Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range
theverge.com
theverge.com
Vaporware until they get a production line though, and the absence of airbag is somewhat worrying when it advertises a top speed of 127mph and 0-60 in 4.5, at a GVWR 10klbs it's outside the light truck regs (8.5klbs GVWR) and thus doesn't require them but still...
Of note, the Verge article is light on useful pictures, there are other sites with interesting pics especially of the interior: http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1111790_bollinger-b1-the-...
And while it has the same dimensions as a Wrangler it avertises 2~3 times the curb weight and towing capacity and almost twice the cargo volume (rear seats stowed). And the maximum ground clearance is pretty ridiculous as well (advertised as adjustable from 10 to 20, most trucks seem to be between 8 and 12)
(For non-Europeans, link: http://petrolblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Peugeot-306... )
Americans seem to love^H^H^H^Hdemand huge vehicles, but those huge vehicles rarely have the clearance and towing capacity to actually be "utility" despite being advertised that way :-(
Not just that, but his $300 trailer probably doesn't have brakes. It's lunacy to tow 2500 unbraked pounds behind a Honda Fit.
That works out to 1466 pounds. The guy was towing 2500 pounds with a Honda Fit that (unless it's a hybrid) weighs less than 2400 lbs for the car itself.
Do you think the Fit's brakes are designed to safely stop 2x the design weight? Plus the stability just wouldn't be there. Plus any appreciable "tongue weight" behind the back wheels will make the front end light. Bad for control. Wikipedia touches on the issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towing#Towing_safety
Here's another counterexample. The Porsche Cayenne can tow 7716 pounds (3500 kilos) braked, but only 1653 pounds (750 kilos) unbraked. And it's a vehicle that weighs twice as much as the subcompact Fit: http://www.porsche.com/usa/models/cayenne/cayenne-models/cay...
The Fit is 1t and was pulling 1.1t unbraked, 110% of its weight.
But a friend who is more auto-literate looked into it and said in Europe the way trailers are positioned is different somehow such that the weight on the hitch is different.
Also more aggressive speed limits on trailers and other safety regulations enforced on the drivers.
So I don't know, it might actually be partially legitimate.
The B1 can fit 12' with the liftgates closed.
-You can easily haul very limited quantities of lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack.
I've tried once to put the maximum legal (well, in Norway, at any rate) weight of 200kg/450lbs on my Land Cruiser's roof rack, just to see how it affected handling.
I've only felt more nervous in a car once, and that was in a Congolese taxi seemingly bent on having a go on the sound barrier. In the dark. With no lights.
The body roll was extreme, and any bump in the road led to damped oscillations like you wouldn't believe. After a bit of trial and error, I found that slightly less than half the max allowable weight was about as much as the vehicle could take and still be somewhat drivable.
Come to think of it, an estate wagon of some sort would probably be better for hauling stuff on the roof - sits much, much lower.
Re: what you said about wagons, I think the Subaru Outback is actually the most practical ICE vehicle out there. Pretty high clearance, very powerful engine, great towing capacity, good roof rack options, ample trunk space, and low centre of gravity.
I just wish they made one with an electric motor and a plug.
Land Rover vehicles are made by Jaguar Land Rover. The term "Land Rover" usually refers to either the Land Rover Defender (a bulky, tractor-looking SUV that isn't legal in the USA* due to a lack of safety features and emissions controls) or a variety of luxury SUVs that are remarkably good off-road but suffer from questionable reliability.
Land Cruisers are made by Toyota. The term "Land Cruiser" can refer to two totally separate Toyota vehicles. The J20, J40, and J70 models are known for being incredibly sturdy, reliable, and versatile vehicles, while the J50, J60, J80, J100, and J200 models are luxury SUVs; the J200 has a base MSRP of USD$86,000. Toyota doesn't sell the rugged, non-luxury models in the USA, although unlike in the case of the Land Rover Defender this may be more due to market analysis than legality.
There's no way to know from the original comment whether they were driving a rugged Land Cruiser or a luxury Land Cruiser. I've never driven either of them, but I'm sure that they behave very differently.
