Ford’s electric pickup can power a house for days | Hacker News Reader

Ford’s electric pickup can power a house for days

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247 pointshelsinkiandrew421 comments

Surprised there’s no discussion on the price delta here - I could buy 10x power-walls for $110k, or 1x E F150 for $40k and get a free truck thrown in.

As someone with a large house who just investigated a hybrid power walls + gas generator + solar backup solution and didn’t go through with it due to cost, this is huge. I am literally considering buying an F150 to just keep parked stationary behind my garage.

My understanding is the more natural comparison is between the ~$80k truck with the power walls since it allows the backup power solution vs manually plugging things in via extension cord. Engineering Explained had a good video about it. https://youtu.be/ATAFIoXTEe8

Thanks. But even at $80k it’s a no brainer. The hybrid solution I vetoed came in at $130k!

EDIT: To expand on that, only about $40k was batteries. After an initial period would fall back to (large) generator and only certain areas of house powered. I’d have to check the math, but an E F150 with a much smaller generator would be both cheaper and power the whole house indefinitely.

It depends on your use case. If your use case is emergency backup power, then yeah the truck is the hands down winner. But if your use case is to load shift to minimize costs then buying a slightly smaller fixed location (ie: powerwall) battery bank which is always able to be on-line will likely make more sense, since once you drive the truck somewhere it's no longer attached to the house.

It depends on how your electricity generation, distribution, and consumption works for your own location.

But also, holy cow! $130k in powerwalls is a LOT of powerwall!

Natural gas and/or propane is the best option for my home. Solar installation + battery is just insanely expensive compared to gas (6x at a minimum) and where I live offers far less reliability.

I agree. Plus any prolonged power outage (multi days) is likely to be area wide which means that topping up an F150 from a fast charger before dark and those are likely to be heavilly over subscribed (or out of action) in the local area.

With the Powerwall option you could top up your F150 at home then range further to find a working fast charger thats within the calculated power budget.

You'll need to consider that the truck uses a different battery chemistry than home battery backup solutions intended for a different use case. The truck isn't intended to power your entire home and you'll likely have to use a manual disconnect from the grid.

Also it sounds like you'd still need solar panels and a backup generator.

This especially makes sense these days now that (in most places) you can only sell your solar at bulk rates which are lower than the electricity you buy.

So you literally get your energy sold back to you at a premium for the sole service of storage which is a rather crap deal. Keeping all the power you produce seems like the best option, though you do have to pay for the initial cost of batteries.

It would be neat to see some numbers as to how long it would take to make up the cost back in monthly bill reductions depending on the local prices.

> This especially makes sense these days now that (in most places) you can only sell your solar at bulk rates which are lower than the electricity you buy.

Here in NM, that's true if you literally sell your surplus solar. But if you allow PNM to "bank" it, you receive kW for kW back what you put in, when you need it (e.g. during the dramatically colder winters here in northern NM).

10x powerwalls for 110k or f150 for 40k …

… or generac with 100amp breaker for 4K …

We power our house and our outbuildings/barns with no problems - even using 30a dryer and 20a microwave, etc. - all from the generator.

500 gallon propane tank implies at least 7 days of runtime but much more if we conserved. I can’t believe we lived without this …

> 500 gallon propane tank implies at least 7 days of runtime but much more if we conserved. I can’t believe we lived without this

How unreliable is your power grid? It's a lot easier having someone else manage the entire infrastructure. Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever.

What an inexperienced comment. Stuff happens and it pays to be prepared

> Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever.

Are thunderstorms considered a natural disaster (sincerely asking)? I've lived in a few states, in a few rural areas and sometimes storms would knock power lines down for a handful of days. I don't remember any 7 day stretches, but 2-4 days was not uncommon. Even more in the winter when I was in a snowy area.

