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According to some rudimentary Google sleuthing, the battery alone costs about $35K which is about the starting cost of a new gasoline F-150. So yes, the battery

According to some rudimentary Google sleuthing, the battery alone costs about $35K which is about the starting cost of a new gasoline F-150. So yes, the battery alone (i.e., excluding electric motors) is much more expensive than an entire ICE drivetrain. It's essentially very difficult to make a cheaper electric pickup truck because batteries are expensive and you need to have a lot of battery capacity to move a big, boxy pickup truck ~300 miles on a single charge. If you trade off range, people won't buy it (it's already hard enough to persuade pickup truck owners to buy something that has very little towing range and for which there aren't good charging options for a truck with a trailer in tow) and there isn't a lot you can do to make up the range by lightening or streamlining the vehicle without increasing costs. Maybe economies of scale could help, but it's hard to imagine economies of scale without increased demand, which is hard to imagine without lower costs, etc.

Dalewyn 3y ago
It's worth mentioning that electric vehicles in general have to contend with the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation[1][2], and something like an electric truck that demands bursts and even constant high power draws exacerbates the problem severely. The gist of the problems EVs face right now is that the energy density of batteries do not compete with fossil fuels. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation [2]: "In what has been called 'the tyranny of the rocket equation', there is a limit to the amount of payload that the rocket can carry, as higher amounts of propellant increment the overall weight, and thus also increase the fuel consumption."
- bagels 3y ago
  The rocket equation is not directly applicable. An electric car still works if it has less capacity and lower energy density. It is just slower and or has a lower range. Rockets need to produce >1g of acceleration or they don't get to leave earth.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    It is because an electric vehicle needs to move its own batteries as part of itself (obviously), but you also need more batteries to provide competitive driving range/power because the energy density is so low. Thus, you need to install more batteries to compensate for the increased workloads that a truck would forseeably experience, but you need more batteries to convey those batteries which requires bigger motors which requires more batteries and herein lies the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation. At some point you need a breakthrough in energy efficiency or energy storage density because you hit an upper practical limit on how much energy storage you can haul around. ICE cars and trucks must also technically contend with this, but in practice they do not because fossil fuels are so energy dense that we almost never meet that upper practical limit.
    - lazide 3y ago
      Not really though? You have a similar (but not quite as bad) multiple for ICE cars with engines/transmission/fuel. Rockets it’s exponentially worse. Which is why the saying.
  - jameshart 3y ago
    The rocket equation says nothing about how much acceleration you're going to get. It relates fuel mass and exhaust velocity to payload mass and delta-v. The 'tyranny' isn't 'you didn't accelerate fast enough and you will not go to space today', it's 'for a given rocket exhaust speed capability, there is a maximum payload you can possibly lift to a target delta v (i.e. to a target orbit or planet or whatever), no matter how much fuel you throw at the problem'.
- jameshart 3y ago
  The metaphorical rocket equation's worse for batteries than for gasoline, since they don't get appreciably lighter as the energy is used up, whereas with a gas engine you can throw the spent fuel out into the atmosphere for someone else to deal with. The rocket equation's only metaphorical here because the rocket equation's tyranny is really about how much reaction mass you have to carry, not so much the energy store. Chemical rockets kill two birds with one stone by extracting energy from fuel+oxidizer then using the waste products as reaction mass. But you can go with a nuclear powered rocket that gets all its energy from uranium and just uses plain water or something as reaction mass. The rocket equation's 'tyranny' is that your rocket constantly has to accelerate the reaction mass it plans to use later. Cars - electric or gasoline - do not require any reaction mass, though.

Dalewyn 3y ago

It's worth mentioning that electric vehicles in general have to contend with the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation[1][2], and something like an electric truck that demands bursts and even constant high power draws exacerbates the problem severely. The gist of the problems EVs face right now is that the energy density of batteries do not compete with fossil fuels. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation [2]: "In what has been called 'the tyranny of the rocket equation', there is a limit to the amount of payload that the rocket can carry, as higher amounts of propellant increment the overall weight, and thus also increase the fuel consumption."

bagels 3y ago
The rocket equation is not directly applicable. An electric car still works if it has less capacity and lower energy density. It is just slower and or has a lower range. Rockets need to produce >1g of acceleration or they don't get to leave earth.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  It is because an electric vehicle needs to move its own batteries as part of itself (obviously), but you also need more batteries to provide competitive driving range/power because the energy density is so low. Thus, you need to install more batteries to compensate for the increased workloads that a truck would forseeably experience, but you need more batteries to convey those batteries which requires bigger motors which requires more batteries and herein lies the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation. At some point you need a breakthrough in energy efficiency or energy storage density because you hit an upper practical limit on how much energy storage you can haul around. ICE cars and trucks must also technically contend with this, but in practice they do not because fossil fuels are so energy dense that we almost never meet that upper practical limit.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Not really though? You have a similar (but not quite as bad) multiple for ICE cars with engines/transmission/fuel. Rockets it’s exponentially worse. Which is why the saying.
- jameshart 3y ago
  The rocket equation says nothing about how much acceleration you're going to get. It relates fuel mass and exhaust velocity to payload mass and delta-v. The 'tyranny' isn't 'you didn't accelerate fast enough and you will not go to space today', it's 'for a given rocket exhaust speed capability, there is a maximum payload you can possibly lift to a target delta v (i.e. to a target orbit or planet or whatever), no matter how much fuel you throw at the problem'.
jameshart 3y ago
The metaphorical rocket equation's worse for batteries than for gasoline, since they don't get appreciably lighter as the energy is used up, whereas with a gas engine you can throw the spent fuel out into the atmosphere for someone else to deal with. The rocket equation's only metaphorical here because the rocket equation's tyranny is really about how much reaction mass you have to carry, not so much the energy store. Chemical rockets kill two birds with one stone by extracting energy from fuel+oxidizer then using the waste products as reaction mass. But you can go with a nuclear powered rocket that gets all its energy from uranium and just uses plain water or something as reaction mass. The rocket equation's 'tyranny' is that your rocket constantly has to accelerate the reaction mass it plans to use later. Cars - electric or gasoline - do not require any reaction mass, though.