*Yes, I know that the person who commented specified that they were in Norway. I'm just adding the bit about Land Rovers not being legal in the USA (with a few exceptions) so that Americans like myself won't be scratching their heads trying to remember what Defenders look like :-)
Sorry, you're totally wrong about that. Rest-of-world (ROW) Defenders are absolutely legal in the US, as are any vehicle > 25 years old with original spec motor. Also legal are North American Spec (NAS) Defenders, which were imported for three years in the 90s.
Source: I am the co-founder of NAS-ROW, the Defender forum. https://nas-row.com
P.S. That's a neat site! I'm glad that there's an American Defender community. Defenders are beautiful vehicles, and on the rare occasions that I see one I always try to get a picture with it :-)
It is more a matter of physics than utilitarian/luxury, I suspect - 4x4s ride tall (my roof rack is 6'8" above ground), so to behave properly with a significant load on the roof, you'd need lots of mass to keep the centre of gravity low while also requiring suspension stiff enough to be unusable to keep the roll in check.
Even if it’s a little worse in terms of the math, electric utility vehicles are strongly appealing due to their torque characteristics and fewer parts which always seem to be the ones you forgot spares of and such. With passenger sedans you’re playing the efficiency game, but with off-road, utility, industrial, and so on, there is more to think about when considering EV. Might not be that weird. (I’m a Wrangler owner who reads about electric conversions constantly — look at South Korean work on Jeeps — and I completely get where Bollinger is coming from.)
The racing world proves this conclusively. Watch Formula 1 or NASCAR and you'll see 200 mph crashes where everyone walks away. Watch motorcycle racing and see guys fall of their bikes at all kinds of speeds and just glide on their backs until they stop, get up and walk away. I went off track at Willow Springs raceway doing 120 mph, no big deal.
People survive crashes in racing regardless of speed not because the crashes typically take place over a long period of time but because they have a seat that fits them well, straps keeping them in it and heat restraints.
Also, going off track is not crashing.
Going off track at 120 MPH was not fun. Dirt, rocks, slashed two tires. Beyond that it was uneventful. The speed just makes it last longer and probably contributed to the huge holes on the tires.
You can have a crash on the highway at 100 MPH and have it be just an uneventful other than a crunched-up car. It's a function of the delta in speed AND the delta in acceleration, angle, forces, etc. In other words, if the car in front of you is decelerating gently vs. violently, etc. Too many permutations to list.
What you don't want is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No7v2ps6ukI
It doesn't even look like they are travelling fast at all.
No, we're agreeing on that.
I'm saying that most of the benefit in a typical racing situation comes from seats and restraints. Look at some of the wrecks from the cup series race last weekend at Indianapolis. They're not walking away because the wreck took a long time. They're walking away because they weren't bouncing around inside.
The human body can survive plenty of G forces.
http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm
"Stapp'd endured 25 Gs. It was the equivalent of a Mach 1.6 ejection at 40,000 feet, a jolt in excess of that experienced by a driver who crashes into a red brick wall at over 120 miles per hour. Only it had lasted perhaps nine times longer. And it had burst nearly every capillary in Stapp's eyeballs. "
"Stapp had already proven what he'd set out to prove: that a pilot, if adequately protected, could survive a high speed, high altitude ejection"
Yet it is true that airbags have probably saved millions of lives as well as untold people from painful, expensive and life changing injuries.
There is no way I would buy a car without airbags. This is one reason I am not into vintage or collectible cars, they are simply not safe and I do not care to drive them.
What do you think an airbag's purpose is?
Google "HANS device". That's a restraint.
The belt does that unless you literally have a rubber neck.
The point of the airbag is to restrain your head so that it does not snap forward too fast and break your neck (heads are heavy, and necks were not built for sudden forward deceleration), that's why it needs to inflate so fast: it has to be fully inflated before you faceplant in it, so that it can slow down your head's forward movement, that's why it has vents and starts deflating as soon as it's fully inflated, and by the time you've stopped it is fully deflated.
If it were a cushion it would have no reason to deflate on its own and the deflation would not, in fact, make any sense at all.
> Google "HANS device". That's a restraint.
The HANS device is a better restraint, it is also a much more cumbersome one and requires wearing a helmet, nobody is going to wear a HANS in their while driving to the corner store.
...and more interestingly, none of the cars have airbags. What they do have, however, are very tight restraints.
The rest of you are welcome to the damned things and the undoubtedly enhanced security they provide. Me, I shall never be thoroughly comfortable with a giant armed boxing glove pointed at my head.
