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I can't think what the issue would be aside from range. One thing that stood out to me about the cybertruck is that they made huge tradeoffs to make it more aer
by eucyclos 10mo ago
I can't think what the issue would be aside from range. One thing that stood out to me about the cybertruck is that they made huge tradeoffs to make it more aerodynamic. The only reason to do that is to increase maximum driving distance. Put a big blocky trailer behind it and suddenly the battery's maximum distance is competing with a gas tank on a much more even playing field. Regenerative braking would make up for some of that in very hilly terrain, but on level ground it just can't get out to as many of the remote areas people take their trucks to.
I really think the first obvious use case (aside from bugout vehicles) would be something like the early road rangers - driving all over a farm and bringing back crates of produce from muddy fields without getting stuck or needing a lot of maintenance.
- bluGill 10mo agoCharge time matters. I can fill a gas tank in the time my partner uses the bathroom. Evs need a lot longer.
- fisherjeff 10mo agoLack of pull-through charging stations is a very big hurdle too.
- dboreham 10mo agoPresent day EVs don't take that long to charge (basically the time to go to the bathroom and check email), but they don't have enough parallelism so at a busy location you can end up waiting for an open charger. There are orders of magnitude more gas pumps than public chargers.
- NetMageSCW 10mo agoThat’s an unfair comparison because you can’t count gas pumps used to charge in your locality - those are replaced by charging at bome.
- bluGill 10mo agowhen you need a charger there is rarely any choice of location. Charging at home doesn't help when you are not home. Those rare public chargers is what you need and they can be hard to find.
- vel0city 10mo agoThis varies a lot based on where you are. For the trips I usually take around in Texas where I need public chargers, I actually usually do have a choice of chargers. I understand this isn't universally true in other parts of the US though.
- UncleMeat 10mo agoIf you don't have a place to charge at home, yes. But if you are charging at home then the only time you need to charge away from home is on long road trips. And you need to stop for lunch or whatever. And if you are taking only a couple road trips a year the time spent charging on road trips will be exceeded by all the time spent on gas fill ups throughout the year for a gas vehicle.