The Ford F-150 Lightning tows like magic.
That may not be surprising for a vehicle that weighs 3 tons and has 700 horsepower on tap at any speed, the dynamic reality is even better than the numbers suggest.
The truck is whisper quiet, and the lack of a transmission means a speed adjustment is just a tilt of the throttle …
It's kind of an interesting problem as even if battery technology improved and battery prices declined, for the near term they are still relatively slow to re-charge and weight quite a bit.
Even if we could double the range of the truck for nominal cost in batteries, it would add quite a bit to the weight of the vehicle and then simply increase the length of time to reach a full charge (although, obviously increase the range between charges).
Obviously the energy density of batteries will most likely continue to improve but I'm just not sure it will ever rival the energy density of gasoline / diesel / hydrogen.
In addition, while charge rate will improve, there's just nothing to show that it will even get remotely as fast as simply filling up a gas tank.
For non-towing applications electric seems more and more compelling all the time but for towing (any distance greater than in-town), I'm just not sure it's the right technology for the foreseeable future.
Towing involves a lot of energy, so the ability to replenish that energy becomes more important that it does in other modes. The amount of time you spend towing will determine how much of a priority that is - we tend to over-emphasize it because that's how people think. Does an extra hour on a trip you do a couple of times a year matter more than having fuel up a few times a week? It really shouldn't. Does it matter more if you do that trip every week? Obviously, yes. Where you draw that line is up to you.
In reply to QuikMcshifterson :
For non-towing applications electric seems more and more compelling all the time but for towing (any distance greater than in-town), I'm just not sure it's the right technology for the foreseeable future.
Yep, I think that's a fair tl;dr for the subject.
Another big part of the problem is the absolutely horrendous aerodynamics that trailers have. With a few rare exceptions they are massive air-brakes that happen to hold some cargo. Aero vault and others are the rare exception.
Yeah EVs are still clearly a compromise, and towing exacerbates the gulf between what works and what's reasonable.
I'd say we're at the point now, though where most EVs are highly suitable for most drivers on most trips, which is a lot more than we could say even just a few years ago. Infrastructure continues to be a major issue, as public charging is ridiculously expensive and the tiny fuel cost savings will never offset the additional buy-in required. Sorry, apartment dwellers!
Towing is an even more specialized use case, and the argument really breaks down there. Currently the best argument I can see for a Lightning as a regular tow rig would be for someone using it for in-town service duty. Like a lawn service or a contractor. Someone who's making short, local trips and returning to a common stop every day where they can recharge using residential-cost electricity. I wouldn't question for a minute if my lawn guy showed up with a Lightning or Rivian one day, except that maybe he ws charging me too much. But I'd probably just let him use my L2 while he was there and have him shave something off the bill.
Did I see a great opportunity for a comparison between the aero vault and a conventional enclosed trailer? Equal cargo weights say 4K lbs, same routes/ distance behind the Lightning!
First real-world towing test I've seen, nice.
I've always been confused by the hype around EV tractor trailers that seem to be intended as over-the-road trucking segment. My understanding of the technology is poor, but I thought they would be among the last segments to use EV, largely b/c the reasons JG outlined.
What's your view of the cost of public charging versus the price of liquid fuel? Last time I checked, I was paying roughly the equivalent as a car making 30 mpg on a car that likely would be making 30 mpg if it was powered by gas.
ICE is a compromise too, it's just the one we grew up with so we accept those compromises. For example, I'm working on a project that's requiring me to idle a Miata for long periods in the garage. That's a way to kill yourself or at least make all your clothes stinky. And the Mini sitting beside it has probably been inactive long enough that the carb needs another rebuild.
I don't think cost savings are the best reason to buy an EV, although they are real if you can feed off your own supply. They bring a bunch of different attributes to the table. For example, if your lawn person was plugging in to charge every night, the time spent refueling disappears. Even if it only takes 15 minutes to detour to a gas station and pump in a tank, if you're doing that four times a week that's an hour's work gone. If you've got a fleet of 8 trucks, that's a full person's workday in a job market where it's hard to find workers. And then there's the maintenance aspect...