[Edit: typo]
I reckon what's more useful than an airbag in all situations, though, is a good restraint system.
Good thing we have solid engineering and scientific studies proving the safety then.
An airbag is a supplementary restraint system. It does not replace or take precedence over the primary restraint system (a.k.a. the seat belt). That's what I meant when I reckoned it to be less critical; the airbag does you little good (and in fact is a heck of a lot more dangerous) if you're not wearing a seat belt.
Now, if this truck didn't even have seatbelts, then I'd be a lot more worried.
The problem, though, is that when an insurance company does that, it colors the title of the vehicle (e.g. "salvage title"), which makes it harder to sell and reduces its resale value.
They in turn sell it, where one of two things happens.
* It is parted out for spares for other cars.
* Someone actually repairs and resells it. This is one of the things you have to look out for when buying a used car. It may not be difficult to repair it cosmetically, but crumple zones are one use only.
Second, I will gladly pay extra for such a highly effective safety feature.
Third, I'm quite certain the medical costs saved by airbags every year will more than offset the cost of installing them on every new car. And that's just cold calculation, without bringing the moral value into it.
It's worth noting that a lot of this is due to massively improved crumple zone technology - older cars have smaller and sturdier crumple zones, meaning the cars drive away from accidents more intact (although the human being inside might be pretty messed up). New cars take much more damage in relatively small accidents to disperse as much energy as possible. Bad for resale value, but good for human survival.
It's usually the kinetic energy of the body that needs to be dissipated, modestly increasing the time it takes that to happen dramatically decreases the forces involved.
I've got good news and bad news.
OK, give me the bad news.
He's dead, Jim.
What's the good news?
The insurance company didnt total the car!The statistics are pretty easily google-able so I'll only bother linking one article here: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5410761/ns/us_news/t/around-saved-...
That's not to say we shouldn't work on safer airbags, especially for children, or hold manufacturers accountable for faults/failures; of course we should. But saying cars are somehow safer without airbags flies in the face of the available evidence.
[edit] I realize you didn't explicitly say that airbags are not safe ('good idea or not is debatable', 'may or may not'), but you strongly imply that with 'Airbags are a false sense of security'.
First time I had ever heard of the last part of that quote. A quick check shows 30 states have primary seatbelt laws. As these include all the big states (NY, CA, TX, FL,...) I would have to think we are at 2/3 of the population.
That's not the case (emphasis on the "way up" part). The average new car price is over $33,000 in the US. Airbags, including side curtains, are a trivial portion of that cost. Even if you averaged it all out by including all airbag deployments and the cost to replace them, you're talking about a net 1%-2% of the cost of a new vehicle's purchase price (much less if we were to count the total expenditures across the lifetime of the vehicle, including fuel and routine maintenance).
"NHTSA estimates that when side curtain airbags become standard to meet the new side impact regulations in 2013, the airbags will add about $33 to the overall cost of the vehicle. Side curtains are slightly more expensive from OEM suppliers than traditional chest airbags (which cost about $50 apiece, on average) [source: Automotive News]"
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regu...
Self driving cars will probably take over before "front blind spot detection" becomes a thing.
Russian Roulette is outrageously dangerous.
Old cars are just ever-so-slightly more dangerous than new cars.
There's a reason your age is the biggest factor in your car insurance premium.
Making it statistically less likely for a car full of drunk teenagers to go off a cliff on their way to prom affects road fatality statistics the same way decreases in infant mortality increases life expectancy.
The primary reduction in traffic fatalities is due to keeping "undesirable people" off the roads, increases in vehicle performance (modern cars can stop on and turn a relative dime compared to cars from decades ago)that turn many accidents into close calls.
Chasing safety is a lot like fuel economy. It's a steady march of small improvements all of which are compromises. I and many other people don't want to be injured in a likely accident scenario for a small reduction in the likelihood of death in an unlikely accident scenario. I also don't want the spare tire of my SUV under the trunk floor where I can't access it without removing cargo just to get .01 extra mpg.
I'm sure there are analyses out there of the probability of serious injury or death in various crash scenarios in various types of cars.
Also, I think the shoulder belt brake tends to work better than you imply (I had a big scratch when I collided with someone that crossed the centerline, I didn't hit my face on anything, despite the lack of airbags).