Not usually, but you’re absolutely right to think about it. My dad lives in a rural area in the Midwest and often has to deal with power outages lasting for a few days after particularly bad storms or ice. I think 7 days is probably on the long side of an expected outage, but not too crazy to plan for.

> I've lived in a few states, in a few rural areas and sometimes storms would knock power lines down for a handful of days. I don't remember any 7 day stretches, but 2-4 days was not uncommon.

A derecho[0] hit in my area (eastern Iowa) in August of 2020. This is an urban & suburban area with fairly reliable power—even short outages are rare, and I can't think of any instances where power was out more than a few hours—but after that storm there were dozens of miles of high-voltage power lines in need of complete replacement, along with supporting structures in some cases, as well as issues with generators and substations. My own home was without power for at least four days and some of my friends didn't get their power back for almost two weeks.

I used my vehicle's 1kW alternator as a generator for the first two days to run a portable 12V refrigerator and to recharge devices & battery packs in combination with a 200W inverter. It used surprisingly little fuel, perhaps 1/3 gallon per hour at most, and it was quieter and had better-filtered exhaust than the portable generators some of my neighbors were using, though of course it wouldn't be able to handle higher-power appliances like residential refrigerators or A/C. After that I took an impromptu trip out of the affected area until the power was restored—we never actually reached a point where one couldn't find gasoline for vehicles or generators, but there were long lines are all the local gas stations and I didn't want to risk it when there was another choice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_Midwest_derecho

I wouldn't consider a standard thunderstorm a natural disaster in what I was referring to. A hurricane, earthquake or tornado would be (although a very severe thunderstorm could be). I've never seen a thunderstorm knock out power for a meaningful amount of time. But it could be because I don't live in a particularly rural area.

Assume that there's both a lead time and a fixed cost to having the local propane supplier come out and top up your "7 day" tank. And that such tanks are readily available only in a few specific sizes, and ...

We've had two >7 day electricity outages in the past 15 years here in central Massachusetts due to snow storms.

I expect we mostly agree, but I disagree with your use of "ever". :-)

From the "January 1998 North American ice storm" Wikipedia article [1]:

    The area south of Montreal [...] was nicknamed the triangle noir ("dark or black triangle") [...] for the total lack of electricity for weeks.
    
    [...]
    
    In Quebec alone, 150,000 people were without electricity as of January 28.

(The storm started about Jan. 4.) The Montreal area is not prone to common natural disasters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ic...

Some Ottawa residents have been without power since May 21.

After the storm whipped through, I believe over 170K customers were without power.

That's not a time line I'd ever have considered possible in a major city in May.

Worst it's ever been, supposedly. Topped the 1998 ice storm and the tornado in 2018 for number of people in the dark.

That was 4 million people in an event that was so rare that it's the standout example of the last 40 years. The majority of people in North America seem unlikely to experience such an outage.

Here in Iowa many would have previously said the same thing, but the Derecho a few years ago proved otherwise. Never hurts to be prepared - we now have a generator and a dc-ac converter for my Volt PHEV.

The Derecho destroyed 2/3 of the trees in the affected area. By definition, it was a uniquely bad experience as no future storm could cause that much tree damage (well, in decades if enough regrow.) Planning for a repeat seems like a mistake based on a traumatic experience with an outlier.

Maybe in the hardest hit areas. We did not lose 2/3 by a long shot but were still out for a week. If we experienced those winds again we'd absolutely have similar devastation. Not to mention, disaster preparedness is about flexibility. Tornados, solar flares, cyber attacks on the grid, regional cascading failures... All of these are nice times to have access to secondary power sources. Plus the one in my Volt is obviously super mobile.

"Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever."

We live on a ranch near San Francisco.

We have several 24 hour and 1 or 2 48 hour long outages every winter.

See, when your power goes out you are one of thousands affected and your utility will spend man hours and overtime, etc., to get it back on very quickly. When our power goes out we are one of five. Or one of ten. They'll get to us Monday. Monday afternoon, that is.

