Ford Says Large Electric Trucks And SUVs Have 'Unresolvable' Problems
-
It's nice that their incentives finally line up with something I want. Now if only building surveillance into new cars was somehow unprofitable.
-
Hydrogen is looking better and better for those needs. My city runs a fleet of hydrogen busses and they've been a great investment so far. They are outscaling the other busses, including electric.
-
I think a lot of the fab issues are solved by it being a pure electric axles and the engine just being for maintaining the battery charge. You don't have a drive shaft that requires certain alignment from front to back. It takes skill, but not decades worth. Honestly, I think the biggest headache would just be the dashboard work.
One of the reasons I have more faith in Edison then I do other start up is is that they're the Engineers, Mechanics, and End User. Too many products today are made by people who will never use the product or have to fix the product. The margins for errors on the system are going to be way bigger and they're Right to Repair stance means that you should be able to modify their systems to be pure EV if you want. Only advertising their hybrid systems is just to keep marketing and supply chain issues simple.
-
There's a lot more than swapping in the E-axles. The engine will need to be swapped out for a small Cummins engine with the generator bolted on the back and the battery packs will need to be fabbed in place as well along with all the high voltage wiring and what not. It's certainly not an insurmountable job but it will definitely be out of reach for most people to do at home without having had a decent amount of experience.
Just to be clear, I'm extremely excited about their project, both the light-duty truck conversions and the heavy-duty EV trucks, and agree with what you're saying about the company, so don't take this as criticism of Edison or their work.
-
I suppose it's settled then, no more large trucks!
-
But how is that an unresolveable problem?
Energy density of batteries is getting higher while prices are shrinking year by year. You can of course question if makes sense to keep throwing more and more batteries at a car with the size of a yacht instead of building a more efficient vehicle. But it's not unresolveable.
The unresolveable from my perspective is the underlying physics of more weight, big tires (at slow speeds) and poor aerodynamics (at higher speeds) increase consumption. And that problem was there all the time.
-
It's 'unreasolvable' in the sense that nothing currently exists to make an EV truck match the range of an ICE truck while they're presumably dumping lots of cash at the problem currently. Whether or not batteries are cheaper and more energy dense years from now, it doesn't help them sell more 2025 model year trucks. This isn't 'unresolvable' in the sense that it can never be solved just not something that can be solved now.
-
I wish fuel cells were cheaper. I looked into it once and it was over a thousand for even a low watt unit. and that's not counting the fuel or the tank. it wouldn't be hard to hot swap a fuel cell into my ebike but a battery is just cheaper
-
More people adopt it will result in it being cheaper
-
I want an electric maverick.