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/26/us/study-shows-air-bags-sa...
There's a more comprehensive summary here: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
have no idea why are you saying that. Probably you just _think_ so, and you've probably never been in a "relatively minor" accident, let alone in the accident where the car flies off the road and violently turns in every possible direction while flying and skidding upon landing. I was. Thanks God and Federal regulation authority for the seat belts mandate. Fixed by the seat belts it was like the scariest, very high-G, twists and turns, amusement park ride. Without the seat belts even the survival in that situation would hardly be possible, let alone avoiding heavy traumas and disability. The airbags didn't deploy for whatever reason.
Also your car's engine is a series of constant explosions connected to a giant tank of gas.
I'd rather have a sore neck from driving into a wall at 35mph than have a concussion from bouncing my face off of a bag full of high pressure gas.
Side curtain airbags are a much more useful technology than frontal ones.
Edit: Fire needs three things, fuel, oxygen and ignition. The atmosphere has oxygen. A gasoline vehicle keeps the fuel and ignition relatively far from each other. A battery contains both fuel and a source of ignition in close proximity. A punctured gas tank will not cause a fire every time. A punctured battery pack will cause a fire basically every time. In many cases a rusted out or leaking fuel system is noticed well before it starts a fire. There isn't much opportunity to notice a high-amperage short before it's a problem. Putting out a fire is even harder on electric vehicles. You can't throw foam and water on an internal short. There are many advantages of electric vehicles. Fire safety is not one of them.
Great, then there's nothing to worry about... but if it is a serious crash, you'll wish you had an airbag to bounce off of rather than a hard steering column, dashboard and windshield.
If OEMs would just be less trigger happy with frontal airbag deployment then I'd be satisfied but the problem with that is that then you get the Concerned Mothers Association(TM) complaining about OEMs not doing everything they can to "save lives" and publicizing a few edge cases.
You are an edge case.
Not only do I wear a seatbelt since that incident but I'm also, by orders of magnitude, a more conscientious driver than I was prior.
[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
Turning an accident that would have left one only bruised from the seatbelt into one that also includes a broken nose and injuries to one's hands and arms is fairly common.
That's not really a good thing. Having something to catch your head helps prevent neck injuries. In a high-speed crash, the forces involved could actually be debilitating and/or life-threatening.
You do understand that airbags are bombs. The inflation mechanism literally uses explosives. They can and have killed people especially children and the elderly. Early generation airbags are more violent and dangerous because the standard was to protect an unbelted driver.
Who puts children in front of airbags?? The car is half-way covered in stickers saying not to.
If all you care about are deaths per distance then you probably want the former. If you care about minimizing accidents that require any medical care reducing the number of small explosions near people's faces is the better bet. Someone else posted the a NYT link that's relevant.
This is for driver's frontal airbags only. Passenger airbags and side curtain airbags are less bad because people usually sit farther from the passenger airbag and there is less support in side impacts.
An air bag might have reduced my injury to a sore neck.
P.S. I was in a 1964 Chevrolet C10 Pickup that I had installed seat belts in.
An airbag isn't there to protect you from rear-endings. That's what headrests (which your '64 C10 did not have) are for.
Depends on the manufacturer of the airbags...so YMMV.
/I'm looking at you, Takata...
I always drive with a certain slight feeling of unease because of that explosively triggerable thing in front of me. I'd rather not. In no way do I wish to stop anybody else from having these devices in their vehicles - I just wish I weren't forced into having them myself.
For the record, I don't like the forced use of seatbelts either, even though personally, I wouldn't dream of ever driving one meter without them.
I just can't understand preferring an actual increased risk of death to a known-irrational feeling of unease.
Edit: The style seems heavily inspired by the original Ford Bronco. They even support the removable rear top. http://classicfordbroncos.com/builds/
The Defender was a lighter vehicle, closer to a Jeep Wrangler. Both came with roll cages. The Bollinger lacks that, and has a flimsy cab. It needs a roll cage.
Source: I am the co-founder of NAS-ROW, the Defender forum. https://nas-row.com
If you're going to use batteries your range is going to be limited if you're driving a brick -- more attention to aerodynamics would pay dividends in mpe and overall cost -- fewer batteries required to go the same distance...
