After Natural Disasters, Electric Vehicles Come to the Rescue
The morning after Hurricane Ian knocked out power at Westley and Sarah Ferguson's home in Haines City, Florida, a suburb southwest of Orlando, Westley ran two extension cords into their house from the outlets on the couple's Ford F-150 Lightning. He plugged the refrigerator into one and a power strip into the second, which was soon powering lamps, fans and a television.
The Fergusons' setup was more rudimentary than the Lightning's design allows — Ford's top-of-the-line in-home charger will automatically start powering an entire house if the truck is plugged in during a blackout — but it was good enough for them to cook beef stew on an electric stovetop and, afterwards, to host another neighborhood couple for an impromptu movie night. Cell and internet service were also down, so they used a Blu-ray player to watch Casper and a turntable to spin big band jazz records. “There was nowhere we needed to go,” says Westley, a 33-year-old web designer. “So we just stayed home.”
The Fergusons, who have been in Florida since 2013 and lived through Hurricane Irma, weren't thinking of natural disasters when they ordered their Lightning in May of last year. Westley had long wanted an EV and Sarah, who works in health-care management, wanted a truck to haul things for her side business hosting picnics. Before Ian, they had mainly used the truck's 12 power outlets — spread between the bed, the cabin, and the frunk — for boondocking overnight on the Space Coast.
“You want to use it when you go camping or you're having a tailgate. Those are the fun party tricks,” says Westley. “You don't really want it to be a lifeline to cook dinner or power lights. But it was definitely nice to have.”
While Ford has made two-way charging and the
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