One of many persistent electric vehicle gripes is that batteries don’t last long enough. Still, as reported by Ars Technica, a recent study found that a majority of EVs maintained 90% of their original battery capacity after roughly 93,000 miles (or 150,000 kilometers). And as this real-world example shows, they’re capable of going a lot further than that.
Out of Spec Renew recently did a video on a 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning that needed a battery replacement after covering 233,930 miles. A busted rear window, cracked windshield, and assorted dents and scrapes indicated that those weren’t easy miles, either. However, sourcing a replacement used battery pack and swapping it in was fairly straightforward, so this truck could very well see even more miles in the future.
The truck in question is a Lariat Standard Range, which has a 98-kilowatt-hour battery pack that afforded an EPA-rated 230 miles of range when new. A 131-kWh Extended Range pack was also available for 2022, which was the Lightning’s inaugural model year. The bigger pack boosted range to 320 miles in the Lariat, XLT, and fleet-only Pro models, and 300 miles in Platinum spec. Ford juggled trim levels and equipment a bit during the Lightning’s brief production run, while prices fluctuated like a seafood restaurant’s.
The Standard Range pack has nine modules, and in this truck one of those was sick. The fourth module had a 317-millivolt imbalance between cells. That means the voltage from one cell to another is far off, equivalent to some cells holding at 60% state of charge and others at 10-15%, host Alex explains in the video. The cause wasn’t diagnosed when the truck arrived for its battery swap, but Alex speculates that a weak short might be to blame.
If only one module is bad, it sometimes makes sense to replace it rather than the whole pack. But finding a used module in a similar state of health to the others can be difficult with such a high-mileage truck, Alex explained, and used Lightning battery packs can be had at a reasonable price.
234,000-Mile Ford F-150 Lightning Needs A New Battery!
Removing the old pack involved disconnecting lots of things (including a 12-volt battery that’s buried at the rear of the Lightning’s massive front trunk), removing skid plates and other underbody protection to gain access to the pack, and undoing the eight bolts that hold the pack in place. In this case, the replacement pack also had some damaged connectors that needed swapping out with parts scavenged from the old pack.
Ford cancelled the Lightning at the end of the 2025 calendar year, having previously abandoned an all-electric replacement codenamed T3 that CEO Jim Farley once bragged would be the “Millennium Falcon” of pickups. The automaker is instead planning a full-size pickup with a gasoline range extender and a smaller all-electric pickup dubbed the Fathom.
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