But these utility vehicles are instrumental in getting real shit done at countless farms, industries, and construction sites across the globe.
Don't think "Tesla alternative" when you look at this thing. Think of something more like a pickup truck, at home alongside a farm tractor, a 4-wheeler/side-by-side, a skid steer, a flatbed, or a horse.
Even though they seem sometimes to be the majority of pickup truck owners, those who use pickup trucks for commuting or driving the kids on vacation are doing it wrong.
200 miles is great for commuting in cities. $60,000 is rather expensive for a farm truck.
The internal-explosion-engine approach to solving this problem is usually to stick a much larger fuel tank in the vehicle to provide the added range. The most direct equivalent in the battery-powered approach would be to add more batteries, whether to the vehicle itself (lots of room in the front and back for a bunch of battery packs) or to the trailer.
It's actually got aluminum skin like the orig Land Rovers.
"One interesting regulatory note is that the weight rating allows the B1 to qualify as a Class 3 commercial truck which considerably reduces regulatory requirements compared to vehicles intended purely for passenger use."
Tesla solves the same problem, in a completely different way, by pushing everything to an iPad like display in the middle. Both end up with nice clean interiors. The mass market cars look like flea markets in comparison.
Also: "It also bucks the high-tech trend of new cars in general. There will be a radio with an AM/FM receiver, Bluetooth connectivity, and an AUX input, but there’s no touchscreen." I hope this becomes a trend. Touchscreens in cars are horrible ux.
Indeed they are. When I'm driving, I need to be able to feel what I'm manipulating; I shouldn't have to take my eyes off the road (or if I do, it should be at an absolute minimum).
A screen on the dashboard controlled by physical buttons/knobs makes a lot more sense if a screen is really necessary. That way, even if I have to look at the screen, at least I can still peripherally see the road.
Take this to it's extreme and you could make the touch screen read-only when the car is moving unless the passenger seat is occupied.
Anyway I'm with you on this. There's a touchscreen in my car and only with some clever finger placing can I tell which part I'm touching. Fortunately I still have physical steering wheel buttons.
[1] https://www.millerwelds.com/equipment/welders/engine-driven/...
Of course I'm talking about a small niche of customers in an already small niche of people that buy 4x4s.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=5792
From that and similar threads on Teslas, the caveats seem to be:
- Need a sine wave generator vs the cheaper square wave ones.
- Some cars allow you to adjust the current draw to match lower output generators, some don't. Cheap generators probably don't output enough current.
- You have to tie neutral to ground and use a real ground rod.
Not that a pure sine wave generator isn't superior to noisy, cheap square wave 'inverters' or that grounding a charging EV is a bad idea, but that's the attitude I have picked up from seeing ground pins cut off of various farms and tools. I'm sure their EEs would make sure that the thing was double-insulated and otherwise capable of dealing with this need.
That seems really weird; I'd expect that the big charging station you install in your garage would convert from home AC into some high-current DC. Batteries don't actually charge on AC, do they?
And their rectifiers expect nice sine waves.
The super charge ports (CHAdeMO/CCS/etc) use DC power and are basically direct hookups to the battery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAdeMO
For a simple example of this, Tesla's mobile connector will signal different maximum currents depending on which outlet adapter you have on it. If you have a NEMA 14-50 adapter it'll tell the car to draw up to 40A, but if you swap in the NEMA 5-15 adapter it'll tell the car to only draw 12A.
I like this. Feels like many new cars are adding in a screen (touch or otherwise) while I prefer cars without it.
It seems to me that this is a huge market opportunity. The technology is right on the cusp of being very practical in terms of range. Soccer moms who commute to the grocery store and occasionally go on a trip to the mountains want a car with room and 4WD. If such a car existed, they would be shouting "take my money!" Not quite sure why the car manufacturers aren't building these things.
Because consumers aren't buying these things.
The only people who seem to be buying full electric vehicles are electric vehicle enthusiasts, meaning it is a niche. Most enthusiasts will just buy a Tesla if there is a Tesla at the price bracket they're looking at, since Tesla is the most exciting brand in electric by far.
For everyone else, full electric vehicles don't make cost effective sense. Oil is too cheap and electricity too expensive. Many vehicle subsidies have also vanished. So people who are cost sensitive are looking at hybrids, or even plug in hybrids, since it is completely future proof to oil or electric price fluctuations.