I forget what year it was (2017 ?) our area had a 7-ish day power outage ... related to fires and PG&E transmission shutoffs. In other recent years we have had multi-day outages for similar reasons.

We've always needed a generator because of how long it takes service crews to get to remote, rural, dead-end locations like ours - but in 2022 even people in town want them because of the administrative power shutoffs ...

>> We have several 24 hour and 1 or 2 48 hour long outages every winter.

That makes the US seem like a third world country. In my apartment in central Europe I experienced only one, few hours long, power outage in over 10 years (not counting the few times when electricity was temporarily cut off because of unpaid bills :)

Yes and no.

On the one hand I do find it to be an example of civilizational inadequacy and I am critical of my state and local government as a result.

On the other hand, I have made a decision to live in a very, very rural place that has almost nothing at all in common with the very urban place you describe living in.

>> How unreliable is your power grid?

With climate change, I believe a lot of formerly reliable power grids will become less so in the future. Investments in distributed power generation and local storage will likely lead to a higher quality of life outcome for more people.

I heartily agree. Climate change isn't about a gentle 2 degree rise in temperatures. It is about 2 degrees over the whole damn planet being a LOT of energy and it isn't distributed evenly. This means more extreme weather events - both cold and hot - than we have been historically used to.

Electrical distribution will have to get better to keep expected reliability. Or if you are cynical about the prospects of that actually occurring, you cover your own needs.

Never say ever. We just lost power for 5 days, and some are still without power today (day 9) after high winds (130km/h) ripped apart our local infrastructure. This is in Ottawa, Canada.

You can be on a very reliable grid, and lose power for an extended period of time due to issues with local distribution lines. This is common in areas with above ground distribution lines that experience storms.

I would have thought the same until I moved to a suburb of Seattle. We've had two 5+ day periods of power outage in the last couple years. And it's not like we're exactly in the boonies. Houses in our neighborhood are densely packed and regularly go for $2+ million. But there's lots of trees in the Pacific Northwest and when the wind blows hard it knocks down branches across the whole region, so 50k+ people lose power all on the same day due to many downed lines and it takes a week to get to everyone.

> How unreliable is your power grid?

If you live in Puerto Rico, extremely unreliable [0, 1]

> It's a lot easier having someone else manage the entire infrastructure

Indeed it is, if they're competent [2, 3]

> Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever

Puerto Rico, along with the mid to southern east coast of the US, along with coasts on the Gulf of Mexico, are not strangers to powerful hurricanes. As climate change gets worse, the impacts of these phenomena may increase. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September of 2017, it took *months* for power to be restored to most of the island [4]

[0] (Island-wide outage in 2016, before Hurricane Maria): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37436392

[1] (Island-wide outage in April of this year): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/07/major-...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/businesses-puerto-rico-f...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/us/puerto-rico-power-outa...

[4] https://www.npr.org/2018/08/15/638739819/nearly-a-year-after...

Yeah, PR (and TX and CA) seem to have poor power grids.

PR (and parts of TX) at least have the excuse of hurricanes. Although TX failing because of the unexpected people turning on their ACs in the summer is a bit much.

Above ground power in areas with large trees is a recipe for longer power outages.

I was in northern NJ when Superstorm Sandy hit, and that suburb had many houses with multi-week outages.

Yes, a coastal region that could be exposed to hurricanes would be an area with natural disasters. And Superstorm Sandy was, IIRC, a hurricane that went so far north because of global warming.

The cost comparison should be more than just the thing that provides backup electrical power, though. The Lightning includes a vehicle and a different power source. It's an entirely different system.

Generac + truck + propane + gasoline

vs.

Truck + electricity

Over time it almost certainly works out in favor of the Lightning. Throw solar panels in as a source of power (for both your house and vehicle) and it becomes even more cost-effective.

Sure, but I have propane for heating anyway. My generator is already pretty old and should last a lot longer, meanwhile cars rust and wear out after about 10 years.

