A Recent report on the replacement cost of the battery for Ford’s F-150 Lightning has stirred up a conversation once again.
Tim Esterdahl stated I had to replace my car a couple of months ago, I purchased a 2019 Ford F-150 XL with excellent service history and slightly higher mileage for its age. The truck is in excellent condition, but given the state of supply chains in 2022, I ended up paying more than I expected to.
Even so, it is still less expensive than buying an electric car’s new battery.
Okay, so maybe not every replacement battery for every electric car, but Tim Edterdahl of “Pickup Truck Plus SUV Talk” fame checked into the pricing of battery replacements for an F-150 Lightning that he’d been driving for a week to evaluate and discovered some very high figures.
According to Esterdahl, there are two battery options for the Lightning: the basic battery, which is intended to provide the driver a range of about 230 miles, and the extended range version, which improves that range to roughly 300 miles.
Esterdahl evidently prefers to deliver the bad news first as seen by the screenshot he displayed of the cost of the extended-range battery.
It was $35,960.
The decimal point is at the proper location, thus it is not a typo. You are not alone if your initial thought was, “That’s more than I paid for my complete car!”
The labor to install it, according to Esterdahl, would be “quite inexpensive,” but he clarified that this was only for the battery.
If you think that is too expensive, you may always choose the normal range battery for just $28,556.47. (If you asked the dealership really nicely, I guess they would give you that 47 cents.)
Esterdahl had been driving a Platinum version of the F-150 Lightning, which has a suggested retail price of almost $96,000. You’re well into the six figures once you add in the price of a replacement battery.
Then Esterdahl said, “Wait for a second.
Why do we keep thinking that the battery would eventually die? That’s something that seems to come up frequently, he thought. Hey, did the battery of your cellphone die? Did your computer battery just die?”
“Could a battery just die?” he asked. “Yeah. Could a new Ford F-150 truck engine just die? Yeah. They both could die.”
Since both Tesla and the Chevy Bolt have been on the road for long enough to have a track record to go by, Esterdahl used them as illustrations of how batteries might degrade over time.
Esterdahl argued that batteries will degrade at a rate of 2 to 3 percent annually, more frequently if the user frequently uses fast charging, citing an online Autoweek report. Like any other piece of equipment, Esterdahl claimed that if the battery is treated badly, it will deteriorate more quickly.
He referenced a different video blogger who mistreated the battery in his electric vehicle (EV) and now only gets roughly 270 miles of range from it as opposed to the 320 he had at first.
You can watch his full video here:
The battery in the Lightning will be covered by warranty for the first eight years or 100,000 miles, according to Esterdahl, who added that he anticipated replacement batteries to be substantially less expensive by then.
Yet due to advances in technology, the hypothetical replacement battery you purchase on your own expense in 2030 after your warranty expires may charge more quickly, last longer, and provide a greater range.
You need to keep everything in perspective, he advised.