6 ms·

> The price isn't right for small businesses. These trucks are quite expensive So are RAM trucks and I don't think they're hurting for customers. I think ther

• roadside_picnic 10mo ago
  > One is that pickups are a weirdly-politicized lifestyle choice in the US Based on my personal experience traveling, there's a more practical reason for the political divide. I spend a good portion of my life in rural parts of the US these days, where most of the residents are pretty conservative. But these are also parts of the country where I get nervous when I'm on 1/4 tank of gas. If you're routinely out in places where the nearest gas station might be > 50 miles away, you also see a dip in e-vehicles for very practical reasons. When I'm at home in a city, it makes perfect sense to own an e-vehicle: typically I'm only driving a few miles a day, and the car spends most of it's time at my house or in a parking garage. When I'm out on business, and driving across hundreds of miles of barely inhabited land, I cannot imagine the stress of having an electric truck. It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that. In rural parts of the country, especially when you're out working, you can easily be putting on mileage combined with being far enough away from a charger that it just doesn't make sense to have an e-vehicle.
  • ghaff 10mo ago
    I do know someone who bought a Tesla after debating it for a long time. And it was only after getting comfortable with the range for a mostly weekly drive into the country.
  • cyberax 10mo ago
    Try this map: https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map , it has a feature called "range circles". If you set it to 50 miles, you'll see that most of the country is well within 50 miles of the nearest supercharger. Including almost all of Texas. At 100 miles of range, you only have a couple of blank spots. With third party chargers, there's really only one blank spot in Montana. At this point, the range is already a solved problem. Earlier this year, I did experiments with placing stations manually on the map and using the US road networks to calculate the isolines. With just about 70 more stations, you can make any point on the public road network in the entire contiguous US lie within 50 miles of the nearest charger. So the charging availability is likely going to be solved completely even during the current shitty admin. > It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that. At 325kW charge rate (common on recent chargers), you're looking for maybe 20 minutes to get enough charge to reach your destination.
    • EgregiousCube 10mo ago
      “There’s at least one spot within 100 miles where you can wait 20 minutes to get enough charge to get to the next charger” is not an argument that will convince someone to give up the convenience of the gas station.
      • cyberax 10mo ago
        What exactly is convenient about gas stations?
        • wkat4242 10mo ago
          They're everywhere and you can get a full charge in 5 minutes.
          • nandomrumber 10mo ago
            And you don’t need to fill up again at the next one.
  • WalterBright 10mo ago
    You're also likely to have to wait in line to charge.
    • foobazgt 10mo ago
      I know congestion can be an issue at some sites, but I have never waited in line to charge in seven years of EV ownership. In addition, for superchargers, you can see real-time stall availability, so if a particular site was crowded, you could just opt for the next. (Easy enough to do since there are so many).
    • NetMageSCW 10mo ago
      Unless you are going a long way, you charge at home. And rural areas have a lot of independent housing and outdoor power so it’s easier than for city dwellers.
  • dalyons 10mo ago
    The vast majority of truck owners do not live in these sparse / long distance situations. There just aren’t that many people as a % of the population that live that rural. Whilst a real factor for some, that is not the main reason behind the political divide over trucks.
    • NetMageSCW 10mo ago
      What do you think constitutes “many”? The US Census says 20% (e.g. 60 million) are rural, and places like where I live (a small city of 50k surrounded by lots of farm land) don’t count, but it’s very rural when it comes to things like Superchargers.
      • dalyons 10mo ago
        i tried to find some data that isnt chatgpt. [1] & [2] show that about 60-65% of pickups are owned by people living in urban/suburban settings. of the rest, its kind of hard to find a breakdown for situations like your own, but lets guess that roughly half live in towns that are big enough to get superchargers in the near term. That makes, ~80% of pickups sold in places where you can expect to have charging infrastructure either now or soon. [1] https://www.americantrucks.com/pickup-truck-owner-demographics.html https://www.americantrucks.com/pickup-truck-owner-demographi... [2] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/04/21/suv-and-pickup-purchases-soar-but-whos-buying https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/04/21/suv-and-pickup-purcha...
