Does a 230 mile/charge range make you more or less likely to buy a Lighning?

[Todd n Natalie]

I would not be interested in the lightening for similar reasons as those listed above. I would be more interested in a commuter car that was all electric, run to work, errands around town and back home to charge each night. The usage of my truck varies greatly from daily commute to hauling building supplies, to towing distances. Electric trucks could make sense for fleet use where the real world range and capabilities and charging ability are known and they fit the fleets usage.

I am interested in the F150 powerboost and wish we would see more hybrid options for trucks, I feel that these give you the best of both worlds and could be greatly expanded upon. Sadly I believe that manufacturers are looking to jump into EVs and will jump right over this area of expansion.

Amp up the powerboost (pun intended) as a plug in hybrid with some more EV capabilities and you could have your cake and eat it too (assuming there is payload remaining for cake)

Yes. When I read the F150 was coming out with a hybrid, I was really hoping the hybrid was a PHEV instead of the powerboost we got.

 

[Todd n Natalie]

The second factor I think about is in terms of re-thinking how we do stuff. Without a doubt, an EV will take longer to charge than a car does to gas up, but how can we re-think that use of time? It's not as if you have to plug in your car and sit there with your hand on the charging cable for an hour, the way you often must do at gas stations for 5-10 minutes, so how else can that time be used? In terms of travelling, when I think of the "flow" of our trips, we typically camp somewhere overnight and hit the road in the morning. By lunchtime, we typically need to get gas but we tend to 'stack' our stops -- this is what I mean by "how else can that time be used". So we fill up on gas, spin the dogs out, grab something to eat, use the restrooms, etc. which in total takes us between 30 minutes and an hour depending on how relaxed we are being. That's plenty of time for an EV to sit and passively charge while we are doing our other tasks. I think a similar "rethink how we do stuff" approach can work for commercial users of EVs. Folks using EVs professionally would for sure need to figure out how they use their time to make it worthwhile but it's not a deal breaker. For a time, I was working from the cab of my truck; a gas stop is a "lost" 10 - 20 minutes, but I can totally see myself parking for an hour to charge and pull out my laptop to do invoicing/e-mails as that full hour actually gives me some time to focus. That is work that needs to be done at some point in the day - might as well do it while my truck is fuelling up, and kill two birds with one stone.

Sure. But what if there is two cars in line ahead of you? Now you're there for an hour and a half to three instead of 15 - 30....

We're getting there. But we aren't there yet.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Sure. But what if there is two cars in line ahead of you? Now you're there for an hour and a half to three instead of 15 - 30....

We're getting there. But we aren't there yet.

Yes absolutely. Right now there seems to be more chargers than cars in our area; I know there are plenty of parts of the world (California) where that is not the case at all and there are sometimes huge delays for supercharger access.

And of course the power has to come from somewhere. Whether I'm burning dinosaurs in my engine or they are being burned in the coal plant 150 miles away I think is another challenge that the EV wave has to contend with.

 

[jkam]

The numbers given for any EV are under optimal conditions.
Nobody is going to use one in optimal conditions.
And in less than optimal conditions, the range drops dramatically.

 

[Todd n Natalie]

Yes absolutely. Right now there seems to be more chargers than cars in our area;

Oh really? I find the opposite. I see a lot of EV's but couldn't tell you were one charger is.

If I recall we live in the same city, no?

 

[plh]

As far as charging times, there are two factors I think about. The first factor is that charging times are practically pretty good today - far better than many give them credit for, as this is an area where there's been significant real-world growth in the last 5-ish years. I've shared before, but a Tesla managed to do nearly 3,000 kms in 24 hours on the Autobahn a few years ago. Without a doubt they are slower to refuel than gas equivalents, but even in a gas vehicle I can't see anyone practically needing to do 2700 kms in a day -- human beings aren't really wired to do that, regardless of whether they are in an ICE or an EV, so in a 24-hour period, EVs have the same practical range as gas vehicles (i.e. the vehicle will go further, including fuel stops, in a day than most humans likely would want to do in that same time period).

