Towing long distances with a Rivian still seems less than ideal

boing
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That might be true, but it’s a pretty much irrelevant point. For me, that once or twice a year I borrow my dad’s pickup. But what happens in 5 to 10 years when most of the new vehicle market converts to electric? What if we don’t magically develop better battery technology? Even if EV charging stations where as plentiful as gas stations that means a lot of dead time waiting for recharges every 100 miles.

North Carolina is a fairly large state, and from my house to a mountain destination (like Boone) is +80 miles. A 50 mile radius means I could go get some supplies from the local Home Depot, but that’s maxing out the “truck” utility part of this vehicle. I know plenty of people who tow small boats and trailers much farther than 50 miles at a time.

So we are going to add weight to haul more capacity? How far do you need to take that? 100kW battery pack? Are we talking $15k at a weight of 500-800 lbs? Why not just a petrol generator that could power the vehicle while in transport? Would pollution really be an issue - since you are only going to use it once or twice a year?

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If they could improve the technology…solar panels or turbines (for a similar purpose to the hood scoop).

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Are you…disappointed…in @jlw 's post?

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What I am seeing here is that there is an untapped market for making batteries on trailers as well, with their own motors in the wheels. Start with, say, a camper that can be hooked with your EV so that it also can provide extra battery power, much like how you can hook external batteries to your phone. Or have its own motors on the axle, to help with acceleration and reclaim braking energy. Things like that.

This video is a case of “doable, but still needs work here and there.” Germans call it Jammern auf hohe Niveau.

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And scope to improve aerodynamics of trailers (and at the same time including solar panels?).

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Visions of Mark Whatney, now that you mention it.

Actually, I am thinking that what is missing is a way to swap batteries in a sort of “pit stop”: pull in, have the depleted unit removed, a fresh one put in its bay. A solution that, now that I think of it, could actually make sense on construction sites. Forklifts are already electric, having electric earth movers with swappable cells means they can stay on site, with a small buggy to move the heavy batteries between the charging station and the on-site vehicle to make downtime less than with internal combustion vehicles and refueling.

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Hey, we’re allowed to do that, it’s in the Grundgesetz.

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Speaking as a huge renewables fan, who gets to work in the field: solar panels and wind turbines both simply will not do the job.

Wind turbines would just add drag, and they can’t produce more push than their drag. That’s a really important point. You could only use the turbine as a brake, not at cruise.

Solar panels convert sun power to electrical power. On a super-clear day near the tropics, sun power works out to around 1 kW-ish per square meter (call it 0.12 hp / sqf).

To power a towing truck at cruise on the highway, I would guess you’d need around 30 kW (very optimistically), or about 40 hp. (if someone has more accurate numbers, I’m happy to fix this, but it won’t make a huge difference to the conclusion unless there’s a huge difference to towing power).

If your panels were 100% efficient, the solar array to power that would be about 30 m2 or 320 sqf. A Ford F150 is about 6’8" wide. A solar panel this wide would have to be 48 feet long.

But solar panels are, at most, around 20% efficient. Let’s be super-optimistic, and assume they’ll be 33% efficient in 10 years. You’d need three times the area calculated above, or roughly 150 feet long. Bigger, as you get further from the tropics, or cloudier.

This is why solar farms are usually many many acres big.

But right now, this isn’t a towing vehicle. And it looks like towing will be one of the last problems solved by electric ground vehicles (but probably solved before aviation).

You can either say “I need to tow medium distances regularly” and this doesn’t fit your needs.

Or you can say “I only need to tow a few times a year; it’s a lot cheaper to own / operate an electric car for those other 350 days a year and rent a damn truck when I need one, thereby saving me $30k over 10 years” [your numbers may vary].

But the important bit: electric vehicles already cover most use cases. Whether people can live with that and work around its limitations is currently a marketing problem more than a technical close-the-gaps problem. Time will tell if that turns into a technical problem (e.g. even better batteries).

ETA: solar panel efficiency notes and last paragraph.

