Every pickup owner is familiar with a certain call, the one that begins with, “Hey, I’m moving this weekend, I was wondering if…”, or, “I need to pick up [insert bulky item] at [insert bulky item store], are you busy Saturday?” Ford has just introduced another way those pickup truck drivers will be able to help that legion of beseeching friends. We jest, but this will be useful: The Ford F-150 PowerBoost Hybrid and the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup equipped with the optional Pro Power Onboard system have the power to charge other EV’s that use an SAE J1772 charge port. The Pro Power system comes with a 240-volt outlet, which is the same rating that would be used at home for Level 2 electric vehicle charging. All one needs is to fit an adaptor so that the Nema 14-50R plug on the Ford Mobile Power Cord fits the Nema 14-30p Pro Power outlet in the pickup’s bed, then connect the charging plug to the vehicle that needs help from its friend. Voila. Here’s another reason why the system won Autoblog‘s 2021 Technology of the Year.
The F-150 Powerboost Hybrid offers a 7.2 kilowatt Pro Power system, the Lightning will upgrade the option to 9.6 kW. Ford says that plugging either of those into a Mustang Mach-E will add an average 20 miles of range per hour. Your mileage will certainly vary depending on where and under what conditions the charging is happening, but that’s the same rate of refill that Ford says the Mach-E gets on a 240-volt home system. Plugging one Lightning into another Lightning restores an average of 13 miles per hour of charging, while doing so for a low-roof E-Transit cargo van gets an average of 10 miles per hour into the battery.
By the way, those adaptors can be picked up anywhere from hardware stores to Amazon for under $20, but we don’t recommend getting the cheapest version out there. And this charging isn’t possible with the 2.0- and 2.4-kW Pro Power Onboard systems, but we’re not sure why not. Ford sells an adaptor for the mobile power cord, which can draw up to 32 amps, to fit a 120V/20A home outlet, which is what the smaller Pro Power outlets are rated at. Perhaps its because that lower output only puts three miles of range into a Mach-E per hour.
Because the system is designed to used the ubiquitous J1772 connector, a helpful Ford owner could easily charge an EV from any brand with that connector. Given an adaptor to convert the J1772 to Chademo or a Tesla plug, the world of public service opens up further.