People aren't buying electric for completely normal rational reasons you can quantify using an Excel spreadsheet. For that to change, either oil has to go up, electricity has to come down, subsidies have to return, or electric vehicles need to offer some other quantifiable value not found on a hybrid.
A car like the Fiat 500e, Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf etc. can be leased for $100-$200/mo. These cars all effectively get 100+ mpg. So, any difference in the lease cost is made up for in 1 or 2 tanks of gas.
There are still tons of incentives as well. In a couple years, there will be little functional difference between electric and gas cars for 99.9% of use cases. I think in 10 years, new sales of electric cars will exceed gas cars.
I still think about some of the kits from the 1970's.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_car#/media/File:3-4Nose.jp...
Check this out: https://books.google.com/books?id=iwEAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA4&ots=0...
It's even better than I remember. :)
They talk about high speed, not low-speed high-torque. They don't say much about how the drivetrain behaves at low speed. Do they have locking differentials, or something that prevents wheel spin? It's a two-motor system. Does the motor control system know how to keep the front and back wheels in sync when traction is bad? You don't have a front-to-back differential; that's a software operation here. How good is very low speed, high-torque operation? There's no shifting, so you have to do low-speed control in software. With good software and differentials, this could be a good rock-crawler. Can you pull a stump with this thing? They should be able to do this, assuming they're using 3-phase motors like everybody else today.
Providing 120VAC power out is a nice feature. They don't say much about charging. It should carry a charger that can charge from 120/240VAC, so you could charge slowly from any power outlet if you have to. Or another Bollinger. You'd have a big charger at home base, but opportunistic charging is a necessity when you're far from charging stations.
Really needs air bags, and fewer sharp edges in the passenger compartment. Off-road that thing and you'll cut yourself on the door handles. Once they find a real manufacturer, they can clean up the interior.
Does it have a heater? That's a big problem with electrics, especially ones like this with no insulation.
Ford used to sell (in the 90s) an electric Ranger. It used lead acid batteries.
It wasn't a big seller, and it didn't get great range - but it did exist for a bit. Not sure why they made it, though.
/The Ford Ranger (ICE) was actually a very popular small pickup for commercial usage; tons of companies used them, especially utility companies or other companies of that nature. They tended to be very rugged little workhorses, and their size - though small - was still very capable of handling some decent sized loads.
Also what is your off-road experience, that you can say "you'll cut yourself on the door handles." _citation needed_
Frustrating in that the most realistic option is retrofitting an existing electric car drivetrain to a small truck frame.
The first group like the tough image, but so long as it goes 100 miles round trip and you can put something in it they have their needs met and the rest is about image. This group just needs an electric car drive train.
The second group actually needs a truck. They have a ton (literally a ton) of tools that they need to get from job site to job site (think the handyman type who does several 2-3 hour jobs). Or they are back and forth from the warehouse delivering materials to different work sites. Or they are bringing 400 liters of fuel to the tractor, and then off to the feed store. I can probably come up with a few dozen other groups of people who use a truck as a truck.
My truck can get 22mpg on the highway but when I load on my 8000lb trailer I'm lucky to get half of that.
Most farmers, workmen or mechanics in Europe should be fine with a 200 mile range, but it might not work in Texas.
First note that most of these users are loaded - they are now driving a truck rated to get ~20mpg unloaded, but they average ~14mpg because of their extra load. Realistically your 200 mile range to 140 miles.
When you are going from job to job - 25 miles to the first job, then 50 to the next, then 30, you are too far from home to make it back. Generic handyman jobs stay closer to home, but if you are the only mechanic in your city that knows how to fix a paver that might be your life (road equipment is generally repaired/maintained on sight as that is cheaper than bringing them in)
If you are dong warehouse delivery you are probably looking at a bunch of 60 mile round trips before you head back to refill the truck, if you can recharge while the truck is loading you are fine. Fast recharge in current batteries currently reduces their life, but we can budget for that. (there is potential for something like drive 50 miles and put 20 miles worth of charge back, and repeat: this is enough to get to the end of the day and then you do a full recharge overnight)
The farmer going to the tractor and the feed store probably cannot stop to recharge - he might leave the truck sitting most of the day, but never near a power line. However a 200 mile day would be unusual. If we make sure that every shed/barn has a charging station he can probably get by.
