But I appreciate that traditional car makers are finally getting it that people want EVs that are not just golf carts. Too bad this is just another demo but let’s hope they make some of it real.
VW seems to be the only major manufacturer that's really going all in on electric and it's only after wringing their hands from the emissions scandal.
The old automakers seem to only want to do this in the face of bankruptcy.
They are not as big as VW, but that sure should "all in" to me..
I did some digging for my next car and this is what I found: The Chinese owner established newer companies for the Chinese market mostly in China which use their engineering. One of them is a pure EV company.
edit: yeah, found this: https://electrek.co/2018/04/25/volvo-electrification-plan-fu... . And their goal is 50% of sales will be electric by 2025.
And that's probably what they expect to sell. Producing 5.9M electric cars is one thing (and that's not easy on its own), but selling them is the problem.
One, get the government off their back. Two, round up all the 'whiners' lay half of them off and demoralize the rest.
It is said, with only a very small sense of irony, that the only vehicle to come from the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles was the Toyota Prius. See, Toyoda thought we were serious, was blocked from joining the partnership (Bush/Gore era protectionism at its finest) and built a brain trust to compete with what turned out to be a bluff. Detroit may be the biggest bunch of learned helplessness foot-draggers there is. It's too haaard. See? We can't do it.
No, it was just a silly physics trick, same as Tesla's Cybertruck pulling the F-150 stunt (which was just because the cybertruck was heavier & therefore had a friction advantage, had nothing to do with being more powerful or anything like that).
As for the train, weighing 1.25 million pounds doesn't mean it took 1.25 million pounds of force to move it, not at all. Just like it doesn't take you ~150 lbs of force to move yourself forward on a bicycle. Wheels are pretty great, and so is a low rolling resistance. A train's steel wheels on a steel track mean super low rolling resistances, and estimates are the Ford only needed around 1875 pounds of force to move that 1.25 million pound train. https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a28506476/ford-electri...
That's well within the capacity of a bunch of vehicles, no trickery required.
I suspect they didn’t actually build a battery powered truck, not even a prototype or demo.
Instead they just bolted a big electric motor into an existing truck, rigged it up to the crankshaft, and wired it up to power. Lame, if true. But it’s just my suspicion and I don’t know if it’s true. It was clearly a PR stunt timed to take some of the limelight away from Tesla.
And the video of the stunt also has a bunch of angles, including an overhead shot, and there's no hint of anything like a power cord and the truck bed is visibly empty?
But I’ll believe they are sincere when they decommission or fully convert the bulk of their ICE car factories.