With maintenance, cars last about 20years unless they get extremely high mileage.

Truck also has insurance cost, and coat (energy, higher insurance) of using an overlarge truck for driving when you would have used a smaller car one otherwise.

Ford has found value “sweet spots” with the $39k electric F-150 and the $19k, 30mpg Maverick. They are both very reasonable vehicle choices that almost any household could make use of.

Interesting point of view, from my European view they seem like totally frivolous vanity items that are not only bad taste but actively destroy the planet. We're in the middle of a climate and resource crisis, and you could easily make two cars out of one F150 raw material (except maybe for the battery). They weight a lot which damages the road more, they are also very dangerous for pedestrians.

Why isn't everyone looking forward a more reasonable future with cars sized after one's real needs, not damaging aspirations? I know the car industry wants cars big, but consumers should activate a little bit their brains too and think a bit about the bigger picture.

>Surprised there’s no discussion on the price delta here - I could buy 10x power-walls for $110k, or 1x E F150 for $40k and get a free truck thrown in.

The reason there is no discussion of price delta is at least partially because the price of the truck discussed in the article is not the $40k variant. 10 Powerwalls would be 140 kWh of battery while the $40k F-150 Lightning would be 98 kWh. The one mentioned in the article with the 131 kWh battery is nearly double the price starting at $72.5k. That still might make the F-150 the better solution, but accuracy is important.

10 Powerwalls: 1.27 Wh/$ 1 40k truck: 3.5 Wh/$ 1 72.5k truck: 1.8 Wh/$

I think you're better off getting the 40k truck. I have no idea how Ford is getting batteries for so much cheaper for the 40k truck.

Or maybe Tesla is charging a lot

do we know the margins on Tesla Powerwalls?

Presumably extremely high, because we can't name a competitor and battery supply is limited by manufacturing logistics not supply/demand.

There are actually quite a lot of companies in that space, though mostly pretty small ones. Panasonic does sell their own home battery system though.

Your general question is fair, but your math is wrong which exaggerates the difference.

10 Powerwalls: 140 kWh / $110k = 1.27 Wh/$ 1

40k truck: 98 kWh / $40k = 2.45 Wh/$

72.5k truck: 131 kWh / $72.5k = 1.81 Wh/$

That said, I would speculate the that base model is effectively being subsidized by the marketing team. Saying it "starts at under $40k" sounds a lot better than "starts at under $73k". Ford simply won't produce that model in high quantities and they also know people generally won't be buying the base model anyway.

Apparently 1/5 Lightning's are the $40k pro model for the commercial market. I wouldn't be surprised if Ford is selling at a loss, but it's more likely to get the foot in the door of electrifying work trucks and making sure companies are investing in electric infrastructure so that Ford can replace the other 90% of the companies fleet with electric at a profit.

https://insideevs.com/news/584709/ford-one-five-f150-lightni...

The 72.5k truck only provides about 90 kwh at 9.6kw

90 / 72.5 = 1.24 Wh/$

Source is a footnote on Sunrun's site: "3When home is properly equipped and home transfer switch disconnects home from the grid. Based on 30kWh use per day using the F-150 Lightning with the extended range battery...." It requires the 80A charger which costs $4k + installation + the electrical upgrades to send 80A to wherever your charger is located.

It's incompatible with many solar systems too.

>I have no idea how Ford is getting batteries for so much cheaper for the 40k truck.

Because F150 is the number one vehicle sold in US, and Lightning is the platform that is aiming to replace it in the future. Ford probably has long term supply contracts with battery manufacturers.

They aren’t, yet. There is enough demand that Ford does not need to produce these smaller pack cars for a few years at least. Much like Tesla, they announce the cheaper (shorter range) config, but enough demand exists they never need to actually build it.

Yep. And here in Canada my understanding is the $40k (US) variant won't even be sold to consumers. Fleet vehicle only.

