New EV F-150 Lightning

[Rusty_S85]

Personally, I think EV's are the coming thing. But, I stress COMING as I don't believe they have "arrived". I see two major problems with them at the moment for the kind of driving I tend to do, which is long trips with many days of ~600 miles/day.

The issues I see are:

• Batteries: At this point in time driving 600 miles will require at least one recharge, and that assumes that there's a recharging station at exactly the mid-point of the trip. Otherwise you'll have to recharge more than once, and recharging takes a lot of time. But, if the manufacturers were to standardize the batteries and be able to swap them out in 20 minutes for fully charged ones, that would be a game changer.

• Recharging Stations: There is no standardization of the stations nor connections to the vehicle. And until we have standardization I don't think there will be a charging station at the point in your trip where you need it.

Again, I think EV's are the coming thing. But "the system" isn't in place for my kind of driving.

There was a time when there were charging stations across the country and people thought electric cars would replace gas. Then the electric starter came out and put the nail in the electric car. They have tried numerous times to reboot electric as well as hybrids as well as alternative fueled vehicles and they all failed in the end and never caught on.

Be it the baker electric car of the teens

Or the Doble

Or the Owens Magnetic, the car of a thousand speeds

Or even Fords Hemp car that was never given an offical name and was fully constructed of hemp based materials and was powered by hemp based fuel.

All of these and more failed on doing what they were claimed to do that is replace the combustion engine and they have still yet to do that to this day. I dont see it happening any time soon, in fact I could see the Ford Nucleon being produced and released before electric/hybrids take over.

For those that dont know the Ford Nucleon was a 1958 concept of a nuclear powered vehicle as the "car of the future".

[Rusty_S85]

I am no engineer but why is it that we can charge batteries on our vehicle now but there is no way to incorporate that into these new EV vehicles? Is there no kind of alternator or generator that can be designed to be put on the moving part of the vehicle that would at least give some amount of charge while you are moving? Must be something I am not seeing or overlooking since I know they have some of the worlds best engineers working on them.

As was stated before it goes against the law of physics.

Lets say you are going down the road consuming 50A of power to maintain speed. Now lets say you have a generator running off one of the wheels to create electricity to charge the battery, which youll need to create 70A of power to off set the 50A consumption to charge the battery. This load of generating 70A of power now increases the load on the drive motors making the 50A of power to maintain speed to shoot up to 85A.

In a nut shell when ever you try to use something to generate the electricity to run itself it becomes a never ending escalation between energy consumption and energy output. As output goes up consumption goes up more.

[ArdWrknTrk]

Personally, I think EV's are the coming thing. But, I stress COMING as I don't believe they have "arrived". I see two major problems with them at the moment for the kind of driving I tend to do, which is long trips with many days of ~600 miles/day.

The issues I see are:

• Batteries: At this point in time driving 600 miles will require at least one recharge, and that assumes that there's a recharging station at exactly the mid-point of the trip. Otherwise you'll have to recharge more than once, and recharging takes a lot of time. But, if the manufacturers were to standardize the batteries and be able to swap them out in 20 minutes for fully charged ones, that would be a game changer.

• Recharging Stations: There is no standardization of the stations nor connections to the vehicle. And until we have standardization I don't think there will be a charging station at the point in your trip where you need it.

Again, I think EV's are the coming thing. But "the system" isn't in place for my kind of driving.

There was a time when there were charging stations across the country and people thought electric cars would replace gas. Then the electric starter came out and put the nail in the electric car. They have tried numerous times to reboot electric as well as hybrids as well as alternative fueled vehicles and they all failed in the end and never caught on.

Be it the baker electric car of the teens

Or the Doble

Or the Owens Magnetic, the car of a thousand speeds

Or even Fords Hemp car that was never given an offical name and was fully constructed of hemp based materials and was powered by hemp based fuel.

All of these and more failed on doing what they were claimed to do that is replace the combustion engine and they have still yet to do that to this day. I dont see it happening any time soon, in fact I could see the Ford Nucleon being produced and released before electric/hybrids take over.

For those that dont know the Ford Nucleon was a 1958 concept of a nuclear powered vehicle as the "car of the future".

Gotta love those '50's concept cars like the Lincoln Futura.

Rusty, I think people have to get away from the idea of going to the filling station.

If it's down to Amazon building their own fleet because they see the advantages of electric over ICE, then they will lead.

Delivery vans certainly spend more hours on the road each day than 98% of vehicles do.

I'm not really impressed by any of the electric trucks on offer. Ford, Rivian, Tesla, Lordstown, Hummer, whatever...