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Reminds me of the following Technology Connections, which I first came across, I believe, on BoingBoing:

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So, you’re telling me it’s now possible to drive an electric pickup towing 8,000 pounds behind it across country and you’ll have plenty of places to stop and charge? Which just a few years ago wouldn’t have been possible? And this is… a problem???

Look, I get it. Sure, we’d like to go more than 100 miles between charges while towing or hauling a heavy load. Suck it up. The first gas powered pickups likely couldn’t even tow anything, but no one said “oh, no, that doesn’t fly,” did they? No. This, too, will improve and improve rapidly. People will start figuring out how to add batteries to their trailers for extra charge (maybe even power those trailer wheels to help with drain). Better batteries are coming.

We’re at the start of this. Having an all electric pickup for those who do NOT need towing is a massive win. For the rest, the gas powered or hybrid models will suffice until the range is improved.

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It would be a higher win if people in the US didn’t feel their internalised toxic masculinity meant they had to drive a “truck” when a normal car is better suited to 90% of modern lifestyles but I guess an electric “truck” is better than nothing.

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For almost everyone. Short trips under 30 miles account for 95% of all trips. Of trips over 50 miles 90% are between 50 and 250. Trips not towing anything are more common than trips towing something. We have the stats.
https://nhts.ornl.gov/
I strongly recommend only viewing that on some type of non-mobile device. It is one of the least mobile friendly sites I’ve seen.

Assuming battery tech suddenly comes to a complete halt, and electric adoption speeds up far beyond what we see, we’d still be fine. You either reserve gas vehicles for such situations or you combine rail and roads like we should be doing for a lot of long haul loads to begin with. Right now the most popular vehicle in the country is a tremendously inefficient vehicle for more than 90% of trips it takes.

We’re cooking the planet, killing tens of thousands of people a year with air pollution and killing tons of pedestrians to keep the marketing image of trucks in place.

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I was thinking along the lines of a selective apparatus for extended range, not full power. Rivian already has regenerative braking, which must be a drag as well (pun intended) :man_shrugging:

Not to mention the lifeline a small solar panel would be if you were say, to run out of electricity in the Nevada desert. Also, as many people have discussed above, extended range is still better than nothing at all.

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Over here in the UK, the Ranger is a big truck. I’d like an F150, but I doubt I could find anywhere to park it!

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I think the complainers are all a bunch of pearl clutching controversy seekers, the post is very mild and compliments the Rivian. This issue of distance, towing and hauling is legit. Road trips are real.

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It just tells you how illogical people can be. They’ll spend ten thousand dollars or more extra on a truck (not to mention the massive costs of low gas mileage associated with high-towing capacity trucks). They could rent a bigger truck for that one weekend and come out WAY ahead financially.

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time and time again, on any discussion of trucks, there are the demographic facts of who buys trucks and what they do with them; vs individual anecdotes.

“but but I have a truck and I simply HAVE TO tow a fifth wheel trailer and my boat 3 times a year and landscaping supplies and I live in a rural spot where I need the clearance and 4WD and often make 600 mile trips that require my truck!” Of course you specifically do that, because that’s what your specific needs are and why you bought a truck that can specifically do those things.

Most people who buy trucks these days are probably buying them as big, high-up luxury vehicles that can “do anything”, not buying them because a pickup truck is actually the proper solution to their specific problems. However, INDIVIDUAL people and specific groups of people are definitely buying trucks because they specifically need a truck.

This particular truck is only so-so at towing things, compared to a big turbodiesel with a shorter rear end, transmission and oil coolers, and one of those bed-mount hitch thingies. Personally, an R1T would be massively, massively over-capable of anything I personally would ever want to do in the next ten years.

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Road trips are one of the worst reasons to pick (or not pick) a vehicle. Using a once-per-year event to determine which vehicle fits your needs is completely illogical. People will rent a UHaul when they move, but nobody seems to realize that they could do the same thing for their annual road trip. And a 2700-mile road trip towing a boat? That’s not a typical road trip. It’s an extreme example done for the clicks by the YouTuber.

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Why not just power the trailer?

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I know you’re right and yet I am in love with the (original) concept of Gran Turismo

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