This is an ongoing switcheroo with EV manufacturers unfortunately. Targeting the high margin luxury segment only. They announce lower trims with cheaper prices only so that they can bait consumers but also get in good with various government subsidies.

Likely it all has to do with battery supplies. There's just not enough of them.

The larger pack gets you a much larger towing capacity, in exchange for less cargo capacity (weight, not volume). You don't get much cargo either way, so for the commercial market trailers seem like something you have to have, and the extended range battery is thus required.

Many fleet purchasers are very much interested in the short range model. It's being targeted at businesses, not end consumers. Local businesses like landscapers don't need a ton of range. I believe Ford's long term strategy is to make up for the small margin with high volume on this model.

Yes that is a good long term strategy, but short to medium term, there are not enough batteries, and batteries are not cheap enough. It's aspirationally priced (which is OK because there is so much demand for the expensive models too right now).

Nice exposition of Tesla's grift.

For all that screaming about $100/kWh packs, none of those cost savings ever seem to trickle down to the end customer.

You can buy LFP cells for about 2k for 10kwh, so this is 5wh/$, the use case is for a diy alternative to powerwall, but long story short, I'm sure Ford pay less for their batteries.

> As someone with a large house who just investigated a hybrid power walls + gas generator + solar backup solution

What about solar as the primary power solution, plus powerwalls for the night. How much would it cost?

Powerwalls may have a premium over other commercial solutions. Will Prowse covers everything from Powerwalls, DIY and commercial systems down to portable camping batteries on his YouTube channel [1]. For the kind of investment you're talking about, it may be worth exploring other potentially more cost-effective options outside of DIY.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse

I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but as the owner and operator of multiple EV's and a powerwall, they sound way off to me.

But beyond that, there are big distinctions left out of your theory: for instance, that the F150 is selling for 130-145k unless you happen to be friends with a ford dealer, and that the powerwall's value is primarily derived from grid peak time cost savings, not just emergency backup.

Unless you plan to charge and discharge your car's battery daily, by, i suppose manually flicking your main breaker over (is that even legal?) you will not see that value returned with your truck.

You should base your decisions on life cycle costs not inital costs. What is the longevity of the car battery vs. house battery? How much does their disposal cost?

Surprised at the negativity. This is great IMO! I just bought a house and am surprised by how crappy all the options for backup power generation are.

Cheapo generator: allows you to plug in some stuff but it’s very ad hoc, needs some light maintenance. Definitely good in a pinch but it’s not gonna power your house or even make it easy to keep your lights on.

Expensive generator, wired into house electrical system: great stuff but very expensive, and still requires maintenance.

Powerwall: low maintenance, terrific user experience, however exorbitantly expensive and also won’t really help in a prolonged outage.

I am curious to hear of hands on experience with http://www.generlink.com/ .

It is a medium power transfer switch that installs behind the electric meter, meaning that the existing panel can be used to select loads.

With a lower quality generator, you probably get ~3kW for less than $5000.

I really dislike the complexity of the automatic transfer solutions and I especially dislike the concept of preferred breakers or sub panels for generator use, etc.

Instead, just buy the $30 metal lockout tab for your panel and wire your generator right into the main panel and be done with it.

So. Much. Simpler.

Power goes out, you flip the lockout over and manually start the generator. Worried about loads ? Fine - while the panel is open, flip off your dryer 30a and … ?

In reality, load is not an issue - a generator with 100amp breaker will power your entire house.

(I even tried to break it - ran dryer, 20amp microwave, toaster and kicked on a water pump … no issue)

Can you explain why automatic transfer solutions must be more complicated? Is it because they must constantly monitor the power situation to know when to kick in?

I've installed this, the price approaches/exceeds the cost of entry level automatic transfer systems but with the functionality of a manual system. I think most would get more value out of something cheaper or more expensive. Also, because it sits above your breaker, you're introducing a new point of failure to your home's electrical supply. If a transfer switch fails, you don't have generator power. If this fails, you have no power whatsoever until it can be removed or replaced.

