791–800 of 1001 posts
Now we need to figure out how to make sure the electrical grid is able to support the new load (hopefully with clean energy solutions), and deploy public electrical charging destinations across the entire US to make it feasible.
I think it's interesting to look at this through the lens of Christensen's disruptive innovation idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma The move by Ford offers strong evidence that electric vehicles at this point have become a sustaining, not disruptive innovation. Incumbents like Ford can now compete using existing business models and possibly manufacturing practices/equipment. EV companies li…
I'm confident they currently hold the upper hand on both fronts right now and for the next couple of years most likely. I am not at all confident that they can hold onto either advantage much longer than that.
Hot take: this, as some like Ars Technica have observed, stands a decent chance of being a real game changer. Everything about this vehicle launch appears masterful, from its technology to its branding to the obvious care taken to ensure that in almost every respect it is so superior, and offers so many no-brainers, as to make anyone who can (both individuals and especially, fleet managers), buy these as fast they ca…
To be fair, some of these features are available on the recently released hybrid, as well. What I would like to figure out is if it can actually backfeed the home with 240V split phase power. That would be a seriously big deal if it could, it's not a common generator feature as it is. I'm skeptical, but they did claim it could transition from charging to supplying the house and back to charging when the power returne…
I wonder if the wiring is basically plug the 240v split phase into a special outlet in the house that feeds the transfer switch. The 80amp charger is then just a charger.
Could be completely wrong though. We'll know more at launch.
I'm really happy Ford and others are starting to actually deliver on EV's. I do however think there will be a long list of issues as they scale the roll out, given the newness and complexity of this product. Here are some concerns I think people should be aware of: 1. No comprehensive supercharger network. This is a real big deal still. Using existing non-supercharging networks is not feasible for any long distance.…
I haven't kept up with Ford, but I know they have lane keeping and some sort of adaptive cruise control. That's Autopilot like anyone else has, it's just not marketed as autopilot. Anyway, I don't care about Effonefittys, I want an 8 passenger Autopilot vehicle that I can buy used.
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2021...
Ironically, the frunk on electric trucks is a game-changer. Complementing the bed with an enclosed, waterproof, secure place to carry things (and no mucking around with insecure bed covers) is a killer feature. No more springing for a crew cab just to carry groceries in the rear seats. In terms of practical carrying capacity this dominates an SUV.
Trucks are more dangerous to pedestrians because of the higher and flatter front--means people end up underneath rather than above if they are struck. I understand why they kept the look the same and why they used that space but in the future would prefer that they made changes to make it safer for everyone and not just the occupants. The high hoods make for poor visibility around the front.
My yelling at one driver who was staring at her phone while driving out of a parking ramp and across the sidewalk where she nearly hit me, probably woke her up enough to avoid driving into traffic and being hit by a bus!
No, it's not the vehicles, it's the people driving them.
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Ford also hasn't sold that many EVs (yet), so it's still eligible for the US $7500 federal tax rebate (unlike Tesla). (BTW: It seems like such an arbitrary and ultimately bad decision to cap rebates by manufacturer. Rebate caps for expensive luxury cars? Sure. But penalize a manufacturer for making _too many_ of the thing you're incentivizing doesn't seem right).
Ford has already sold over 100,000 EV's, and if they can't sell 100,000 Mach-E's in the next 12 months then they're doing something wrong. So by the time the F-150 becomes available their credit should be in the wind-down phase. Another likely scenario is that Biden gets his infrastructure bill through and the credit becomes available to all US-manufactured EV's.
Specifically, the thing they are doing wrong is not having enough capacity to make 100K Mach-Es this year. It's not that demand isn't there, but rather the supply can't meet demand. Same problem Tesla has, just in smaller numbers on the Ford side for the time being.
I'm curious, with the advent of electric what's the advantage of a truck vs. a minivan for a lot of situations? IIRC there were literal space constraints before which is why a minivan couldn't tow like a truck, but since the motor and batteries sit underneath the car, couldn't one build a van/minivan with just as much power as this? If that's the case, other than hauling very tall objects, why get a truck? A minivan…
Length. The size of trailer you can pull behind a tow vehicle is very dependent on the stability of the tow vehicle, and a lot of that comes down to wheelbase. As long as people want to tow 30+ foot long RVs, they will have to have tow vehicles the size of HD pickups.
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Trucks are more dangerous to pedestrians because of the higher and flatter front--means people end up underneath rather than above if they are struck. I understand why they kept the look the same and why they used that space but in the future would prefer that they made changes to make it safer for everyone and not just the occupants. The high hoods make for poor visibility around the front.
Pedestrians make up only a small minority of people killed in car crashes. (Like 6k of 40k per year.) So sure, it's good to make easy adjustments if they lead to big reductions in deaths, but it's not reasonable to care a ton about seriousness restricting the form factor yet think cars are fine in general. Best would be indexing car/truck sales tax to the size of the negative safety externalities, which would be a qu…
unless the form factor has some very significant upside that I'm not seeing, preventing deaths should be prioritized over people's aesthetic preferences.
>It's clear consumers in the US value the large truck format and are willing to pay for it.
no, it's clear that consumers in the US don't value the lives of pedestrians, and therefore we cannot trust the free market to determine what types of things get made.
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At least for my use cases, I think Ford actually has an edge over Autopilot. Any car with adaptive cruise control and autosteering is gonna behave identically to a Tesla with autopilot for 99% of the time behind the wheel. Ford doesn't do lane changes or summoning, but from what I've seen both of those features have some jank with Tesla and I wouldn't use them. The big pro of Ford's system is that on some highways/fr…
"Any car with adaptive cruise control and autosteering is gonna behave identically to a Tesla with autopilot for 99% of the time behind the wheel." This isn't even close to true. Most LKAS and ADAS systems will only last a few seconds before they require human intervention. It is not at all the same experience.
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> A lot of people just want to move stuff I suspect most people with big trucks rarely use them for moving stuff. Not to say they never do, but from my observations owning a big truck has a lot more to do with signaling a certain status to others who value big trucks.
Not to say, of course, that owning an EV, a hybrid, or a Geo Metro (or a converted hearse with a Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine in the back) has nothing to do with signaling status....
Owning a Geo Metro signals that you don't give a damn about status or what anyone thinks and you don't care much about how long it takes to get to your destination. The Geo Metro owner in 2021 is truly the most independent thinker.