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Trip planning to alleviate range anxiety

Our Service Manager Taylor recently planned to go on a camping trip in the mountains in his Ford F150 Lightning. He travelled from Lacombe down to Kananaskis for this trip, which was a 600 km round trip.


Planning for a trip like the one Taylor went on has a few steps. You need to book your campground, grocery shop and pack. In an EV there are some extra steps when going on a trip away from home.


The first is to plan a route.

Before Taylor left home, he planned his best route to get to his destination. Planning the route helped him to find where his stops to charge are.


You can plan your route using the navigation screen in your vehicle or by using an app like Flo. You can also use the FordPass App to find chargers that are on the Blue Oval Network the same as the navigation screen in your Ford vehicle.


For this trip, Taylor planned to stop at a Petro Canada station outside of Calgary on Highway 1. Then one the way home he planned to stop at the Stoney Nakoda Casino.


The next step is to plan for extra time.

Charging your electric vehicle does take more time than it takes to fill up an internal combustion engine vehicle. Even with fast and super chargers available across Canada, there will be some downtime.


When you are planning your route, make sure you are giving yourself extra time. Anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes per stop could be needed depending on the type of charger available and what charge percentage your battery is at.


Taylor gave himself extra time to get where he was going and found other things to do while he was waiting.  His longest wait time was on the way home. When he stopped in to charge up his Lightning at the Stoney Nakoda Casino he waited 30 minutes for his truck to charge up. In that time he went ang got some breakfast from Tim Horton’s.


Finally, you need to know if you are planning to use your EV for anything other than driving.

Taylor went camping with a few friends. Instead of using a generator for the trailer, they used the F150 Lightning to power it. The truck only lost 10% of battery during this time!


When planning for a trip like this, you need to know if you will be using your vehicle to power up something else, and for how long. This will affect your route home – you may want to find a charge station that is closer to where you are rather than trying to make it back to your last stop.


What did this trip look like for Taylor’s battery range?

Whole trip was 600 km.


Stop 1: Petro Canada on Highway 1 outside of Calgary

15-minute stop for a top up. Went from 60% battery to 85% battery.


Stop 2: Campsite in Kanaskis

Arrived with 60% battery. Powered trailer for the weekend. Left the campsite with 50% battery.


Stop 3: Stoney Nakoda Casino

30-minute stop to go from 45% battery up to 80% battery. During this time Taylor got breakfast at Tim Horton’s.


Final Stop: Home!

Taylor made it all the way back home on a single charge. When he arrived back in Lacombe he still had 30% battery life left.


Travelling in an electric vehicle is a bit different than it is in a gas-powered vehicle. It does require looking at how you are going to get to your destination a bit differently. Being worried about the switch from gas-powered to battery is normal, it does come with a learning curve. But we promise it is not as hard or scary as it may seem.

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