This may not be specifically grassroots cheap, but I thought you all might find it interesting. For the last year or so I have been doing work for Lucid Motors.
Today the company revealed the results of the EPA range testing for the Lucid Air EV that is going into production soon.
Per the EPA test, the range is 517 miles.
https://lucidmotors.com/stories/lucid-air-sets-new-standard-with-517-miles-on-single-charge
I was just reading about this on another forum. Cool. Now can the range battle be over?
IMO this is the same as arguing over a gas tank range in a car right now. I don't care if if can go 400 miles or 700 miles on a tank... I don't want to drive that far in a single day anyway!
Exactly! Over this type of range, it's really unimportant. Even in my Bolt, with roughly half that range, I basically never pay attention to the indicator.
This thing is rad. Hopefully they don't make the [flame suit on] Tesla mistake of thinking that the rest of the car will just fall into place. If they build a real current-OEM-level car around that drivetrain, and don't charge $Texas for it, then it's a winner.
In reply to Type Q :
What have you been doing for them?
Give me this in a Miata sized package and I'm in.
tuna55 said:In reply to Type Q :
What have you been doing for them?
HR consulting. Total back office stuff.
As a gear-head its been really interesting to have an insider's view of the development and launch of a new model.
Sept 9 is when they doing the big reveal online.
At that level of range, it's become irrelevant. Nobody is seriously going to try to drive 500 miles in a single sitting. But since all EVs have bonkers performance, range is the one number that everyone can latch on to. Efficiency is far more interesting but too technical, so it's all about how big your battery pack is.
Refer back to that cross country road trip done by a friend of mine last week. Having nearly 40% more range probably would not have changed that trip at all. It might have removed a couple of charging stops but without a step change in efficiency, that would have made the remaining stops longer. And they'd still have to pee :)
In a sedan I could see the argument that that amount of range doesn't matter. If it can transfer over to a small SUV type EV, it starts to matter a lot. There are tons of people that make road trips up to and longer than 500 miles in a day. I've done it all my life. In Texas it's fairly common. I'm looking forward to being able to get something the size of the Mustang mach e with at least 500 mile range.
shagles said:In a sedan I could see the argument that that amount of range doesn't matter. If it can transfer over to a small SUV type EV, it starts to matter a lot. There are tons of people that make road trips up to and longer than 500 miles in a day. I've done it all my life. In Texas it's fairly common. I'm looking forward to being able to get something the size of the Mustang mach e with at least 500 mile range.
You couldn't stop and charge during your 500 mile trip? You still probably want to stop and pee, get a snack, or get your blood moving a bit.
A leap in battery tech or efficiency is great. But cramming 500 miles of batteries where there was previously 350 is no big deal to me and honeslty screams inefficiency. Thats more cells the buyer needs to purchase up front and drag around with them everywhere.
We all know you can add a ton more batteries for a ton more range, but its catering to the .001% of use cases, so why bother? If they become needed for something like towing, or a larger vehicle, etc, sure then it makes perfect sense to do so.
See Keith's point above. Adding that range wouldn't fundamentally change a cross country trip by more than a few minutes. And as chargers become more common, and faster, the range becomes less and less necessary.
Ultimately, Lucid is not even remotely close to my price range, but I am disappointed that everyone keeps making bigger, faster, longer range luxo missles when in reality what the average consumer needs is the opposite of that. The Bolt should meet 99.9% of dual-vehicle families needs and probably 90% of non dual vehicle families needs (excluding work vehicles). Now sell me a cheaper Bolt!
Keith Tanner said:At that level of range, it's become irrelevant. Nobody is seriously going to try to drive 500 miles in a single sitting. But since all EVs have bonkers performance, range is the one number that everyone can latch on to. Efficiency is far more interesting but too technical, so it's all about how big your battery pack is.
Refer back to that cross country road trip done by a friend of mine last week. Having nearly 40% more range probably would not have changed that trip at all. It might have removed a couple of charging stops but without a step change in efficiency, that would have made the remaining stops longer. And they'd still have to pee :)
It may open up more routes that aren't accessible today. 10 years from now I expect it to be a moot point, but right now I see the value for the fringe cases. But they're fringe cases - my situation that I proposed, this would save at least 30 minutes because at one point the Tesla route planner took us on another route because the most direct route didn't have a charger for too long (Think if you're going from Chicago to Seattle, you can take I90, I94, or I80 - all are about the same time, but only 1 has a super charger - so you can only take that one). EDIT: Note, this is a really silly fringe case. 30 minute savings over a 17 hour car trip? Dumb.