It takes a full examination of costs to determine if there are actually savings, not just "public charging costs money".
madmrak351 said:Did I see a great opportunity for a comparison between the aero vault and a conventional enclosed trailer? Equal cargo weights say 4K lbs, same routes/ distance behind the Lightning!
GRM has a connection at Aerovault, this would be a really useful test and I suspect Aerovault would jump at the chance. Heck, GRM is in Vegas RIGHT NOW. They could do this test tonight. Find a Lightning. Go rent an equivalent U-Haul and do a back to back test.
CrustyRedXpress said:First real-world towing test I've seen, nice.
I've always been confused by the hype around EV tractor trailers that seem to be intended as over-the-road trucking segment. My understanding of the technology is poor, but I thought they would be among the last segments to use EV, largely b/c the reasons JG outlined.
Agreed, but they also can be used for highly predictable routing so that mitigates a lot of it. I don't know how far the average rig travels and if it's limited by cubes or mass. I suspect most companies will have a mix - if you're hauling straight across the country, you burn liquid fuel. If you're trucking from LA to Vegas, you burn electrons.
Well, that's not what I wanted to hear though it was what I expected to hear.
Not to mention that $113000.00 will buy enough gas to take a gas truck half a million miles.
I just don't think EV's are a proper replacement for ICE vehicles at all. It's a political decision that's not based on any sort of reality. Who's going to pay for the infrastructure needed? Where's it all going to go? How's it going to be implemented as the construction of the necessary charging stations will be massive and very disruptive. Unless battery charging time changes, the amount of space needed for the chargers will be huge, where's all that space going to be found?
What about people living in apartments or condos that can't have a charger at home? What about the fact that electricity, for the most part, is supplied by fossil fuel burning power plants? How about the fact that batteries for them need rare earth minerals, which the mining of causes environmental damage plus the fact that they're found in countries that have opposing interests to us? Or the fact that building and disposing of electric cars is also a dirty process?
Yeah, EV's don't do it for me. If a solid state battery ever comes out where it can be fully charged in 5 minutes or less I'll be more interested but only if the infrastructure has caught up. If the charge cost to me costs the same as a tank of regular gas, what am I really gaining in function?
Keith Tanner said:What's your view of the cost of public charging versus the price of liquid fuel?
I think the cost of public charging—not to mention the needless complexity and difficulty of access—makes EVs pretty unrealistic for anyone who doesn't have access to a level 2 charger at residential electrical prices. Which is sad. Public charging has basically adopted the cord-cutter model of "Oh, you don't want to pay the cable company $150/mo anymore? Okay we can fix that so all you have to do is pay $30/mo to these five different companies."
docwyte said:I just don't think EV's are a proper replacement for ICE vehicles at all. It's a political decision that's not based on any sort of reality. Who's going to pay for the infrastructure needed? Where's it all going to go? How's it going to be implemented as the construction of the necessary charging stations will be massive and very disruptive. Unless battery charging time changes, the amount of space needed for the chargers will be huge, where's all that space going to be found?
What about people living in apartments or condos that can't have a charger at home? What about the fact that electricity, for the most part, is supplied by fossil fuel burning power plants? How about the fact that batteries for them need rare earth minerals, which the mining of causes environmental damage plus the fact that they're found in countries that have opposing interests to us? Or the fact that building and disposing of electric cars is also a dirty process?
Yeah, EV's don't do it for me. If a solid state battery ever comes out where it can be fully charged in 5 minutes or less I'll be more interested but only if the infrastructure has caught up. If the charge cost to me costs the same as a tank of regular gas, what am I really gaining in function?
