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Comment by nixonpjoshua | Hacker News Reader

I agree EREVs make a lot of sense, electric first but not requiring a full commitment, especially for a truck that sometimes has to do things like towing.

https://insideevs.com/news/777407/scout-motors-erev-reservas...

I'm sure this wasn't lost on Ford, 80% of Scout reservations come with the EREV and only 20% BEV.

Maybe one day they will have enough volume in the segment to justify making the pure BEV version again but with parts sharing with the EREV. An advantage to EREV design is that if done smartly you can offer the same vehicle stripped down and BOOM you have a BEV too.

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The problem with EREVs is they are more complex than a BEV. More parts to go wrong, to purchase, and ultimately a (potentially) higher price.

The reason to do EREVs for a manufacture is, IMO, primarily because they can't get a hold of batteries for a cheap enough price. And I think that's the weakness of the way Ford has attacked EVs. They haven't (AFAIK) really built out battery plants. As a result, they are at the whims of their supplier for their battery packs.

For a truck like the F150, that's a large pack requirement that probably ultimately likely killed their margins.

Edit OK, they've been working on a plant for the last 5 years, but it looks like they've done almost nothing. Like, literally just have some support structs up.

One factory was done, and already producing EV batteries. They're converting it to fixed energy storage:

https://www.wdrb.com/news/business/all-1-600-kentucky-batter...

Are they really much more complicated than a hybrid? Think RAV4 Hybrid. I’d much prefer a fully electric drivetrain with an electric generator to the joyless CVT.

Even if batteries were very cheap, you run into scaling issues where your battery pack ends up very heavy, so then you're using increasingly more energy to lug your heavier battery back around for everything that isn't long-range towing.

Studies have shown that hybrids are more reliable than ICE vehicles - it turns out that using EV mode of the time and ICE less often increases reliability. No reason an EREV shouldn’t be even better.

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