I did a run to Florida in a day (a bit over 1,000 miles) 2 weeks ago and returned last week also in a day, 16 hours and change both times with stops. Very much done with driving for those days after arrivals. ICE vehicle. I don't think the trip could have been done in a Tesla in a similar amount of time. Also was carrying 5 adults and all our stuff for the week (vacation). Tesla says 200 mile range and 20 minute charge time, for the last 500 miles the temperature outside was under 30F and as low as 10F. Much of the trip was driven above the posted speed limit by a good amount.

 

[AbleGuy]

I did a run to Florida in a day (a bit over 1,000 miles) 2 weeks ago and returned last week also in a day, 16 hours and change both times with stops. Very much done with driving for those days after arrivals. ICE vehicle. I don't think the trip could have been done in a Tesla in a similar amount of time. Also was carrying 5 adults and all our stuff for the week (vacation). Tesla says 200 mile range and 20 minute charge time, for the last 500 miles the temperature outside was under 30F and as low as 10F. Much of the trip was driven above the posted speed limit by a good amount.

Yup. First day for us on the road last fall was @ 630 miles. I try not to do those long days anymore but sometimes I have to. An EV just would not have done it for us.

 

[pith helmet]

I wouldn't have any use for one as a DD til it was 4x4, 500-mile range and quick charge.

 

[Regcabguy]

I wonder what Furnace Creek is charging for a jolt?

 

[ThundahBeagle]

I would not be interested in the lightening for similar reasons as those listed above. I would be more interested in a commuter car that was all electric, run to work, errands around town and back home to charge each night. The usage of my truck varies greatly from daily commute to hauling building supplies, to towing distances. Electric trucks could make sense for fleet use where the real world range and capabilities and charging ability are known and they fit the fleets usage.

I am interested in the F150 powerboost and wish we would see more hybrid options for trucks, I feel that these give you the best of both worlds and could be greatly expanded upon. Sadly I believe that manufacturers are looking to jump into EVs and will jump right over this area of expansion.

Amp up the powerboost (pun intended) as a plug in hybrid with some more EV capabilities and you could have your cake and eat it too (assuming there is payload remaining for cake)

Chevy had a Hybrid Tahoe about 1p years ago. I still see 2 or 3 of them around just in my neck of the woods. I sure wish they had been brave enough to stick it out with that. They would be so far ahead of the curve by now.

Then again, GM had the EV1 back in the 1990's. It was the cancellation of that car that inspired a couple of guys to invent Tesla.

 

[ThundahBeagle]

I had posted a solution that went over most peoples head. In a different thread. I will do it the KISS way this time.

#1 You buy a electric vehicle.
#2 They give you a charged battery with the vehicle like a tank of gas. This battery is not yours, you are just using it. You can charge it up at your home or business.
#3 when on a trip or driving around. When the vehicle runs low on battery power (fuel) you pull into a fuel/battery station.
#4 You pull into the line for battery replacement.
#5 They pop the hatch to the battery. Unstrap the battery pop off the plug. lift comes down and removes the battery.
#6 A charged battery is installed in the vehicle.
#7 You pay for the charged battery and drive away.

This should be close to the same amount of time to pump gas or swap out a battery.

If the government has the power to force pollution controls, safety devices on your vehicle then, then they can make the builders of the vehicles make the batteries universal.

You have the stations in place already. With the charging station and lift modifications you will have the stations in place already.

Now it is Wednesday and your short of money you can not afford to buy the long range battery so you buy the short range battery that will get you through to payday.

Now you have the stations set-up already (the gas/diesel/ battery stations). This will work just like buying fuel. You drive, you use it up you buy more fuel / electric power. The battery is charged waiting for the next vehicle to stop in.

The stations get the batteries from the big oil companies just as they buy the fuel from them. Yes, it will take some time to get the batteries built, stations retrofitted and employees trained.

Filling stations will be around a long time since electric vehicle will need many improvements to get up to speed with what the consumer wants. This will take time. I do not see electric sim-trucks replacing the diesel trucks soon, away not for a while.