Still, though, most of your complaints here are infrastructure complaints, not actual EV complaints. The non-Tesla EV infrastructure in the US is a hot flaming dumpster full of infected clowns, and even that is giving it too much credit. And a lot of really good cars will come and go because of poor infrastructure supports when they could be making a lot of drivers very happy.
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
Not really. The building and recycling of EV's isn't an infrastructure problem, neither is where the energy to create the electricity comes from etc.
PHEV trucks probably make way more sense for towing. Imagine a battery 1/3 the weight, cost, and range, with the torquey EV motor for acceleration and regen, but also a little turbo engine to keep the highway MPG's up. Oh wait, Ford makes a F-150 hybrid... though with only a 1.5 kWhr battery vs the Lightning's 98, it falls short in EV-only usage like commuting.
I think in general there should be more plug-in hybrids with just enough battery for a typical commute (50 miles or so). If the engine is only used for longer trips or towing vs 95% of the time when it's EV-only for in-town errands, isn't that a good enough solution? We are in this stupid race to build bigger, heavier, more monstrous EV batteries, spending that 80% to solve the remaining 20% of the problem. PHEV's are the low hanging fruit, but we aren't satisfied with good enough.
JG Pasterjak said:Keith Tanner said:What's your view of the cost of public charging versus the price of liquid fuel?
I think the cost of public charging—not to mention the needless complexity and difficulty of access—makes EVs pretty unrealistic for anyone who doesn't have access to a level 2 charger at residential electrical prices. Which is sad. Public charging has basically adopted the cord-cutter model of "Oh, you don't want to pay the cable company $150/mo anymore? Okay we can fix that so all you have to do is pay $30/mo to these five different companies."
Complexity of charging if you don't have electricity at home is fairly easily solved by putting chargers where people go for extended periods on a regular basis. That's why EA putting chargers at Walmarts doesn't make sense for roadtrippers, but it's ideal for people who want to charge while they do the weekly grocery run. We have fast chargers at our local mall and Tesla has a specific charger for "urban" use that runs about 75 kW if memory serves - if it's too fast, you don't get your errands done :) With that sort of deployment, charging becomes similar to filling an ICE but more convenient because you can incorporate it into your daily routine. I have a friend who runs an EV and doesn't charge at home, he just plugs in and grabs a coffee on the way to work once in a while.
High speed charging on road trips takes a different kind of infrastructure design, but it's the one that everyone thinks about.
I agree that the big non-Tesla players are mostly just burning up infrastructure incentive money with no attention to maintenance. It costs approximately 5x as much to install a non-Telsa charger as a Tesla one, because they have no incentive to do it any cheaper. This is definitely going to hurt EV adoption overall, although the Tesla network will be opening up to other cars soon. As a Tesla owner, I'm not excited about that but as a human being I recognize it's the right thing overall. Once there's some real competition, maybe EA and friends will start taking this seriously.
In reply to maschinenbau :
That would make more sense to me. For a service truck, I need 50-100 miles of range without towing 80% of the time. The other 20% I need towing and or 300 miles of range.
docwyte said:In reply to JG Pasterjak :
Not really. The building and recycling of EV's isn't an infrastructure problem, neither is where the energy to create the electricity comes from etc.
It's far easier to control pollution from a point source like a power plant than it is to control pollution on a dynamic source like a bunch of cars. One power plant should pollute less than then the number of ICE cars the EVs it feeds would replace. This argument feels like perfection getting in the way of progress to me. EVs aren't a perfect solution, but they are oftentimes better than continuing down the ICE path. And they'll continue getting better. After all, they've only been out in scale to the public for like a decade.
maschinenbau said:PHEV trucks probably make way more sense for towing. Imagine a battery 1/3 the weight, cost, and range, with the torquey EV motor for acceleration and regen, but also a little turbo engine to keep the highway MPG's up. Oh wait, Ford makes a F-150 hybrid... though with only a 1.5 kWhr battery vs the Lightning's 98, it falls short in EV-only usage like commuting.
