BUT THERE WAS TIME FOR MUCH MORE: We Charged Our Electric Truck at 7-Eleven and All We Got Was This Stupid Hat.

Our F-150 Lightning was on the EV equivalent of fumes, sitting at 13 percent charge and 30 miles of range, when we plugged in. You activate the station through the clunky but functional 7Charge app. The Lightning said the stop would take a little over an hour to hit 80 percent, so we looked for ways to entertain ourselves. Thankfully a store full of distractions was mere feet away. Having spent five minutes and $3.58 on a coffee and a hot chocolate (our photographers have the palates of children), we returned to the Lightning to nurse our drinks, chit-chat, and kill time.

About a half hour later, we went back into 7-Eleven to hit the restroom and grab some food. The location didn’t have a public restroom, but the sympathetic clerk made an exception after we explained we were using the 7Charge station. We then went shopping and came out with two taquitos, some Goldfish crackers, a bag of chips, some water, two Starbucks Double Shots, an extra-large Coke Slurpee, and a sweet 7-Eleven trucker hat. We spent an additional $29.83 on boredom retail. Just half a bag of chips and a single Double Shot remained by the time our Lightning notified us its pack was sitting at 80 percent charge and 227 miles of range. The 87.619 kW our Ford consumed cost $51.70 at an expensive $0.59 per kW, as well as an hour and 11 minutes of our time, the price of the snacks, and possibly some heart health.

Time required to fill up with gas? Probably under five minutes. “We love that Ford has been aggressive in adding features like YouTube to our Lightning via over-the-air software updates, but what we’d really love is for it to improve the Lightning’s peak charge rate.”