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Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

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Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#261
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in rural northern New England, and as well on-road I have plenty of either off road or unmaintained road usage year round, and a number of loads in those conditions that exceed the width of the vehicle (so wouldn't be public road legal). Also equipment and loads that exceed the height of the vehicle (which is road legal if properly secured). In principle a van with sufficient towing capacity and off road capab…

On the flip side, as a van owner (though not a professional "working van") ... 1. you don't need straps and bungees for the van - ours can take pipework, framing lumber and other "long" stuff up to 16', straight on the floor, fully interior. 2. you don't need the gate down - it handles 4x8' sheet goods with all the doors closed, either vertical or horizontal 3. security concerns are much better 4. weather concerns ar…

I rented a van to move a bed frame and I needed straps.

Not a big deal, but things still slide around in a van.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#262

Article says the next F-150 Lightning will be an EREV-style plugin hybrid. Which, if so, makes a lot of sense. EVs are great, but not so much for trucks. I was always bothered about how cars were either supposed to be all electric or all ICE. Working together is the smart way forward.

Chevy Volt my beloved

Which wasn't actually an EREV. They wanted it to be, but it was more efficient not to.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#263
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, what do we expect from this brainless company that promised a $20k Maverick and let the stealerships mark it up to over $40k?

Ford announced the Maverick, it got so much excitement that it sold out and dealerships sold for over MSRP. So in their infinite wisdom they... didn't make more mid range trucks. Ill never understand these guys.

The idea is that you make more profit selling 50,000 cheap trucks and 50,000 expensive trucks than just 100,000 cheap trucks. When you can fool a largely innumerate populace into 84-month loans with "cheap" monthly payments, overpriced vehicles are the way to go.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#264
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge at home, that’s the whole point. My F150 lightning costs about $14 in electric charges a month for about 600 miles on average.

Home electricity in California is about 45¢/kWh. If your F150 mileage is typical, you're getting about 2 miles per kWh. 600 miles would cost about $135 here in California. Meanwhile, a 20 mpg gas car would cost about $110/month at $3.65/gallon. You must be paying about 4.7 cents per kWh, or about 90% less than you'd pay here.

That's only certain parts of California, right? I mean, a big part, but definitely not all of it. PG&E is a tire fire, I feel bad for you guys.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#265
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay are we just saying they just discontinued one electric F150 in favor of another? Meh. Edit: Oh, an EREV is fancy way to say "hybrid" ok

>Oh, an EREV is fancy way to say "hybrid" ok Kind of. EREVs are what locomotives have been doing for a century (and to a lesser extent barges), which is called diesel-electric in that field. I agree the terminology is lacking, but EREVs are quite compelling (and their high market share in China supports consumer demand). Hybrid: * ICE must run during regular operation (except for ~very short distances at ~very slow s…

I think the term of art in the automotive space so far has been "series hybrid". But like you said, the differentiation here may just be the size of the battery. Series hybrids are still predominantly driven by fossil fuels, even if the drive is an EV drivetrain, due to the battery mainly acting as an energy buffer.

The absolute sweet spot, as someone from a country with long long distances, is a plugin series hybrid that has ~150-300km EV range and a ~60 litre fuel tank. That's getting me to work entirely electric, and then once a month when I need to see family I can chew down the fossil fuels.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t seem that crazy to me - a broadly applicable coordinated OTA zero day applied across cars during US rush hours has the potential to result in likely hundreds of thousands of deaths in a few hours if safety critical systems like airbags can be tampered/inhibited by OTA-capable systems. The scale of car travel plus the inherent kinetic energy involved make a correlated risk particularly likely to lead to a…

Nonsense, if that's the goal the countries are at war and you have to worry about nukes, not your car being switched off. I'd expect HN crowd to be smarter than nonsense security propaganda, yet it seems to work.

There was already a million vehicle recall for a vulnerability that allowed remote control of safety features (steering/breaking/acceleration control) that could be abused by anyone with a sprint mobile sim.

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2015/RCRIT-15V461-4869.pdf

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#268
post #155
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you're often either towing or you're doing a bunch of shortish drives for construction, etc. purposes--neither of which are a great match for electric.

How are short drives not a great match for electric?

The details matter but just doesn't buy you a lot, especially if you have a second vehicle to drive a handful of miles a week. Per sibling comment, a couple of fillups a week really is a fair bit of driving.

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#269
post #63

I wish if this U.S. administration and U.S. carmakers don't care to promote EVs, that they'd at least let in the Chinese manufacturers that are interested in them.

There have been many demonstrations that F150, cybertruck, and others have short ranges when loaded and even shorter ranges when towing (I saw sub 40 miles on a full charge claimed by some people). If you use your truck as a truck, that’s simply not feasible. If you just use it as expensive transportation, you probably still try to convince yourself by thinking about how you might use it as a truck sometimes and won’…

> sub 40 miles on a full charge claimed by some people

See, that's what you get for believing whatever you read on the internet that confirms what you already wanted to believe.

Back in reality, towing does demolish the range, you end up around 1.0 to 1.2 miles per kWh if you put a travel trailer behind a Lightning. Normal 70-75 mph driving is about 2.0 miles/kWh. Around town, depending on your habits, it's 3.5-4 mi/kWh. The battery is 131 kWh. So range can very quite a lot based on your current activity, but someone who told you sub-40 miles was jerking your chain (or had their own motivation for lying).

Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150

#270

The F-150 is in one of the markets I think ev's will take over first (small commercial vehicles) but it just was not the right vehicle to start with. To expensive, even when the tax incentives were still a thing, and Ford suffers from having corrupt dealers taking a large cut on top of that. So you are selling to either the top 5% or bigger businesses. If you are a top 5% buying this you want it to tow your expensive…

> "tow your expensive toy somewhere which ev's suck at currently" Do EVs suck at towing because of battery life? I thought electric engines were often superior to comparable internal combustion engines regarding torque.

I can't think what the issue would be aside from range. One thing that stood out to me about the cybertruck is that they made huge tradeoffs to make it more aerodynamic. The only reason to do that is to increase maximum driving distance. Put a big blocky trailer behind it and suddenly the battery's maximum distance is competing with a gas tank on a much more even playing field. Regenerative braking would make up for some of that in very hilly terrain, but on level ground it just can't get out to as many of the remote areas people take their trucks to.

I really think the first obvious use case (aside from bugout vehicles) would be something like the early road rangers - driving all over a farm and bringing back crates of produce from muddy fields without getting stuck or needing a lot of maintenance.

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