Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in an area that has probably >100% pick-up ownership per adult male. I've noticed that these people will not go to the grocery store on days when the weather is inclement due to the chance of the groceries getting wet. Seems like a bad vehicle for grocery runs.
Wait do people put their groceries they intend to eat on the bed of their trucks, exposed to exhaust, asphalt, tire rubber and all other forms of road pollution?
Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
741–750 of 915 posts
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#742Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess you’d call my Chrysler Pacifica an “EREV” then. It’s honestly perfect for us. 32 miles on a charge, we barely touch the gas except for the winter when it’s so cold out we need the engine to warm us up. Any other time and the battery is all we need, and it charges overnight on a simple 110V wall outlet. Long trips are still possible, you just drive. We go through maybe 8 tanks of gas per year with our occasion…
There have been no EREVs produced and sold yet AFAIK (though maybe BMW had a version of the i3 that did? I'm not sure). Dodge has one in the works. Ford has now announced one. The old Chevy Volt was philosophically wanting to be an EREV but was as a practical matter still a parallel hybrid.
That was mostly because the electrical conversion from a gas generator is still so relatively inefficient and slow compared to a modern battery. The mechanical efficiency of gas engines is relatively better (which is why ICE has survived as a category for so long). Batteries are far more efficient at delivering high power on demand as needed for torque than a gas generator.
Any EREV is going to have that problem and experience those trade offs. It's a unfortunately defining part of the category. It's also why Chevy has said there's no real future in EREV power trains because they are a worst of both worlds situation with too many unfortunate trade offs to consider, such as needing to be parallel in gas-only operation edge cases to make torque requirements.
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#743Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those were some examples, not an exhaustive list. What about hauling a load of mulch or topsoil, you're not doing that in your nice minivan. Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush? I do that a few times a year. Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash. An open truck bed is the most flexible configuration in my experience. Of course it's not perfect for everything. A utility trailer could do a lot of that to…
A family sedan is a suitable tow vehicle for the large flat bed twin axle + four seven tonne truck spring configured trailer we built 35+ years ago for hauling across broken land in the Pilbara. It's a good idea to use anti-sway bars on, say, a Hayman-Reese hitch when things get technical and loads want to skid sideways. Rig your trailer right and you can have a removable gull wing hutch for sleeping in / tool securi…
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#744Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in an area that has probably >100% pick-up ownership per adult male. I've noticed that these people will not go to the grocery store on days when the weather is inclement due to the chance of the groceries getting wet. Seems like a bad vehicle for grocery runs.
I don't get the whole American thing for Pick-up trucks. Unless you're hauling hay or manure, why would you want your cargo area exposed to the elements? A normal van is better in every single way. I can't figure out why someone would put their expensive tools in a pick-up's bed when this is an option: https://modulinecabinets.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/van-...
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#745Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those were some examples, not an exhaustive list. What about hauling a load of mulch or topsoil, you're not doing that in your nice minivan. Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush? I do that a few times a year. Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash. An open truck bed is the most flexible configuration in my experience. Of course it's not perfect for everything. A utility trailer could do a lot of that to…
Those are good examples, I've hauled most of that on a trailer attached to a cheap family sedan. With the upside of the trailer receiving the brunt of the abuse, having probably 4x the capacity of your truck and the car being super convenient to use on a daily basis to say, commute.
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#746*Ford:* Makes giant, electric pickup truck that you can't purchase for less than $85,000 and your normal, weekend warrior has no need for to make their Home Depot runs. *Also Ford:* WhERe aRe all tHe cUstOmerS?! I don't understand what's so hard to understand about selling EVs like hotcakes. Make a reasonably sized vehicle, with a reasonable range, at a reasonable price point. They already have the Maverick. An excel…
Nope.
Live in Texas, where there are plenty of people with top level F150s, Raptors, 250s, 350s and so on. Ive seen maybe like 5 Lightnings total since they came out, despite them being the same price. Full size trucks is a different market.
Car frame Trucks like Rivian or Maveric make sense because they are trucks for car people that like the idea of a truck. People don't really carry much in those trucks, and don't really drive that much.
With full size trucks, outside the negligible market that buys them for the size factor, people buy them because the utility value goes through the roof. Quite a lot of people who use the trucks end up putting a lot of miles on them, or using them for carrying lots of stuff (and there is a difference between full size truck bed size and even mid size like Tacoma, namely with what you can carry with tailgate up a and also the depth of bed to prevent things from falling out).
EV in fullsize truck doesn't work that well because a) aero drag is insane, so you are limited in how fast you can go for any real range, and b) any extra battery weight takes away from total payload capacity.
So long as XLT is available (which makes up for 33% of the sales) and gas stations are a thing, you are never going to compete with any equivalent EV.
The easiest thing for Ford to do is make a good plug in hybrid. They already have the hybrid F150 (although reliability issues are still there), but the thing can power your house in power outage, and go like 600+ miles on a tank of gas. Just give it a bigger battery and make it plugin, and pair it with the tried and true 3.5 ecoboost, and you have a winning combo, and people will pay $70k for that thing.
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#747Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US isn't flat. Range can vary considerably with climbing into the mountain passes, or in cold weather.
It's mostly a wash, the efficiency on the descent balances the climb, and overall you get respectably close to the same range you'd have gotten on a flat route.
This involves crossing the Cascades.
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#748I expected the "T word" to come out in the article, however this fails to address any of the practical reasons it isn't a good replacement for the value-engineered F-150: * The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive * They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable. * Parts availability is scarce, contra…
Man, Tesla apologists are rewriting reality now.
In no way shape or form is Tesla interior even remotely good.
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#749*Ford:* Makes giant, electric pickup truck that you can't purchase for less than $85,000 and your normal, weekend warrior has no need for to make their Home Depot runs. *Also Ford:* WhERe aRe all tHe cUstOmerS?! I don't understand what's so hard to understand about selling EVs like hotcakes. Make a reasonably sized vehicle, with a reasonable range, at a reasonable price point. They already have the Maverick. An excel…
MSRP is a red herring. Their King Ranch sells just fine at $95k. The problem was and is buyers being gun shy about EVs. The EREV takes away all the excuses. As in the only practical reason to buy an ICE F-150 will be noise.
And the ability to keep the truck at 80 mph without ever worrying about range. Which is why a pure EV truck designed for actual hauling will never work.
Re: Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
#750Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess we will find out if many of these things actually matter with the Slate truck. It is in many ways the antithesis of this electric F-150. If that vehicle fails then there are no more excuses, a significant chunk of Americans just don't like electric vehicles and are destined to be laggards.
I love electric vehicles, but I want something that lands somewhere between the DIY-esque Slate and the literally-costs-more-than-I-paid-for-my-house F-150 Lightning. I have a 23 Chevy Bolt EUV which is the sweet spot for me right now, I just wish it had AWD for the winters where I live.
Slate is very far from DIY.
A DIY Slate would be conversion kits/service for existing trucks.