Today, would you buy an EV vehicle.

[mo1]

With many manufacturers now advertising ev, even in trucks (Ford Lightning, CyberTruck, Rivian) would you invest in an EV vehicle? If everything moves to electric, when do you think you would switch to an ev -- or maybe Hybrid. The future of gas and diesel looks questionable.

I bought a new truck in 2021. Things are changing. The V8 engine is almost a thing of the past. When do you think, as you shop for a new vehicle, you will consider EV as your best choice? Will that happen when you want to keep your truck 6-8 years and gas stations might become difficult to find?

Then there are EV tractors.

Just curious. Thought this when looking for a new truck.

I drive a gasoline-powered pickup truck and often haul decent sized loads on a trailer. My next vehicle will be another gasoline-powered pickup truck as I am not enamored with the cost and lack of reliability of the post-2007 on-road diesel engines. A battery-powered vehicle would be almost impossible to use in this situation due to technical limitations.

Batteries do not hold all that much energy, they do not replenish it at a very fast rate, and recharging a battery-powered car battery draws a huge amount of power. Any vehicle that requires a significant amount of energy and/or intends to run for a long time is going to be very difficult to power from a battery due to these significant limitations. This is also why the current battery-powered vehicles are sedans and small "crossover" SUVs, as they require the least power to propel down the road. They are generally used by city dwellers for short trips where they can leave their house and return easily on one battery charge, so they can reasonably charge overnight and not completely kill every power grid, distribution line, and transformer in existence.

A gallon of gasoline has about 114,000 BTU, which is equivalent to 33.4 kWh. A typical 3/4 ton gasser pickup has about a 35 gallon tank. That tank will fill in 5 minutes from completely empty to completely full at a typical gas pump, which dispense 7 gal/min. It takes about 70 HP (52 kW) to propel a typical 3/4 ton pickup empty down the road at 65 MPH to overcome drag force. That truck will get about 12 MPG at that speed, so you will get about 420 miles of range from that gas tank. Now, let's make that 3/4 ton pickup battery-powered. You will need a 330 kWh battery for an equivalent range. Any battery-powered vehicle battery of 100 kWh or larger is considered very large, so this is more than three times as large as a very large battery. A 100 kWh battery in a Tesla Model S with their fastest rapid charger (the 350 kVA "Supercharger") takes about 50 minutes to charge from dead to full, so this would be about three hours to charge from dead to full, for a 6 1/2 hour runtime. Charge the thing at home with a 10 kW "Level 2" charger that uses a 50 amp circuit and you will be charging it for 33 hours. (If you use a regular 120 volt outlet, it will take over a week.) Now, that is with the truck empty. Pull a trailer and your mileage will get even worse, you may only get 250 miles of range before your tank is empty or your battery is dead.

This is also not taking into account the weight of the battery pack. The absolute lightest battery-powered car batteries weigh 13 lb per kWh, so that 330 kWh battery would weigh 4,290 lb. A typical 3/4 ton pickup weighs about 7000 pounds, so this would result in a curb weight increasing to 11,290 pounds. That is over the GVWR of most 1 ton pickups let alone 3/4 tonners, so you would need to upgrade to a 1 1/2 ton to get any actual load-carrying capacity (and then your range drops because it takes even more power to push one of those down the road.) Either that or your range shrinks massively by using a smaller battery in order to try to use the 3/4 ton truck chassis and still have the load-carrying capacity of say, a Ford Ranger. I suppose you could put the battery on a trailer and pull it around behind you to retain some capacity, but that would be a massive hassle, reduce your range due to increased load of pulling the trailer, and reduce your towing capacity by the weight of the battery as it would have to share the trailer with your load.

We haven't even gotten into the cost of such a battery (estimated at about $40,000 or so), that filling up only one battery charge of a 330 kWh battery is about 1/4 of an average household's entire monthly power use for everything else, or that the fastest fast-chargers (which would have to run for 3 hours to charge this battery) draw 14 times as much power as the "large" (25 kVA) residential transformers can handle.

 

[Hay Dude]

I firmly believe that every new thing is a result of lobbyists petitioning gov't to sway the market into their favor and provide them with huge profits at the expense of the little guy who has to pay for it either outright or through their taxes. I am not against ev's but I am against giving out huge incentives and grants to certain companies and then halting pipelines and such of other companies to scue the prices of items to make people think they have to do something to save money. The public is being used and if these vehicles were so great they would make it on their own. Next will be an influx of at home generators because the grid can't power all the chargers and are causing more brownouts.

Well said.

 

[hiddentacocatneddih]

Not now. My cummins should last 20 years or so as it is. So maybe then. I normally keep a vehicle 10+ years and with electric, the batteries lifespan and repair ability wil keep me away. And I repair electronics and such for a living.

 

[Torvy]

I would much rather have a hybrid Toyota than an EV Ford...or any EV. Given how I would typically use a pickup, an EV would probably work, but i don't like limiting my options.

 

[ultrarunner]

What we need is a EV with a luggage rack or rear receiver big enough for my Honda 5000 to tag along...

 

[RoyJackson]

When the government gives up Air Force 1 and all the limousines and SUV's and go electric...that's when I'll consider it

 

[Jstpssng]

If there was a small affordable commuter type EV, I might consider one... but there isn't and nobody is talking about making one

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No longer offered in the US, of course. For $20k though, I would want more than a 60 mile range. It might be nice in Boston or DC, but if I lived in those towns I probably would ride the bus.

Correction; if I lived in one of those towns I'd move.

 

[droptop]

The politicians pushing (or mandating) electric vehicles have no concept of cause and effect. When you add a huge electric demand to the grid without first adding the capacity to grid to handle this huge load, the effect will be long power outages and brownouts.

Buy your standby generators to keep your freezers going now if you don't already have one.

 

[Fixastuff]

I am touched by how concerned some are about the grid. It's sweet.

 

[Jstpssng]

I am touched by how concerned some are about the grid. It's sweet.

I have two freezers full of food. That's ample reason to worry about the grid.