That doesn't make any sense. Trucking is a business market, not consumer. They care about bottom line.
If electric trucks would increase profits there would be a demand for them. Right now they're just not practical for most uses. The upfront cost is too high and the significant weight from batteries reduces load capacity.
Even for work trucks, they advertise that it has enough power to get your work done, but always emphasize that it's refined and comfortable. People who drive work trucks don't specifically want to drive work trucks, that's just the only vehicle that will get the job done.
What you're thinking of is children who think that the louder exhuast, the more soot, and the bigger engine makes them more of a man. No truck manufacturer wants to be associated with that and no trucks roll out of the factory with a configuration like that. All of that makes a truck less useful.
The highest selling vehicle in America is a full-size pickup truck made of aluminum and has a 6-cylinder engine. It's a very small market of truck buyers who want loud noses, excessive exhaust, or overbearing vibrations, that is not traditional truck marketing.
An S-10 weighs about as much as a Camry or Prius, and uses a similar drivetrain. The engine of this rebranded S-10 is parts-compatible with a Dodge 600 of the same era.
but... the complex suspension worries me. Fungibility or flexibility yes, but massive adjustability sounds fragile and complex. Dual drive sure, but it must have some sort of LSD. Which isnt mentuoned. 200 miles is a really short range. I can do 300+ on my stock tank and its not enough. Last 4 day weekend in the cascades/palouse/okanogan was about 700 miles. Practical recharging in the rural/wilds is .... unlikely.
As mentioned until theres real capital and manufacturing this is vaporware. Im also skeptical of $60,000, I'll bet real money against that. Icon, a small batch truck manufacturer with real product, is more like $100-150,00 and up.
Edit: entry and exit angles look nice. Real curious how that "plate" style chassis handles flex.
But I definitely want one! :)
yes they are expensive but all it takes is a spike in gas prices to seriously hurt some districts who got hit hard the last time it went high.
there are many markets for vehicles which have set operation ranges and known routes. EV tech ain't near replacing combustion in many cases but in tightly controlled instances it does work. (range, charging, weather, and cost are the four areas all being worked on and all needing work)
A documentary on Sherman tanks amazed me because they were gas powered and when hit gasoline exploded. German tanks were powered by diesel. The US has hated diesel from day one it's amazing.
But electric has tons of torque by design it should be suitable. But I wonder if the horsepower can be dialed down for more range?
His frustration with small utility vehicles and a pickup truck are more likely due to types of suspension and weight distribution. Low enough gearing will give you the equivalent of high torque to get over small boulders, but getting through snow is not even that difficult. The challenge is getting your tires to dig in, not a shortage of power.
I'd love a small diesel or electric or diesel/electric 4x4 like a Jeep or a four door 4x4 truck.
I'd take that electric truck though my love of diesel was due to its efficiency and torque now electric vehicles getting common that's a good replacement. Although I worry about going through deep water with a giant battery! In the springtime I've been through water 30cm deep (12") even in the middle of my small town.However, starting it did generally involve 5-10 seconds of running the glowplug, even when it was 50°F (10°C) outside. Do more modern diesel engines have high enough compression that they don't need to warm the compression chamber as much before it will combust?
I did like driving a diesel car. It's seemed very utilitarian and was extremely reliable and durable.
EDIT: actually looks like I spoke too soon:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/04/13/if-you-t...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/04/19/toyota-r...
When I think of utility vehicles, I think of Defender 90 and Toyota Hilux type vehicles - spartan, proven, reparable in many parts of the world. When I think of a new car model, even from large manufacturers, I get the jitters of being a first-adopter. So much gets learned and shaken out by real-world, human use. Nice idea, but I'm a dreamer at heart and through receiving lots of pragmatic feedback, I kind of see this through the same lens.
The caveat is that it's not fully electric. 80 mile all-electric and then the generator kicks in, giving it 310 miles per tank. However pretty good gas mileage and safety was definitely a concern.
But both of these are well outside of my price range. But it has to start somewhere.
The thing I've feared/worried about when it has come to the push for electric, and self-driving vehicles, and the recent rumblings by France and the UK to ban ICE vehicles in the near future - is that those who enjoy off-roading are being left out.