Interesting thought. Like changing batteries in a remote control. But you are talking about major surgery to the car, removing and replacing a multi cell battery at a thousand (?) pounds. 30 gallons of gas weighs what, almost 30p pounds and you dont have to do surgery to get it. Same with just charging the existing battery. Even new cell phones dont have a removable battery

 

[ThundahBeagle]

Yes absolutely. Right now there seems to be more chargers than cars in our area; I know there are plenty of parts of the world (California) where that is not the case at all and there are sometimes huge delays for supercharger access.

And of course the power has to come from somewhere. Whether I'm burning dinosaurs in my engine or they are being burned in the coal plant 150 miles away I think is another challenge that the EV wave has to contend with.

Right! 70 to 80 % of US electricity still comes from fossil fuels and nukes.

And our grid cant handle a hot summer week.

It is getting better but there is more work to do overall than has already been done

I dont want a bank of chargers in the library or groc5store parking lot. I want stations, and charges as fast as gas fueling. That's what I'm looking forward to someday. When was the last time you saw a new house built with it's own gas pump

 

[JaSAn]

. . .
#3 when on a trip or driving around. When the vehicle runs low on battery power (fuel) you pull into a fuel/battery station.
#4 You pull into the line for battery replacement.
#5 They pop the hatch to the battery. Unstrap the battery pop off the plug. lift comes down and removes the battery.
#6 A charged battery is installed in the vehicle.
#7 You pay for the charged battery and drive away.

This should be close to the same amount of time to pump gas or swap out a battery.

Tesla Model Y 75KW battery (300 mile) weighs about 1200 lbs. and costs ~$13000. I will want something that heavy and that expensive to be well secured; it will take more than 15 minutes and a certified mechanic (current garage rate ~$80/hr).

I think all current batteries are attached underneath; not replaceable from above.

Formula E decided to scrap that plan (due to size, handling and safety issues) and they have a lot more brain power working on it than we do.

 

[plh]

I had posted a solution that went over most peoples head. In a different thread. I will do it the KISS way this time.

#1 You buy a electric vehicle.
#2 They give you a charged battery with the vehicle like a tank of gas. This battery is not yours, you are just using it. You can charge it up at your home or business.
#3 when on a trip or driving around. When the vehicle runs low on battery power (fuel) you pull into a fuel/battery station.
#4 You pull into the line for battery replacement.
#5 They pop the hatch to the battery. Unstrap the battery pop off the plug. lift comes down and removes the battery.
#6 A charged battery is installed in the vehicle.
#7 You pay for the charged battery and drive away.

This should be close to the same amount of time to pump gas or swap out a battery.

If the government has the power to force pollution controls, safety devices on your vehicle then, then they can make the builders of the vehicles make the batteries universal.

You have the stations in place already. With the charging station and lift modifications you will have the stations in place already.

Now it is Wednesday and your short of money you can not afford to buy the long range battery so you buy the short range battery that will get you through to payday.

Now you have the stations set-up already (the gas/diesel/ battery stations). This will work just like buying fuel. You drive, you use it up you buy more fuel / electric power. The battery is charged waiting for the next vehicle to stop in.

The stations get the batteries from the big oil companies just as they buy the fuel from them. Yes, it will take some time to get the batteries built, stations retrofitted and employees trained.

Filling stations will be around a long time since electric vehicle will need many improvements to get up to speed with what the consumer wants. This will take time. I do not see electric sim-trucks replacing the diesel trucks soon, away not for a while.

ha! Good luck. Makes total sense but hows that working out for anyone with a "universal" cell phone battery or laptop battery?!

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Oh really? I find the opposite. I see a lot of EV's but couldn't tell you were one charger is.

If I recall we live in the same city, no?

I think we do live in the same place but you raise an interesting point. This is more anecdotal on my part, but I am still shocked when I roll up to a big box store and see a Supercharger out front. I quick check of Google Maps shows about 20-30 chargers in our city but of course whether that's "a lot" or not depends on how many electric cars there are. In my neighborhood, I've never seen an EV, but on the south side I do see Teslas more often. And, Petro Canada now has their "Electric Superhighway", so you can charge up an EV pretty much all along the trans Canada highway. Again, whether this is enough or not depends on how many EVs we have (I did note a shocking number of Teslas on my cross-country trip last summer taking advantage of this charging system). It'd be interesting to see what that actual experience is like (i.e. how many people have to wait, for how long, and how often), and how that metric changes over time as infrastructure grows.

