Once a year? Almost all of the miles on my truck are road trips, 10k mi a year thus far – and I am so much happier than I was in my Westy.
…aaaaaand I don’t use the truck for local solo driving much – I ride an ebike for groceries, errands, to the bar, etc. I use the truck to move dogs and heavy stuff around. I usually use it for road trips as they often involve camping or hauling a bike, surfboards, dive gear, or whatever to where I am going. An SUV would do it too – and has – as have vans. I really prefer the truck.
Maybe those ideas for charging roads aren’t so crazy after all… although I’m not sure what maintenance would look like, especially in the US where properly maintaining a bog standard road is a rare thing.
Trips aren’t users. If trip types are evenly distributed across users, 100% are affected.
And even if they are, and only 5% of users are affected by the problem this article highlights, perhaps this article targets those users. This thread is bafflingly all-or-nothing throughout.
Even if they are clustered among a subset of users every other survey says that towing is a substantially less common activity than daily transport. Every day that vehicle is in use for a non-towing activity it imposes costs on everyone else. If, like the super-majority of pickup owners in this country you use the truck for long distance towing less than a couple of times a year a rental for that task is better for everyone.
They would have gotten more range by slowing down to 65MPH.
However this is why I’m holding out for the 400+ mile range battery.
And I don’t intend on towing anything…
I don’t think there will be consumer buy-in in massive numbers until recharges are as fast as gas stops. Pull in, open a port on the side of the vehicle, pull out spent batteries, insert fresh ones, and roll on. Gas stations will be charging stations in the back room.
The only downside I see to this (or upside, depending on your worldview) is that it’ll probably end up as yet another subscription service that somehow manages to charge you despite your usage; like Comcast.
The Tesla “18-wheeler” concept involves having most of the batteries residing in the trailer, so the truck picks up a fully charged trailer for the trip.
Speaking as an IT guy, there’s loads of issues around communication protocols, and I won’t even pretend to know the sort of problems you might have with traction control and slippery conditions… as an idea I like it.
This is why I think building sites have the first potential: they can own the swapping station, and have the batteries also replace the counterweights that cranes and other heavy lifters need: it could be a principle similar to how power tools are moving to a standardised power pack. The earth movers, the supply vehicles rarely stray more than a half kilometre from the central power station, so even if they get too weak to make it back, a service vehicle can go out, pop off the dead battery, and pop in the new one.
I think you are right, though, about the rental thing. I think the EU, USA and other regulatory bodies will have to regulate it as a sort of deposit on the battery, that you own the one you have but swapping it for a fresh one means controlling who gets the difference, if you get a new one with a better load, say. And how to recycle power packs that no longer hold enough of a charge, all sorts of little things like that.
In the end, though, it’s coming. At first in a trickle, then all at once. Just like smart phones, or television, or any other tech revolution.
The Rivian (even prior to adding a towed load) has a less than favorable weight to capacity ratio - with 7,148 lbs/135kWh (link). That’s a lot of weight, compared to a late model Tesla with 80% of that energy at 60% the mass. The reported topped-out eventual Cybertruck is likely more suitable for towing with 48% more capacity at 200kWh (or 250 if some fantasies are to be believed).
This recent Hackaday thread has some interesting details on battery supply chain issues. Regarding swappable batteries - there have been proposals to implement such a scheme from time to time - barriers include high degrees of geometric integration into the vehicle frame that are unique to designs, given different goals for capacity, center of gravity, changes in charging and cooling tech etc. In smaller vehicles it is probably impractical to dictate such standardized design rules. (Not to mention that making the one component that wears out in EV’s easily replaceable might be a hard sell to the MBA’s). Maybe trucks with looser space constraints would be easier to implement. I’d look to developments in China and India for these kinds of advancements.
Already we see a shift in China’s EV market to Lithium Iron Phosphate chemistries over the Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (LiNiMnCoO2) types that have traditionally been used in Tesla’s etc (aka NMC - this is the variety in laptops and cell phones). LiFePo is less energy dense, but has far better overall characteristics in robustness, lifespan and safety, probably a good way to go for bigger vehicles. (Tesla is adopting LiFePo in some models)
Here’s a cool solar powered van project - they have to make a lot of recharging stops.
The question of whether everyone who buys a truck needs a truck is a legitimate one, but I don’t understand complaining about the very existence of discussion topics which are of self-evident interest.
I have dealt with some of the BMW guys here in Munich, and I think the issue with traction control and so on is already solved, more or less. The communication protocol less so, but I expect that would move to a wireless form. The general idea being reducing connectors to improve problems caused by bad seating, water seepage, and so on.
Valid point. I’m not sure how heavy the trailer they were pulling in this, but it’s important to remember that, while the Rivian is rated for towing 11,000 lbs, it’s the rough size of a Toyota Tacoma, which is rated for only 4,000 to 6,800 lbs. It’s probably not fair to complain about the R1T’s range when it’s hauling around F250 Super Duty loads.
My main gig is industrial communications (in renewable energy farms, these days).
The comms problem is absolutely solved (CAN Bus), and has been for a couple decades.
Trailers usually have an electrical plug into the towing vehicle. CAN Bus is sturdy enough to include a communication link in there. Towing might present vibration and water seepage issues I’m not familiar with, but I’d still bet on that over wireless.
Don’t do wireless on anything you want to be a) safe, and b) reliable, and c) affordable. With wireless, you can pick any two of those.
