Looking to dispel fear, uncertainty and doubt about electric vehicles, British Columbia resident Simon Lindley recently toured his Ford F-150 Lightning Flash 25,000 kilometres across Canada. He didn’t stick to the Trans-Canada Highway with its network of chargers. He went north and south, then across the provinces on gravel and narrow two-lane paved roads. He loved every minute of it, and filmed every minute of it, too, posting his adventures to his YouTube channel Trucked Up EVs.
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Lindley says he wasn’t a car guy, just someone who was fascinated by technology and automobiles of the future. He was a Tesla fan from the start and followed the nascent rise of the expanding EV market. He wanted an electric truck and had his name on waiting lists for the likes of Tesla and Rivian. But when his 2007 Ford Ranger with a 4.0-litre internal combustion engine quit working, he knew it was time to make an immediate switch.
Locating a F-150 Lightning standard range in Ontario, a Ford dealership in Kelowna brought the vehicle in and Lindley drove off. “I couldn’t believe what I was driving,” he says. “It was a profound change from what I’d had before, and I was revelatory in what I could do with this truck.”
Born in Uganda, Lindley lived a large portion of his life in Alberta – including Edmonton and Canmore. Early on, he embraced art, design and music and trained at art college. However, to earn a living, he took on various side gigs and soon the side gig became his life. In 2004, he moved to Vancouver Island where he worked his way up to newspaper publisher. When that job ended in 2015, he said goodbye to his career and weekend Blues Cubed blues trio, loaded up his RV and toured solo with his wife. While on the road, the two of them found property for sale on a mountain in the Kootenays, bought the house and moved there.
However, still not able to get back to his creative roots, Lindley took over a landscaping business. For this job, he required a work truck and that was the 2007 Ford Ranger. “It was a thirsty truck, and I couldn’t get more than 400 km out of a tank of gas,” he says. “I was driving 3,000 to 5,000 kilometres a month at about $100 to $110 a tank. Plus, it was often sidelined for oil changes and repairs.”
So, when he began driving his Lightning, he was enthusiastic about not having to be tied to a maintenance schedule, other than adding windshield washer fluid and periodically rotating the tires. Plus, with the addition of a Level II charger at home, he could plug in during the evening and drive off in the morning with an 80 per cent charge that would see him make his daily rounds, often towing a trailer, for a fraction of the cost.
“But clients, neighbours and the overall community all kept telling me I was crazy for buying an EV, and they all told me what I couldn’t do with this truck,” he recalls. “There was so much FUD — or fear, uncertainty and doubt — about these EVs. Everyone said I couldn’t tow, I couldn’t haul, I couldn’t travel, that it would catch on fire. I’m a bit of a curmudgeon, so if someone tells me I can’t do something, I want to prove that I can. Plus, I wanted to put out something positive and illuminate how cool these vehicles are and show what they can do.”
YouTube was the ideal platform for him. With enough subscribers and views, he’d be able to earn a degree of income, and he was finally able to fully embrace his creative, theatrical side. “I’m a complete goof, and I love acting and hamming it up,” he laughs.
To that end, Lindley gave up his landscaping business and began filming his adventures with his F-150 XLT standard range Lightning, driving across B.C., and driving to the Yukon. As interest in his adventures grew, he opted to upgrade to a 2023 F-150 Lightning Flash with extended range battery. This is the truck he drove on his Trucked UP EVs Canada Wide Coffee Stop Tour, which saw him in every province except Newfoundland and Labrador. He intends to go back.
“There are gaps in the electric charging systems,” he explains. “The best provinces are those where the system is a public utility, including B.C. New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Quebec. The ones where the utility has been privatized are not as good.”
He also maintains there needs to be a national standard in the charging infrastructure. Several times, he came across a charger that was broken. Lindley was never stuck at the side of the road, but several times he did coast into a charging station at zero or slightly negative. Luckily, when that did happen, the chargers were functioning.
“There was no maintenance standard for chargers, and that’s terrible, in my opinion,” he says. But he is an EV convert. Of his F-150 Lightning, he jokes and concludes, “I feel like a geeky kid who got his Back to the Future DeLorean.”
Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or [email protected]
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