Cheaper: Interlock switch. Most local codes allow a UL recognized interlock system to be used on the panel that physically prevents the main panel breaker from closing while the generator breaker is open, and vice versa. You have to install a special outlet to the generator breaker, but as long as it's close to the panel, this does not cost a lot. Functionally this is the same as the product you linked, but for ~$150 plus installation vs ~$850 plus installation.

More expensive: automated transfer panel. If you need to use the generator frequently, this is what you want. Even if you use it infrequently, automatic transfer is so much more pleasant than having to go to the panel, flip the right breakers, turn on the generator, then do it all over again when the power comes back on. You can get a basic one for about the same price as the generlink device you linked. 200-amp whole house switches can be installed for $2000 or less

If it was me, I would not even bother with a manual system. For infrequent use, you can get a window insert that lets you feed extension cables through a window without letting in bugs or cold air. If you're using it more than once or twice a year, $1000-2000 for an automatic transfer switch is not that bad compared to the cost of a generator and will make the experience of using it much better.

The only situation I can think of where a device such as this would have an advantage would be one where you cannot permanently modify anything. It is in fact very quick and easy to install, and can be removed without leaving any permanent changes.

My main use case is powering the blower and pumps on my furnace, so cords won't really work.

When you say you've installed it, you mean for someone else?

I kind of had the sense that it was expensive relative to the utility it provides, but it is nice and tidy.

during the freeze in texas last year I cut the hardwired cable to my furnace and added a plug. I plugged that into an extension cord to a 2kw honda generator and it worked great. I had an electrician clean it all up after the freeze so my furnace now has a permanent plug into an outlet.

I did add an interlock and a 13kw generator that will mostly power the house.

7.5KW Generac $2000 plus installation

https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200665207_20...

I have a Powerwall. It's price was competitive with a natural gas generator. I was surprised as well (I didn't expect the generator to be that expensive), but when they came within ballpark, the Powerwall was a no brainer.

It does (supposed to have) sustainability assuming it's backed by solar and you have enough sun (as with all solar caveats).

The best thing about the Powerwall is that it's not a standby system. It's active everyday. For my house, solar by day, battery by night, recycle, recharge, repeat.

This means that when the rare event comes, I don't have to worry (as much) about it not working because I didn't run the thing for 6 months. It can fail anytime, but at least I can, ideally, deal with it while the grid is up, rather than have it fail when it's actually necessary.

Also the power switchover is seamless.

The Powerwall experience is, indeed, very good.

How long do you have it and are you monitoring capacity degradation of the cells?

Not long enough to see an impact (only had it a few months, the project took almost 2 years with all of the COVID relate shenanigans).

Utilizing the Tesla apps, I honestly am not sure how I would monitor degradation over time. Perhaps were I to download the data, I might glean some insight from that. It's currently not something they highlight.

Ok! Slightly jealous with your setup, that sounds like a nice bit of kit you have there.

With a natural gas generator though, you don't run out of power once the batteries have depleted as long as you still have gas service.

> you don't run out of power once the batteries have depleted

That's definitely true if you charge only via grid, but my friends who got a powerwall bought it because they need to off-set the 9 AM to 3 PM solar into a 6 PM to 10 pm usage scenario.

Their bet is that in case of an earthquake that doesn't hit their house directly, the solar + powerwall + EVs is a more survivable setup compared to gas pipelines or a propane tank on-site.

The other plus side is that they use the device every day, so if it isn't working, they'll know in a day - the previous experience portable generators (though admittedly it is just "burning man" every year) says they need last-minute wrenching if they're idle all year.

This is exactly why I went with Powerwalls. The batteries charge during the day from our solar array and then we use the stored electricity at night.

