to close its books.

The F150 Lightning has proved a big hit for Ford. Picture: Supplied.

“If we turned it back on tomorrow, we’d probably get another 100,000,” Palmer said.

Ford EV communications manager, Emma Berg, said the EV take-up in the US had little to do with saving the environment.

“There is not such a drive for sustainability in the US because frankly a lot of people don’t really care.

“But ultimately, the way you’re going to get them in is by giving them something that they’ve never had before.”

Originally published as Ford F150 Lightning owners tackle blackout concerns