I did a run to Florida in a day (a bit over 1,000 miles) 2 weeks ago and returned last week also in a day, 16 hours and change both times with stops. Very much done with driving for those days after arrivals. ICE vehicle. I don't think the trip could have been done in a Tesla in a similar amount of time. Also was carrying 5 adults and all our stuff for the week (vacation). Tesla says 200 mile range and 20 minute charge time, for the last 500 miles the temperature outside was under 30F and as low as 10F. Much of the trip was driven above the posted speed limit by a good amount.

That's a long day of travel no matter how you slice it! Having not owned an EV I can't speak to what this experience was like, but on paper -- your trip would be about an hour and 20 minutes of charging time to do a thousand kilometres (20 minutes charge = 200 miles range on a Supercharger, roughly; this assumes the chargers were where you needed, when you needed them, and we're not there yet, but superchargers are being opened every day and there are already over 30k of them (with plans to expand to 60k shortly). But on paper, if you were doing the speed limit (assumed 75 mph), that would make for a long day with 14 hours of driving or so. All told, that means a 1,000 mile journey in a Tesla would take about 15.5 hours minimum -- doable in a day, but difficult. The thing is, when I think about a thousand mile day in an ICE car, my trip estimates are roughly the same -- the driving time would be identical. As for being stopped for 1.5 hours total? Yeah I can definitely see myself needing to stretch my legs and take at least an hour and a half of breaks over a 14 hour day in the car. That being said, the superchargers may not have been available on your route, and it sounds like you were fully loaded so the theoretical 200 mile range may not have applied in your case. So, lots of variables and assumptions here -- but my point is, realistically a break of 1.5 hours cumulatively over the course of such a long journey doesn't seem unreasonable, irrespective of fuel choice.

But, I would also say that your example represents a trip that is way outside the average for most folks; for a spell, my daily driver was very old and high mileage to the point where I didn't have a lot of trust in it too far away from my tools, so while I used it for my daily commute, anytime I had to do a longer road trip I used a rental with unlimited mileage and left my DD at home. I would suggest that a Lightening or similar EV will meet the needs of most North Americans, especially if for those "odd times out" they use a rental. The same argument can be used for pickups in general -- buy a fuel efficient car, then rent a truck when you need one -- and frankly I wouldn't make that choice for myself. But my point is, there are many ways to skin this cat, and while your use case in this example would perhaps make an EV not ideal today (I suspect superchargers are not ubiquitous enough yet), for most people a trip like you are describing would be abnormal and there would be other ways to do it if the primary vehicle was limited in some fashion.

With regards to battery life and temperature, I'm not sure what the implications are of that - I know Tesla has some kind of battery heating system and they appear to work great in -40 Celsius, but I'd need to learn more to be more confident in the actual implications on the range of those vehicles.

Right! 70 to 80 % of US electricity still comes from fossil fuels and nukes.

And our grid cant handle a hot summer week.

It is getting better but there is more work to do overall than has already been done

I dont want a bank of chargers in the library or groc5store parking lot. I want stations, and charges as fast as gas fueling. That's what I'm looking forward to someday. When was the last time you saw a new house built with it's own gas pump

You are right about the Grid needing improvements. I think Nuclear is the main viable option for the near future, but the "technically" best and the "socially/politically/culturally" best solutions aren't always the same. It is interesting your comment about gas pumps at every house-- See I think it would be great to have a "gas pump" (plug) at every house assuming our grid can match it, and I can actually see a strong argument for including a EV power port in every new build in North America (but, I would add on emergency bunkers like the Swiss and solar roofs that capture rainwater for recycling to the building codes for all new construction too though, so perhaps there's a reason I'm not in charge of such things!) why do we even need to "stop" for energy in our cars at all? Why not re-think how we power transportation, and refuel while we do other things as opposed to it being a dedicated task that requires time and focus? Why not charge while I'm at the library or grocery store? It'd be great if my car could just charge when I'm not using it. If they can wrangle induction technology so I don't even need to plug it in, and it would just charge wirelessly from the parking stall as soon as I pull in, even better.