(though 775 foot pounds does sound impressive)

Four doors and a tiny "bed" isn't my idea of a truck.

If I wanted a Ridgeline I'd buy a Honda.

Obviously I'm old and out of touch with 'the lifestyle' these vehicles are being sold to.

[rcarlisle]

Obviously I'm old and out of touch with 'the lifestyle' these vehicles are being sold to.

ME TOO!!! I just have no desire to learn the new system. And I'm an old internal combustion guy.

[Gsmblue]

Obviously I'm old and out of touch with 'the lifestyle' these vehicles are being sold to.

ME TOO!!! I just have no desire to learn the new system. And I'm an old internal combustion guy.

$100 refundable deposit paid.

But I probably will not go through with it unless I can tow my 7300lbs airstream 200 miles when the battery is new. 140miles when the battery is old and degraded.

I only like towing 3-4 hours. I feel like any more is a waste and you are driving past a bunch of cool stuff!

[Rusty_S85]

Gotta love those '50's concept cars like the Lincoln Futura.

Rusty, I think people have to get away from the idea of going to the filling station.

If it's down to Amazon building their own fleet because they see the advantages of electric over ICE, then they will lead.

Delivery vans certainly spend more hours on the road each day than 98% of vehicles do.

I'm not really impressed by any of the electric trucks on offer. Ford, Rivian, Tesla, Lordstown, Hummer, whatever...

(though 775 foot pounds does sound impressive)

Four doors and a tiny "bed" isn't my idea of a truck.

If I wanted a Ridgeline I'd buy a Honda.

Obviously I'm old and out of touch with 'the lifestyle' these vehicles are being sold to.

Yep there was a guy that actually built a metal bodied replica of one and another guy building a fiberglass body replica one but after he built the first one he modified the buck he made off a surviving fiberglass duplicate built back then to replicate the 60s batmobile. That really sucks because I would sell everything I own to build a replica of the Futura and throw late model powertrain under the hood.

Problem is though that may be fine for urban use but how well will the electric handle rural use that is the big question. Electric could be possible in large urban centers like Houston or New York where you dont have to drive very far to go to the store. I feel where the ice beats out the electric is in rural areas like here in Texas in rural areas you can in many instances drive 60 miles one way just to go to the store. Banking on a 100 mile battery range at 75 mph (which is our highway speed limit) you would have to plug in at the store just to be able to make it back home in that instance. Why I have always said electric cars are only good for short commutes not long. While Amazon trucks may be using electric in urban areas they are still as far as I have seen gas/diesel powered in rural areas.

As far as the offerings of the electric truck market, no one will offer a truck like a ice truck with any kind of capability because it will reduce the battery range of said truck so they build them to reduce the amount of weight you can carry to try and offset the power consumption and maintain a reasonable 100 - 130 mile on a charge.

Can you imagine how far a all electric 1 ton truck would go hauling 1 ton worth of cargo? I bet you it wont be 100 - 130 miles it would be around 50 to 70 miles.

[81f100custom]

Gotta love those '50's concept cars like the Lincoln Futura.

Rusty, I think people have to get away from the idea of going to the filling station.

If it's down to Amazon building their own fleet because they see the advantages of electric over ICE, then they will lead.

Delivery vans certainly spend more hours on the road each day than 98% of vehicles do.

I'm not really impressed by any of the electric trucks on offer. Ford, Rivian, Tesla, Lordstown, Hummer, whatever...

(though 775 foot pounds does sound impressive)

Four doors and a tiny "bed" isn't my idea of a truck.

If I wanted a Ridgeline I'd buy a Honda.

Obviously I'm old and out of touch with 'the lifestyle' these vehicles are being sold to.

Yep there was a guy that actually built a metal bodied replica of one and another guy building a fiberglass body replica one but after he built the first one he modified the buck he made off a surviving fiberglass duplicate built back then to replicate the 60s batmobile. That really sucks because I would sell everything I own to build a replica of the Futura and throw late model powertrain under the hood.

Problem is though that may be fine for urban use but how well will the electric handle rural use that is the big question. Electric could be possible in large urban centers like Houston or New York where you dont have to drive very far to go to the store. I feel where the ice beats out the electric is in rural areas like here in Texas in rural areas you can in many instances drive 60 miles one way just to go to the store. Banking on a 100 mile battery range at 75 mph (which is our highway speed limit) you would have to plug in at the store just to be able to make it back home in that instance. Why I have always said electric cars are only good for short commutes not long. While Amazon trucks may be using electric in urban areas they are still as far as I have seen gas/diesel powered in rural areas.