• jdeibele 10mo ago
  "More expensive to keep running" might depend on where you live. My wife and I both have EVs and we drive about 2000 miles/month. At just over $.06/kWh our EV charger tells us that we pay about $30/month for "fuel". The first tire rotation on my car was free, and the next two were about $60 total. The first tire rotation on my wife's car was free. We're both going to need another rotation in a couple of months. Other that that, the original wipers on my car were squeaky and I replaced them for about $40. Oh! And I replaced the cabin air filters myself at the 7500-mile service intervals. When we lived in a much bigger city, there were time-of-day rates and assistance with the cost of putting in a charger offered by the local for-profit utility. The kWh rate was just over 3X what we're paying now and even that is cheap compared to some regions. Insurance doesn't seem cheap but we moved from Farmers to Amica and there are a bunch of discounts for having cars with lane departure warning, collision avoidance, etc. I expect to replace the tires at 40,000 - 50,000 miles based on what other people report they get with their original tires. I do get sad little postcards from the dealer about having our cars serviced because there's no oil changes, the brakes should last forever because of regenerative braking, there's not a catalytic converter to steal, etc.
• ghaff 10mo ago
  I'm guessing you're often either towing or you're doing a bunch of shortish drives for construction, etc. purposes--neither of which are a great match for electric.
  • tzs 10mo ago
    How are short drives not a great match for electric?
    • rootusrootus 10mo ago
      Indeed, a bunch of short drives would be ideal. My next door neighbor owns a small construction company and he switched from a gas truck to electric, went from filling the truck twice a week to charging at home. More than paid for the truck.
    • ghaff 10mo ago
      The details matter but just doesn't buy you a lot, especially if you have a second vehicle to drive a handful of miles a week. Per sibling comment, a couple of fillups a week really is a fair bit of driving.
• jandrewrogers 10mo ago
  The limited range and inability to refuel quickly and easily in the middle of nowhere remains a critical deficiency for EV trucks in many parts of the US. Range is something you have to be conscious of even with ICE trucks in some areas even though they have better and more reliable range. There are places where I'd start thinking about fuel once I hit half a tank. Getting caught out in the middle of nowhere with a dead EV because conditions beyond your control changed the range requirements is a nightmare scenario. ICE trucks do much better in these situations.
  • ericd 10mo ago
    Seems like EV trucks need the ability to do the equivalent of siphoning gas, or carrying some Jerry cans.
    • jandrewrogers 10mo ago
      That is almost literally the entirety of it. If we could do that, EV would be lit. EV is honestly better for remote environments in most other regards.
    • WorldMaker 10mo ago
      Level 1 and 2 charging are something of an equivalent to siphoning gas, and maybe too easily overlooked. Carry a wall plug and dryer plug adapter and you can plug in just about anywhere. RV plug in the camping area of a national park. Utility plug on the back of a work shed in the middle of nowhere. Won't charge you fast, sure, but can be the difference to charge you enough to make it to the next stop, in some cases.
      • ericd 10mo ago
        Yeah, I meant siphon gas truck-to-truck, but it seems most worksites would be wired or have generation of some sort, so mobile charger should be able to do something in a pinch. I have had situations where a normal 1400W wasn’t enough to keep pace with keeping the battery warm enough to make any headway on an actual charge, though, but that remote AND cold is a another level.
• sroerick 10mo ago
  I live in Truck Country, Wyoming If you need a truck for work, you're probably going to be towing in it. Now, some of those guys who are hauling are gonna need a 250 or a 350, but a lot of them will do just fine with the 150. Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly. In addition, it's 2 hours to the nearest big city. So as a practical matter, you're adding an hour to your trip every time you go into town. I like Teslas a lot, but gave you ever been on a road trip in one? It's pretty brutal. Plus, I feel like, aesthetically, there is a weird block. I would have no problem dumping a load of sheetrock trash in the bed of a new gas truck. For a brand new electric truck? It kind of feels wrong, don't you think? Maybe that is just me being a Luddite, but I really don't have a sense of an electric car as a tool, the way a good truck is. I think EVs are great as a recreational car, or a useful commuter in the city. I've never seen a Rivian doing blue collar anything. I drive a Camry btw
  • kyralis 10mo ago
    Interestingly, I live in rural Vermont, and there are a surprising number of Rivians around me - including those set up for contractors, complete with scaffolding in the bed with tools and ladders on them. That said, we have an F250. I'd love to have an electric truck, but I use mine for towing almost exclusively. If I'm hauling a trailer hours away, I really don't need to deal with the hassle of stopping along the way to charge. I've yet to see a charging station set up for conveniently charging an electric vehicle with a trailer. When we lived the Bay Area a decade ago, we had a Nissan Leaf, one of the early ones. It only got 95 miles to a charge if you were lucky, but for commuting in the South Bay we absolutely loved it. Here in Vermont? F250 and a Subaru. I'd love to make the second an electric, but no one actually makes a good AWD electric Crosstrek equivalent that's actually designed for dirt roads and not the city.
    • dalyons 10mo ago
      The R3X will be that. Although you could just get an R1, incredibly capable off-road but yeah, bigger.
• tayo42 10mo ago
  Everyone like Tacomas though