I've only had the Powerwalls for a few months, but we've already had several four- and five-day stretches where our production was high enough and our usage low enough that we didn't buy any power from the utility at all. Contrast this with previous average power bills in the $400/mo range, which are now down to $15/mo.

There have also been a couple of brief power outages (5-10 minutes) where the only reason we knew about the outage was that the utility texted us about it before the Tesla app notification appeared on my phone.

Yeah, powerwall + solar is definitely more sustainable.

I can buy a tri-fuel 10/8kw+ generator for ~$1k, which can run all the standard stuff at home - and some extras, depending on fuel. How's a Powerwall competitive with that?

Sure, no seamless transition and a bit of light maintenance. It all depends on how many times per year you need it and for how long.

To be honest, I'd love to have a Powerwall - but with the huge cost difference it is unfortunately a no-no.

Batteries + solar means that you're producing your own electricity every day too. You can't do that with a generator unless you start cooking biodiesel in your garage.

For you light maintenance of a 10kW generator might be easy, but for most of us it isn't. It still has a ton of moving parts, each of which can fail and will be hard or impossible to replace in an emergency situation.

It's like backups, you really don't have them unless you've restored them once. With a solar+battery setup you're testing the system every hour of every day. With a generator you need to actually schedule a test time every X months and make sure the fuel is still valid.

Appreciate that what I got was a bid from a leading generator provider, and the cost included all of the installation, wiring, gas lines, trenching, permits, etc.

Also appreciate that when it comes to mechanical things in general, I seem to excel at swinging hammers on to all 10 of my left thumbs. I'm not someone who's going to "do it myself" by any stretch. Just not my gift.

I was as surprised as anyone at the overall cost of the project, and how the Powerwall had become competitive to it. I do not think I would have been as happy with the generator as I am with the Powerwall, and the daily utility of the system is just far higher than the occasional backup utility of the generator would have been.

Don't the batteries wear down after a few years? I thought the batteries were only good for a few thousand charge/discharge cycles.

a few thousand cycles * a few days of use per cycle = a decade or two.

Reading elsewhere in the discussion, using the truck in this manner requires equipment that starts to get closer to the price of a Generac.

My parents have a Generac. It tests itself every Tuesday at noon. It always seemed fine. But the first time they needed it, something failed. I'm not sure what, but I think it was in the electronics and software. Even the best tests can't catch everything.

Probably a no load test. I put mine online and do a transfer test weekly.

I've got a somewhat goldilocks generator setup that involves a backfeed breaker (with mandatory interlock kit). I can run my central AC on this thing for ~5 hours per 10 gallons of fuel. The generator is "portable" and rated for 12000 continuous watts.

Its a bit of a pain to set up, but this is how I deal with multi-day hurricane scenarios living in the gulf coast region.

I debated standby generator, but the cost vs value is a difficult argument considering how often the texas grid actually experiences a multi-day event.

I am still considering something like a powerwall, but its a lot of extra crap to pay for and think about. My generator is properly winterized and will almost certainly start up if required to within the next half decade. Very simple.

How many tons is your AC? I’m also on the gulf coast and struggling to size a generator for my 5-ton compressor.

4 tons.

5 tons would definitely be pushing it on LRA/running amps for this size generator. But, this ultimately depends on the age & vendor of the compressor. Newer multi-stage or inverter compressor designs are much more likely to play well.

The opposite is often true with inverter driven compressors. It’s VFD powered which introduces harmonics and other noise from SWPS. In the data center industry you oversize your generators to deal with it.

Plus dirty power from a struggling generator will kill the VFD. I just ran into this with my ECM condenser fan motor, circuit killed by generator.

> The opposite is often true with inverter driven compressors.

This is good to know. I had simply made an assumption - The inrush current is what I was primarily concerned with.

I did not realize the other factors would cause trouble once it was ramped up to full speed. I can definitely see how dirty power from a cheap genset (like the one I have) could screw over a digital drive system.