I think in general there should be more plug-in hybrids with just enough battery for a typical commute (50 miles or so). If the engine is only used for longer trips or towing vs 95% of the time when it's EV-only for in-town errands, isn't that a good enough solution? We are in this stupid race to build bigger, heavier, more monstrous EV batteries, spending that 80% to solve the remaining 20% of the problem. PHEV's are the low hanging fruit, but we aren't satisfied with good enough.
PHEVs are also a great way to get more total EV miles driven because you're splitting up rare battery materials into more vehicles rather than sequestering them in a single huge battery that rarely uses all of it's capacity.
Lower environmental footprint in production, more miles converted from ICE to EV, and no range anxiety to dissuade people from purchasing.
maschinenbau said:PHEV trucks probably make way more sense for towing. Imagine a battery 1/3 the weight, cost, and range, with the torquey EV motor for acceleration and regen, but also a little turbo engine to keep the highway MPG's up. Oh wait, Ford makes a F-150 hybrid... though with only a 1.5 kWhr battery vs the Lightning's 98, it falls short in EV-only usage like commuting.
I agree that EV big rigs seems crazy at first, but from what I've read it's actually a pretty good fit for this fairly specialized niche, although not in the same way that it is for normal cars. Long-haul trucks have a very long life and are often driven a million miles before being replaced. That means that compared to the average car it's much easier to reduce total cost of ownership by spending money up front in order to reduce per-mile costs. Also, most of those miles are driven along standard routes, with federally mandated rest breaks at known locations.
So what that means is that as long as you have enough batteries to get from one truck stop to the next and those truck stops are outfitted with sufficient chargers to charge it back up during a mandated rest break, you're all set. It's also OK if those batteries add a bunch of cost to the truck, because they mean you're not buying diesel fuel or doing (expensive) diesel engine maintenance on it. That's a fairly simple calculation to make and if the numbers line up, then great.
At its core, the biggest downside to an EV on long trips is that it costs you flexibility. Instead of driving to any random gas station and filling up in 5 minutes you need to plan your trip around charging stops with adequate facilities to charge your vehicle and figure out how to productively use the charging time. "bigger, heavier, more monstrous EV batteries" are about adding some of that flexibility back, by allowing you to further before forcing a charging stop. The thing about long haul trucks is that they don't need that flexibility.
In reply to CrustyRedXpress :
Two decades ago when I was working for OEM truck suppliers the rule of thumb for class 8 trucks was they needed to rack up 12,000 miles a month to be profitable.
This is the reason they are looking at driverless trucks.
STM317 said:maschinenbau said:PHEV trucks probably make way more sense for towing. Imagine a battery 1/3 the weight, cost, and range, with the torquey EV motor for acceleration and regen, but also a little turbo engine to keep the highway MPG's up. Oh wait, Ford makes a F-150 hybrid... though with only a 1.5 kWhr battery vs the Lightning's 98, it falls short in EV-only usage like commuting.
I think in general there should be more plug-in hybrids with just enough battery for a typical commute (50 miles or so). If the engine is only used for longer trips or towing vs 95% of the time when it's EV-only for in-town errands, isn't that a good enough solution? We are in this stupid race to build bigger, heavier, more monstrous EV batteries, spending that 80% to solve the remaining 20% of the problem. PHEV's are the low hanging fruit, but we aren't satisfied with good enough.
PHEVs are also a great way to get more total EV miles driven because you're splitting up rare battery materials into more vehicles rather than sequestering them in a single huge battery that rarely uses all of it's capacity.
Lower environmental footprint in production, more miles converted from ICE to EV, and no range anxiety to dissuade people from purchasing.
Do you really think the environmental footprint in production is smaller? After all, you're having to build a complete second drivetrain.
I have yet to see a charger that has enough room to pull up with a trailer. Even if there was space, if it wasn't a pull-through spot, that would be a giant pita.
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