After 60,000 Miles of Charging to 100% Every Night, a Ford F-150 Lightning Owner Says His Battery Shows “Not One Single Percentage Point” of Degradation

There is a peculiar anxiety that follows every electric vehicle like a shadow at dusk, and it has very little to do with styling, performance, or even price. It is the battery. 

Not whether it works today, but whether it will quietly wither tomorrow, losing range and value until the whole enterprise feels like a costly experiment gone wrong. 

In the case of Ford’s F-150 Lightning, that concern looms even larger. This is not a commuter hatchback but a full-size pickup, a vehicle Americans expect to rack up miles, haul weight, and remain useful well past the point where the loan is paid off. 

Which is why one owner’s blunt, methodical experiment deserves attention.

“I leased an SR Lariat back in late 23. Long story, ended up with an SR, and didn't want to be stuck reselling an SR, so I leased it. Anyway, this thing doesn't have much range, like 200 miles tops, and if you charge to 80%, you can get in trouble, especially when you drive 25k miles a year. So I quickly decided, "screw it, I'm charging to 100%"

Fast forward 26 months, and I've maxed out my range and turned in the lease (and purchased a 2025 Lariat ER at that lovely 0% for 72).

I have an EVIQO charger on a 40-amp circuit, and I've been charging it at 38a to 100% every single night for over two years. And most nights, it hits 100% within a few hours, and then the battery sits at 100% for the remainder of the night. I'm sure there were days when the battery sat at 100% all day, as if I didn't go anywhere. Basically, I ignored all the rules of "don't let it sit at 100% for an extended period of time."

So I turned in the lease and asked to run a diagnostic to check the battery health. I wanted to see how much it had degraded, so I could decide how I wanted to charge my new ER, which I own. I plan to drive this for at least 4 years, 100,000 miles, possibly more, so I don't want to degrade the battery at all.

So how much did the battery degrade?

Not one single percentage point

That's right, the battery health is at one hundred percent.”

If that reads like heresy to anyone steeped in EV best practices, that is precisely the point. Charging to 100 percent nightly, letting the battery sit full for hours, and repeating the cycle for more than two years is supposed to be the fast track to degradation. Instead, after 60,000 miles of use that would qualify as severe by any reasonable definition, the diagnostic result came back spotless. Not reduced. Not slightly diminished. Perfect.

Ford F-150 Configurations: Towing Technology, and Trim-Level Variability

• The truck’s wide availability of cab sizes and bed lengths allows it to serve personal, commercial, and fleet roles with minimal compromise.
• Driver-assistance and trailering technologies are deeply integrated, helping manage blind spots, hitch alignment, and load monitoring during towing tasks.
• Interior materials and layout scale significantly by trim level, ranging from utilitarian surfaces to near-luxury finishes, depending on configuration.
• Fuel consumption varies widely across the lineup, highlighting a tradeoff between capability and efficiency that depends heavily on engine choice and usage patterns.

Context matters here. This was a standard-range Lightning, a truck already working with a tighter margin than its extended-range sibling. The owner drove roughly 25,000 miles a year and used the vehicle the way pickups are meant to be used, as daily transportation rather than rolling weekend ornaments. If there were a scenario where battery wear should show itself, this was it. And yet, the data refused to cooperate with the fear.

The comment section reads less like disbelief and more like vindication. One Lightning owner simply noted that the battery is proving to be really good. Another thanked the original poster for running a test that few people are willing to perform on their own lease. Perhaps the most telling response came from the owner himself, wondering aloud how long the Lightning could remain viable, floating figures like a quarter million miles, then observing that there is almost nothing to replace. That last point matters. Electric trucks do not age the same way their combustion counterparts do.

There is also an economic undercurrent here that should not be ignored. The experiment ended with the owner buying a 2025 Lightning Lariat ER at zero percent financing for 72 months, a decision made easier by the confidence earned from lived experience rather than marketing claims. This is how reputations are built in the truck world, not through brochures but through miles, routines, and results that hold up under scrutiny.

Even the limitations are stated plainly rather than defensively. Towing range and long-distance road trips remain the Lightning’s weak spots, and nobody in the discussion pretends otherwise. What stands out is how narrow that list has become. For daily use, work commuting, and the kind of driving that quietly defines ownership over the years, the truck appears to be doing exactly what it promised, with fewer long-term compromises than many expected.

What this owner stumbled into, intentionally or not, is the sort of real-world proof that shifts conversations. It does not argue a theory or cite lab conditions. It simply reports what happened when the rules were ignored, and the miles kept coming. After 26 months and 60,000 miles, the battery did not flinch. For a vehicle class built on durability and trust, that may be the most important data point yet.

Image Sources: Ford Media Center

Noah Washington is an automotive journalist based in Atlanta, Georgia. He enjoys covering the latest news in the automotive industry and conducting reviews on the latest cars. He has been in the automotive industry since 15 years old and has been featured in prominent automotive news sites. You can reach him on X and LinkedIn for tips and to follow his automotive coverage.