I love that they are doing a hybrid stepside truck chassis with BMW engines but I hope they have something else. A public NASDAQ company that has $90M in paid-in capital but only $10M cash now, had better sell to stay alive. I hope they do. The basic idea is good; they need to execute.
Nobody who wants a truck for truck stuff is gonna put up with the downsides of electric and the NVH of a 60s panel van and 200mi range unless it costs much less than vehicles with equivalent performance.
The people who buy electric to make a statement about their preference in power sources are not the people who will buy a bare-bones truck.
I think you could have made the same statement about luxury vehicles before the Model S. Electric provides such a game changing increase in performance that people wont care about the downsides as much, so long as you can make it sexy.
They won't even start accepting deposits until 2018, apparently. Gives me more time to save up for this beauty.
It would also help get the taste of the compass & patriot horseshit they've been peddling lately.
That's some beautiful vaporware, I hope they make it.
360HP: 268kW, 200 mile: 321.869km
I left Southern California for this. My current employer is hiring software engineers in Sandpoint, Idaho.
kochava.com/careers
That's the issue, as I am sure you are aware. In SV, a software engineer (according to trite legend, I suppose) can walk out the door and be hired again across the street the same day. They can probably repeat that every day for a year, and still not run out of options.
I know that's an oversimplification, and hyperbole to boot - but you know what I mean.
An area needs more than one employer in the space to make it attractive to those employees they need. Especially if they want to stay in the area long term...
For me, having a permanent bed cover means it's not useful as a truck.
It also has a recommended cargo weight of 6,000 pounds, so it can haul a ton (literally! and two more!) of shit.
This is really no less of a truck than a Ford Bronco or Dodge Ramcharger.
Even so, though - there are plenty of consumer pickup models which are used commercially, and more than a few can handle some pretty big loads (especially towing)...
Remove the backseat and top - ultra-shortbed pickup!
Also this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_Comanche
Then there's this:
https://gr8tops.com/shop/jeepmodels/jk-wrangler/jeep-wrangle...
And finally:
http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/news/a29009...
Of course, this is just my opinion, and a ton of older vehicles that are considered cars would fall into this category. Heck, a standard Jeep Wrangler would fall into this category.
Furthermore, there isn't any reason you couldn't make a truck (that is, a pickup) using a unibody approach, but I don't know of any examples (which just may be my ignorance).
Regardless - I always consider anything modern with a ladder frame to be a "truck". It may not be a pickup, but to me it's still a truck.
As an additional bonus, there are lots of mountains over here, too, and snowy ones at that. Truckee or Tahoe during the winter would make an excellent proving ground for these things, and would additionally be close to a strong potential market for them.
For more then 3 decades it is well known for its boxy style and its benefits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_G-Class (scroll down for pictures)
Electric vehicles are not "clean", they're merely cleaner.
At some other countries (e.g. Portugal, Italy, France), they have tolls for the highways so only the cars crossing that road pay for the cost.
And a new option is automatic tolls, where you don't even stop. They just take a picture of the car with license plate and send you the accumulated bill to your home (e.g. Portugal). Personally my preferred option is the German approach where you know that this is a fixed price. Paying by usage ends up being abused, in Portugal they leased the highways to privates that now hiked up the prices like crazy since it is basically a monopoly (no other road to reach your destination).
JFYI in Italy you pay BOTH a "fixed tax" (which is function of the horsepower of the car engine) AND most highways have tolls.
You pay with the fixed tax the "general maintenance and development" of ALL roads (excluded toll highways) and you pay the toll on a per use basis, as highways are largely "private" (technically they are public but object of concession/grant to privates).
Thanks for the detail about the road taxes in Italy. I had to stop so often on the road headed towards Milan to pay tolls every couple of kilometres and you still have to pay an yearly cost as resident, great.
Normally on highways in Italy you take a ticket when enterng the highway and pay when you exit, the toll boxes every few kilometres is something that was removed everywhere in the 70's (though I cannot exclude that a specific road somewhere in Italy still has them).
It is a truism that when people think they're getting a bargain they then over-consume and end up consuming more than they would have if the price were higher initially. I would like to see that not happening with electric vehicles.
Reduction in energy consumption is easily achieved by not chosing a ridiculously heavy, non-aerodynamic vehicle.