As far as the offerings of the electric truck market, no one will offer a truck like a ice truck with any kind of capability because it will reduce the battery range of said truck so they build them to reduce the amount of weight you can carry to try and offset the power consumption and maintain a reasonable 100 - 130 mile on a charge.

Can you imagine how far a all electric 1 ton truck would go hauling 1 ton worth of cargo? I bet you it wont be 100 - 130 miles it would be around 50 to 70 miles.

As I have looked around into this further it looks like they are going to be making gas generators to carry around with you. What sense does that make? Just keep the gas engine and go about your business as usual. I mean the whole reason to go with a EV was to cut emissions right now your going to carry a gas burner around that probably emits more than the car would because I would guess the portable generators probably do not run and clean as the emission built into the car.

https://www.diy-experts.net/charge-ev/

And what about this side of it after they are used up? Hope someone is thinking all this through before it turns into a big disaster.

 

https://tekdeeps.com/a-field-becomes-the-graveyard-of-thousands-of-electric-cars/

[ArdWrknTrk]

As I have looked around into this further it looks like they are going to be making gas generators to carry around with you. What sense does that make? Just keep the gas engine and go about your business as usual. I mean the whole reason to go with a EV was to cut emissions right now your going to carry a gas burner around that probably emits more than the car would because I would guess the portable generators probably do not run and clean as the emission built into the car.

https://www.diy-experts.net/charge-ev/

And what about this side of it after they are used up? Hope someone is thinking all this through before it turns into a big disaster.

 

https://tekdeeps.com/a-field-becomes-the-graveyard-of-thousands-of-electric-cars/

It doesn't seem to me that it was anything about those vehicles being electric that caused them to be abandoned in a field. 🙄

If the company hadn't neglected them and then gone bankrupt their contract would still be playing out.

Car sharing (even scooter and bike sharing) has pretty much failed because of abuse.

It's a well intentioned social experiment that refuses to accept that people aren't well intentioned.

Back on topic: I am absolutely sure that Ford has done their homework before commiting to the Lightning design.

They know their target market, how many miles are driven and passengers are carried, or they wouldn't have built the truck they did.

Edit, yep this Ford quote from Ars confirms my conjecture about why the mile range....

"More than 145 million miles of telematics data show that for the average F-150 commercial customer in the US, 95 percent of their daily travel is less than 174 miles," said Ted Cannis, general manager, Ford North America commercial business. "Commercial customers track their business expenses closely—they buy what they need and not a penny more."

 

[ArdWrknTrk]

It doesn't seem to me that it was anything about those vehicles being electric that caused them to be abandoned in a field. 🙄

If the company hadn't neglected them and then gone bankrupt their contract would still be playing out.

Car sharing (even scooter and bike sharing) has pretty much failed because of abuse.

It's a well intentioned social experiment that refuses to accept that people aren't well intentioned.

Back on topic: I am absolutely sure that Ford has done their homework before commiting to the Lightning design.

They know their target market, how many miles are driven and passengers are carried, or they wouldn't have built the truck they did.

Edit, yep this Ford quote from Ars confirms my conjecture about why the mile range....

"More than 145 million miles of telematics data show that for the average F-150 commercial customer in the US, 95 percent of their daily travel is less than 174 miles," said Ted Cannis, general manager, Ford North America commercial business. "Commercial customers track their business expenses closely—they buy what they need and not a penny more."

This video popped up in my feed today.

While I know the Model 3 Performance isn't an F-150, it does show that for many the infrastructure is there for whatever distance you want to travel.

Electrify America has a ways to catch up with the Supercharger network, but they have billions left to pay into it, so it is coming.

[swampedout]

This video popped up in my feed today.

While I know the Model 3 Performance isn't an F-150, it does show that for many the infrastructure is there for whatever distance you want to travel.

Electrify America has a ways to catch up with the Supercharger network, but they have billions left to pay into it, so it is coming.

As someone who will inevitably be living through the shift towards all electric vehicles, I appreciate this conversation. I know electric motors can provide a lot of instantaneous torque and I can't help but like that. I've been doing the best I can to study electronics the past couple years because whether I like it or not, it's happening.

My dad tells a story about the first time he had trouble with an early fuel-injected Plymouth he had, and how shocked and confused the neighborhood mechanic was when he came over and popped the hood and couldn't find the carbuerator. I'm trying at least to not be that guy.

Luckily, I can't afford any of these vehicles so I have plenty of time to see how all this plays out.

I think it's a fine looking truck. I'm glad they didn't try to make it look like the Tesla Cybertruck. Its definitely following the trend of electricity-themed names, which I'm sure will get played out soon.

I also think Ford was smart to beat its competitors to the punch on an electric truck.