Soon they'll market it as "Minutes to 100 mile charge"
I gotta say, this additional range means that the longest trip we normally take takes the same number of "gas" stops as in our gas car, and with enough margin that we are highly unlikely to have any anxious moments when we hit a detour that adds mileage and directs us away from where the infrastructure is.
It seems like it ought to be irrelevant, but the cross country road trip thread and most recent living with a Model 3 update really put me in mind of the not-common but not-wildly-unusual randomness that would be totally survivable in a Model 3 but is an absolute non-issue in an ICE vehicle. It's just about when your trip home suddenly gains an hour or two in any case, but in an EV gains an even bigger chunk and an attempted rolling calculation on how to handle the need to charge along the way.
Like I said, utterly survivable, and really not that bad. But those are the days you're already tired, cooked, and want to be home, so any hours you add are extra long. More a matter of having the right mindset than anything.
In the case of our recent detour through the mountains - that was a remote enough drive that you would have had to take gas stations into account with the ICE as well! And the car can do the calculation for you in the case of the EV. They're smarter than their drivers when it comes to energy management.
In reply to ProDarwin :
I could, but a trip from my house north of Dallas to South Padre goes from just over 9 hours to over 11 according to Tesla's route planner. Sure we'd stop for bathroom breaks, but that drive we normally stop 3 maybe 4 times for about 10 minutes. Two of those we'll grab some food to eat in the car. So that's still over an hour extra transit time.
I guess it depends what kind of road tripper you are. I've always liked to stay on the road to get where I'm going and don't usually stop somewhere for any longer than I have to. Also depends where you are. Driving a few cities down the interstate in Texas is 2-3 hours and well over 100 miles one way. So driving there, around town some, and back can easily get in the 300 mile range.
shagles said:In reply to ProDarwin :
I could, but a trip from my house north of Dallas to South Padre goes from just over 9 hours to over 11 according to Tesla's route planner. Sure we'd stop for bathroom breaks, but that drive we normally stop 3 maybe 4 times for about 10 minutes. Two of those we'll grab some food to eat in the car. So that's still over an hour extra transit time.
I guess it depends what kind of road tripper you are. I've always liked to stay on the road to get where I'm going and don't usually stop somewhere for any longer than I have to. Also depends where you are. Driving a few cities down the interstate in Texas is 2-3 hours and well over 100 miles one way. So driving there, around town some, and back can easily get in the 300 mile range.
It also depends on how often you're making this 9 or 11 hour trip. Is it once a year, round trip? Fine, no problem. Once a month? Efff that noise.
shagles said:In reply to ProDarwin :
I could, but a trip from my house north of Dallas to South Padre goes from just over 9 hours to over 11 according to Tesla's route planner. Sure we'd stop for bathroom breaks, but that drive we normally stop 3 maybe 4 times for about 10 minutes. Two of those we'll grab some food to eat in the car. So that's still over an hour extra transit time.
I guess it depends what kind of road tripper you are. I've always liked to stay on the road to get where I'm going and don't usually stop somewhere for any longer than I have to. Also depends where you are. Driving a few cities down the interstate in Texas is 2-3 hours and well over 100 miles one way. So driving there, around town some, and back can easily get in the 300 mile range.
How often do you do that? Do you only have 1 vehicle?
Seems like a fringe case to me. The longest trip I have made in the past 12 months is 170miles.
mtn (Forum Supporter) said:It also depends on how often you're making this 9 or 11 hour trip. Is it once a year, round trip? Fine, no problem. Once a month? Efff that noise.
And even so, if you are doing it once per year, how much extra money do you want to spend and how much extra weight do you want to carry around to save 2 hours per year? Or a few bucks in gas if you just took a different vehicle?
In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :
True. I guess I fall outside of the normal use case. Over the past several years I've done a couple drives like that for vacation and 3-4 from Dallas to Atlanta and back for work each year. Seems normal to me but I guess it isn't.
In reply to ProDarwin :
300+ mile round trip drives are pretty common, outside of Covid stuff anyways. To my parents house and back is over 400 miles and that happens usually every other month. Visiting out of town friends is 300 miles minimum and happens several times a year.
We have 2 cars but I'd really like to take a trip for pennies in electricity instead of a $100+ in gas.
I have made round trips longer than 10 hours each way with my family of 4 atleast 10 times the previous 12 months.
