Like the article says, trucks are made to do truck things. As it stands right now, the Lightning is no threat to become America’s work truck. If you had range anxiety before, hauling stuff will make you want a medical prescription. And forget about towing the airstream for the family vacation out towards the Rockies.
Cruising around town and running to Home Depot, maybe. Running a construction/landscape/what ever business, probably not.
I read that article the other day. I started thinking this could create a market for EV trailers. A bank of batteries on a trailer could be tied to the towing vehicle to give it more range. Also, the batteries could supply a source of electricity if the person camps in an area where there are no electrical outlets.
I read that article the other day. I started thinking this could create a market for EV trailers. A bank of batteries on a trailer could be tied to the towing vehicle to give it more range. Also, the batteries could supply a source of electricity if the person camps in an area where there are no electrical outlets.
Great idea, except in the case of a long tow to a remote campsite with no electricity.
Not surprising. But not a big deal. Most people who buy trucks, frankly, do not do “truck things” with them anyway. They don’t haul. They don’t tow.
Disagree. Most people who buy trucks do “truck things” at least once in a while. It’s the same issue as “range anxiety”. Even if I only take a long trip a couple times a year, I want my car to be able to get there without worrying about it. Most of the time, perhaps nearly all of the time it wouldn’t matter, but once in a while it would.
I have many friends with trucks, and none of them need them for work or their occupation, but all of them do “truck things” on the occasional weekend, including doing favors for friends without trucks. I’m not saying Ford won’t sell some of these, but there will be a lot of prospective targets who think twice about it before signing up.
" A bank of batteries on a trailer could be tied to the towing vehicle to give it more range. Also, the batteries could supply a source of electricity…"
I worked as a power tech for telecom. All of our CO’s had onsite battery backup installed.
Sometimes a battery went bad, which was a very bad issue ( I’m talking large batteries, not an auto start battery ). We had a trailer loaded with batteries stored in a large garage for just that situation. Kept them charged up and ready to go, and in emergencies it would be a 2 man job to haul that trailer to a CO with battery issues, manually haul them into the CO, connect them up to the CO buss bars. We could then take the fried battery(s) offline, get a replacement sent over asap, and problem solved. This occurred in smaller offices. Larger CO’s had many strings, so didn’t have to do that song and dance in those locations,there was enough redundancy built in.
So your idea is a good one, and totally viable. I don’t think EV’s have alternators ( could be wrong,
not familiar with the electrical systems on EV’s ), but something could be designed to keep
a trickle charge on the batteries in the trailer, while connected to the EV truck, so they’d
be fully charged and ready to go to work when needed.
From the article - “You buy a truck primarily to do truck things: towing and hauling.”
This is so wrong, it’s ridiculous! Most pickup truck buyers in the USA never ever tow or haul anything. They buy a pickup truck because they think it looks cool, because they are high up and can see ‘everything’, and because all their friends are buying pickup trucks. I’d guess that less than 20% of the pickup trucks on the road ever haul or tow anything at all. Maybe even less than 10%.
““You buy a truck primarily to do truck things: towing and hauling.””
People buy trucks for many reasons
Some buy them to haul 5th wheel type trailers or other motor homes on vacation. A small percent but those folks want enough range so they aren’t stopping ever 100 miles for an hour to two charge. They probably won’t buy an EV truck for a while.
Many buy trucks to haul stuff around town in the bed of their truck. A thousand pounds of garden stuff, or from the lumber company, isn’t going to degrade range enough for them to worry. Probably all local miles. Others move them to move stuff from A to B. No one borrows a Prius to move a household across town…probably a lot of contractors and weekend folks. Maybe tow the boat 20 miles to the lake and back. No sweat.
Some just want to be cool…or live outside town where the roads are rotten, rutted, need high clearance, or have to travel 5 miles of gravel road to get home. Lots of places like that in Texas…
Nearly all the pickup trucks you see here are commercial vehicle trucks…and lots of vans too with company logos. Then there’s the Amazon delivery vans by the dozens cruising the neighborhoods…
Now go to rural TX and out west…and you’ll probably see that more than half the vehicles on the road locally are PICKUP trucks. Stop in a small town of 1,000 or 2,000 in farm and ranch country, and the streets are lined with 80% pickup trucks.
In urban DFW area, pickup trucks are 10% or less of vehicles on the road, outside commercial vehicles for lawn service, contractors, etc.
Now go to rural TX and out west…and you’ll probably see that more than half the vehicles on the road locally are PICKUP trucks. Stop in a small town of 1,000 or 2,000 in farm and ranch country, and the streets are lined with 80% pickup trucks.
In urban DFW area, pickup trucks are 10% or less of vehicles on the road, outside commercial vehicles for lawn service, contractors, etc.
The DFW area has 7.5 million people. 10% of the vehicles serving 7.5 million people is a LOT more than 80% of vehicles serving towns of 1000 to 2000. Even much more than 100 such towns.
I read that article the other day. I started thinking this could create a market for EV trailers. A bank of batteries on a trailer could be tied to the towing vehicle to give it more range.
Or you could put a gas generator on a trailer, and that way you’d have fuel to make electricity almost anywhere you went! Oh wait…
I just read an interesting statistic from some market research. Due to political censorship I will only say that their information is that adherents to one party buy eight heavy-duty pickups for every one that other party devotees purchase.
You should probably also watch the video below from the same guy (Tyler Hoover - aka Hoovie’s Garage) as well. He peels back the curtain a bit and tells you why he got terrible range out of his Lightning. In a nutshell, he drove it like he stole it with the trailer attached. That costs you range in your gas or diesel truck, and it costs you range in your electric truck, too. Then he explains how sensationalizing things helps bring viewers, which is what you need to do if your business is making YouTube videos. (Or if you are making cable TV shows - which is where the video starts and why I’m posting a link to the middle of the video to skip over the potentially political stuff.)
He also points to another video from another YouTuber, where they got 250 of the claimed 300 mile range out of their Lightning while towing a similar weight. That guy drove much more conservatively. (It was also one of their least watched videos, demonstrating the “sensationalism” point.)
Watching videos on the internet can be entertaining. And it can be educational. But you had better be sure you’re not trying to get your education from an entertainment video.
I’m putting the video itself behind a spoiler so that hopefully you’ll read my explanation first instead of just clicking on the video. I also hope it will hide the video thumbnail, which looks very political when the video itself isn’t terribly political at all.
And some us buy PU’s for the safety side, I like being up where I see stuff over the top of most vehicles in front of me… Gives me an edge on slowdown, stops… Plus towing a 24’ RV, camping, Costco runs, and for this 6’ 2" guy, easier entry/exit… Can’t see an EV PU of real interest so far… Well, interesting, but not tempting…
Just had the '06 services, new wiper blades, ready for a road trip later this week from here in the SF area on up to Seattle, poke around, see what we see… That would be several charges… With the 38 gallon tank, ~14 mpg, it will cost a bit, part of the game…
