What's not to like? Honest question.
Until these issues get sorted out, electric will remain niche. What I don’t understand is why all-electric gets all the hype, while hybrid avoids most of these issues while still polluting less. It’s similar to the hype around 100 percent self-driving, when lesser solutions like front-collision avoidance are proven and ready to go right now. They’re just not as sexy.
But I get where you're coming from. This would be more attractive in the future when there are more charging stations (if they are fast).
Does this really apply to farmers?
Not even remotely my experience with farms. Maybe you’re only visiting lifestyle farms and dude ranches or something.
Yeah, they usually are just hauling their goods up their dirt road to a stand on the side of a road, but they do occasionally make a long trip to sell some cows, pigs, or horses and I don't think they want to deal with midtrip charging.
I'm not sure what kind of farmer you imagine this is called, but these guys are just called farmers in my neck of the woods.
As a child my friend loved on a ranch. Multiple trucks and Jeeps.
Where I live now there's a lot of farm and ranch land near the city. Drive by any and you'll see multiple trucks.
Anecdotally, I'm highly suspicious of your data.
However for most folks and small businesses, a vehicle is far too expensive a capital asset to buy a brand new one with full knowledge that there are some situations in which it will be just useless. Trucks in particular are purchased for their versatility, and electric sacrifices that for…what exactly? So the buyer feels good about being green? That’s a good formula for a niche product.
Pulling a heavy trailer (say 8,000lbs) will take that down to 10mpg but the electric model might not even break 100 miles towing.
In Australia, where the myth of vast commutes is awesomely loud, especially amongst farmers and tradies, when the stats on average drive per day are abundantly clear this isn't the predominant problem. Is it a problem? Yes. For a small but vocal minority of the future drivers of these EV.
Diesel isn't going to disappear overnight. Trucks are alive and well now, which will be there to be used, with ICE, for decades. The production might cease, but that hardly stopped the VW/Microbus from living beyond its expected lifetime, spare parts and all.
Point a farmer at an opportunistic cost saving and reliability improvement on a $750k+ piece of farm machinery and they'll go there when their first neighbour shows the bottom line difference. They're like penguins on the ice-floe, nobody wants to be the one finding the lurking leopard seal in the water. But once its clear a combine/thresher/header machine works better, cheaper by battery, and has lower TCO they'll be all over it like a rash. If you combine that with huge roof surface area on sheds and opportunistic cooling/shade from PV cells they'll be off-grid power advocates in seconds.
Will farmers north of 50 have problems with snow in winter? Sure! Oh damn, ok, lets tank the entire EV market because a cohort in the midwest with snow can't "win".. Thats basically what we're seeing here. Everyone assumes they are 'normal' and their 'normal' usage risks determine the entire market. The F150 sells internationally as well as domestically, its market includes a lot more than RV hunters in the forests, and people north of the snow line. Most of the world lives south, the vehicle will sell everywhere if the price is right.
We'll adapt.
Driving while towing will take the same amount of extra power, whether you have a gas engine or electric motor. Higher load on the motor = less range. I think cutting the range in half would be pretty surprising (in a good way).
Adding weight to the bed has nearly zero aerodynamic penalty and so doesn't change mileage much at all as long as the road is level and is not start and go traffic.
Towing on a highway, is primarily an aerodynamic concern because most trailers have the aerodynamics of bricks and are (partially) outside the designed aerodynamic envelope of the rest of the vehicle.
ICE vehicles take a noticeable hit on range when towing, even considering ICEs become more efficient when under moderate loads. There's no reason to hope that EVs won't suffer at least as bad, and 50% range loss is normal in an ICE when towing something large like a camper.