Truely excited to get to the point I can buy an electric SUV and tow my racecar 10 hours each way with 1 hour or so of stops (especially once autonomous becomes advanced enough). Fringe case or not, roomy family SUVs are more the norm than the exception and treating this norm as an outcast seems strange given the audience.
Glad folks are passionate about the future of EV's but some folks could use a bit of chill in their iced teas.
ProDarwin said:shagles said:In reply to ProDarwin :
I could, but a trip from my house north of Dallas to South Padre goes from just over 9 hours to over 11 according to Tesla's route planner. Sure we'd stop for bathroom breaks, but that drive we normally stop 3 maybe 4 times for about 10 minutes. Two of those we'll grab some food to eat in the car. So that's still over an hour extra transit time.
I guess it depends what kind of road tripper you are. I've always liked to stay on the road to get where I'm going and don't usually stop somewhere for any longer than I have to. Also depends where you are. Driving a few cities down the interstate in Texas is 2-3 hours and well over 100 miles one way. So driving there, around town some, and back can easily get in the 300 mile range.
How often do you do that? Do you only have 1 vehicle?
Seems like a fringe case to me. The longest trip I have made in the past 12 months is 170miles.
The longest trip I have made in the past 12 months is 6000 miles. It wasn't all in one go, though. But sure, in those cases you're going to want to rent or own a second car.
Who can average almost 60 mph on a road trip 2800 miles long WITHOUT exceeding the posted speed limit?
oh yeah, EVs can. So I guess that range thing is pretty much moot. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20751975/ev-cannonball-run-record-broken-twice-2019
For reference, my family takes the 400 mile trip from here to the in-laws house regularly. 60 MPH average would get the trip done in 6 hrs 40 minutes. We can never make that happen with family and even when we did it with just 3 adults leaving after work banzai run it was about 7 hours and we might have exceeded the speed limit.
Sure, if you want to pick some crazy fringe case like living in middle of nowhere Alaska and towing a 20k lb trailer to work everyday uphill both ways into the wind for 4.5 hours in 100+ degree weather, then no, an EV is not right for you.
It's like the same argument about how it doesn't make sense to own a Toyota Tacoma because you might need the towing capability of a one ton Cummins. We all like to come up with justifications for why we need something totally overspecified for that 1% of the time we might use it. An EV will handle everything but that one long road trip every year, and in that case it'll add 10% to the length of the trip? Oh no! That won't do.
Says a guy who used to have a Taco-sized Toyota pickup and replaced it with a bigger Toyota pickup and replaced that with a 3/4 ton Cummins ;) But that Dodge has spent 85% of its mileage doing 75 mph with a gross vehicle weight of about 20,000 lbs, so I think I can truly justify it!
Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:Who can average almost 60 mph on a road trip 2800 miles long WITHOUT exceeding the posted speed limit?
oh yeah, EVs can. So I guess that range thing is pretty much moot. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20751975/ev-cannonball-run-record-broken-twice-2019
For reference, my family takes the 400 mile trip from here to the in-laws house regularly. 60 MPH average would get the trip done in 6 hrs 40 minutes. We can never make that happen with family and even when we did it with just 3 adults leaving after work banzai run it was about 7 hours and we might have exceeded the speed limit.
Sure, if you want to pick some crazy fringe case like living in middle of nowhere Alaska and towing a 20k lb trailer to work everyday uphill both ways into the wind for 4.5 hours in 100+ degree weather, then no, an EV is not right for you.
Exactly. The Bolt works for me 345 days out of the year. The others are random long trips and a vacation. We have a minivan for that.
Keith Tanner said:It's like the same argument about how it doesn't make sense to own a Toyota Tacoma because you might need the towing capability of a one ton Cummins. We all like to come up with justifications for why we need something totally overspecified for that 1% of the time we might use it. An EV will handle everything but that one long road trip every year, and in that case it'll add 10% to the length of the trip? Oh no! That won't do.
Says a guy who used to have a Taco-sized Toyota pickup and replaced it with a bigger Toyota pickup and replaced that with a 3/4 ton Cummins ;) But that Dodge has spent 85% of its mileage doing 75 mph with a gross vehicle weight of about 20,000 lbs, so I think I can truly justify it!
And for the road trip, just rent a vehicle if you don't want to deal with extended stops.
I was really considering a Tesla 3 next year now that I have a pure toy in the NC. Given some of his recent statements........I'm no longer interested in supporting his overvalued stock.
I bet if they sold that car with a "normal" gas motor it would sell well. That is a really good looking vehicle. The fact hat it is also an EV makes it exponentially more cool!!!
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