One of the things they forget to tell you when you get married in the country is that there’s nowhere to plug anything in. Sure, you can trust your nuptials to a mile or two of extension cords snaking back to a single exterior outlet on the closest man-made structure, but that’s a recipe for potential blackout, or in the worst-case scenario, an impromptu demonstration of the flammability of overtaxed insulating materials.
This was the conundrum I was facing when my fiancé and I elected to tie the knot at our home way out in the woods. Although the gathering was a small one, we still needed to provide enough power and light to keep the caterer cooking and prevent attendees from bumping into each other around the pitch black tableau that is our tree-encircled property.
The solution was an unexpected one. It turns out that in 2024, you can power your entire wedding with a single EV. In our case, it was the Ford F-150 Lightning to the rescue, proving that sometimes lifestyle buyers and hardcore utility fans can have their cake together instead of throwing it at each other from either side of an empty pickup bed.
Knowing our limitations
Having a professional international event planner as your partner means you can pretty much count on having all of the little things taken care of before the big day. Throw in my own decade or so spent promoting underground raves, and there’s not much out there the two of us haven’t had to deal with when putting together a party — whether it’s for a few thousand people, or 50 of our closest friends and family members.
Hard-earned experience dealing with some of the sketchiest electrical setups in night clubs and warehouses had taught me the hard way that I couldn’t just count on my home’s power panel to pull duty for the extra strain of our celebration. Out-drawing the rated spec of a porch outlet that was likely intended to feed nothing more than holiday lights or a vehicle’s block heater would surely be a recipe for disappointment.
On top of that, the area’s penchant for unexpected blackouts — we’ve yet to go a full month out here in the boonies without having to plug in our two-kilowatt-hour house battery for at least a day or two — meant there were more than a few unknowns surrounding our ability to keep food warm and the party vibe going well into the evening.
It’s a battery, with a truck attached
Enter the Ford F-150 Lightning. As much press as the pickup gets for the long-legged driving range made available through its optional 131-kWh battery (offered with Extended Range models) it’s easy to overlook that such an enormous power pack has other uses, too. Ford sells a system that allows the truck to electrify your entire house in the event of a grid failure, and I’ve personally used the Lightning to charge another EV using the 9.6-kW Pro Power Onboard outlet found in the bed.
Somewhere in between, we figured the Lightning should be able to offer up enough juice to keep wedding-goers happy and caterers grilling. At least, that was the gamble we took when we decided to make the electric F-150 a key component of our party plans.
Plugging in for taste
The morning of our wedding arrived much more quickly than we had planned, but that’s just how it goes when you’re coordinating food, fun, and forever in a home you’ve only been occupying for six months or so. With the ceremony set to take place in the backyard by our pond (chaperoned by the bass the previous owner had bred in its cool waters) we focused on the more complex logistics of our front lawn. This is where the Tetris-like stacking of catering crew, event tent, coffee station, porta-potty, and Lightning would find themselves all crammed together.
The caterer chose our wedding to debut his new 24-foot BBQ trailer, with two custom-made grilles sitting on the tailgate and nearly a full kitchen under its roof. He had first dibs on the F-150’s largest power outlet, nestling his entire setup behind the Ford that sat at the edge of our driveway like some light blue bouncer. Right alongside the culinary spark were the plugs for the actual arc lights illuminating our dinner tent, and of course the light fixture for the plastic shack intended to accommodate the after-effects of all those savoury BBQ meats.
Open-door policy
One of the least obvious aspects of early versions of Ford’s Pro Power Onboard system is that the truck had to be “on” in order for it to operate. You couldn’t just plug in, power down, and walk away, which means the Lightning had an active “ignition” for the entire duration of our wedding.
There were likely numerous reasons for this requirement — a shortcut to ensure proper battery cooling, and of course a way to prevent thieves from siphoning electrons if you’ve parked it somewhere (even more) remote — but it meant owners had to keep an eye on their trucks if not using it in the middle of nowhere like we were. In theory, ne’er-do-wells could have crept down our gravel road and spirited the truck away simply by snapping the extension cords connected to its bed outlet — if they could disable the shift lock, that is (which requires either the presence of the fob or a touchscreen passkey).
More practically, it also required disabling the vehicle’s automatic shutdown timer, and setting a reasonable reserve cap on battery drain to prevent the pickup from being stranded with an empty battery.
Starting with the 2024 model year, Ford has made it so that owners can access Pro Power Onboard merely by unlocking the truck, meaning they can keep the ignition off. That’s not a total security solution — it prevents drive-aways, but not break-ins — but it’s definitely an improvement in making the outlets easier to access. This functionality is being rolled out to 2022 and 2023 Lightning owners as a software update.
Plus-one power-up
Aside from the vague unease of having a six-figure vehicle running through the night with very little supervision, our entire experience using the Ford F-150 Lightning to power our wedding went according to plan. Neither kitchen spikes nor glowing Edison bulbs could put a dent in the Pro Power system’s ability to keep the juice flowing, which is more than we could say for the one outside wall plug that we threw into the mix. Deputized for coffeemaker duty due to the awkward, trip-fostering positioning of extension cables ruling out the Ford, the machine promptly blew a breaker in our home’s utility room within 10 minutes of warming up. Game, set, match, Lightning.
Even more impressive? After putting in a full 13 hours of work, the F-150’s battery was still at 94% capacity. That means it used just over one-twentieth of its capacity to take care of our entire party setup. There were 458 kilometres of driving range still showing on the dashboard when we finally called it a night, meaning we could have immediately slipped behind the wheel and driven off on our honeymoon without having to hit up a charger on our way out of town.
Sure, a cheaper generator could have likely taken care of our remote power needs (given that our house wasn’t quite up to code to bear the full brunt) but then we’d have been dealing with a noisy racket and the stench of exhaust drowning out our vows and clouding out the sweet smell of pulled pork. It definitely would not have fit in with the peace and tranquility of our wedding’s pastoral setting, either.
I’m not recommending that the F-150 Lightning be purchased exclusively as a rolling electrical outlet, but the fact that it offers an astounding level of portable power as a side benefit to its already impressive on-road aspects illustrates the multidimensionality that electric vehicles now bring to the table. Expect to see more of this as automakers continue to one-up each other in terms of EV practicality — and maybe plan on having a battery-powered guest of your own at your next deep-woods function.
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