>I can run my central AC on this thing for ~5 hours per 10 gallons of fuel.

Sincere question, since I live in the opposite climate: how necessary is running your AC during a power outage? Where I'm from heat is a requirement during a winter storm outage, but my furnace backup doesn't require a ton power. I run most of my house on an 8000 watt portable generator.

In many places in California, you'll more likely die of the heat than die from cold.

Hurricanes are followed by the intense heat and humidity of Summer in the Gulf Coast. Without AC, it's miserable.

Where I live in The South it’s 80-90 degrees for months on end with 70-90% humidity. If you’re on the gulf coast a hurricane could knock you out for a while.

I guess it's the humidity that's the killer? 90F doesn't sound too bad for a few days.

EDIT: This heat index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index) puts 90F (32c) at 90% as equivalent to 122F (50c), in which case I can see the problem!

As others have noted, it is the humidity that is the killer.

In most bad hurricanes, your home is going to leak some amount of water if you are in this region and take a direct hit. Doesn't matter how fancy your roof is. Something is going to leak.

Absent some external miracles, your HVAC system is the fastest way to dry out your house after it gets absolutely wrecked in one of these storms. The only way, even. To be clear, my setup is for the aftermath. I am not expecting to ride through a hurricane with my portable genset sitting in the back yard chugging along.

I have a generator that can power everything in my house except my air conditioning. It plugs into the side of my house. The total cost in todays dollars is less than $1k usd.

I’ve used this generator to power me through outages that have lasted days.

It’s been relatively low maintenance and the maintenance that exists is taught in YouTube videos.

generators and power walls make sense only for hospitals and stupid-rich people (edit: and remote setups)

You probably have a couple things you need to keep running during a power outage. A decent consumer nobreak will be more economical and efficient.

This is marketing. This car is being marketed to the same doomsday people who buy guns because the coming collapse of civilization. Pure fear based marketing.

It's not all doomsday prepper marketing. Adding Vehicle to Load (V2L) or Vehicle to Grid (V2G) is not a huge increase in BoM.

The F-150 already has multiple AC outlets in it, in a pinch you could just carry your fridge next to it and plug it in :)

This is just Ford doing a proprietary charger that can automate switching from grid to V2G mode if the grid goes down.

Realistically, you have to look at it from a "convenience/dollar", since power outages are generally rare.

With the general infrequency of power outages in most places, getting portable quiet generators like Honda EU ones and running an extension cord inside your house is pretty much the most cost effective solution. You can chain 2 EU3000is together for 6000 watts, and only spend $6k, and run them out of your back yard without disturbing the neighbors.

The other issue that you have to consider with Lightning is that while its good for occasional outages, for every watt you use, you slowly lose the ability to drive away if shit goes south, with no easy way of effectively getting that charge back. If anything, the current Hybrid F150 is the better choice for powering your house.

Just remember then when all of your neighbors have power out as well that those small generators often “grow legs and disappear” … it is a very good idea to chain them up.

Also _always_ ensure the exhaust is no where near any open doors or windows. Small portable generators are exceptionally dangerous for carbon monoxide poisoning.

All that said these small generators are fantastic and they can even easily be setup to run from an external fuel tank to increase flexibility.

I run mine out of my garage with the garage door cracked and a fan pointed to push the exhaust out the crack. Have monoxide detectors in the house for safety.

This is great, but don't discount the fact that you can have some battery backup for under $5k USD (~15kwh). Granted, you won't have ~100 kWh of storage, but in most places (in the US), the grid isn't so unstable that you'll regularly use it.

And of course it won't power your home at normal consumption days (or even 1 day), but it works for emergencies.

I'm more interested in the range extender[0] that was patented by ford recently. Body-on-frame vehices seem like a no-brainer case for EV's, since they're typically larger and have more space on the frame for batteries, and having a camping/off road vehicle that also has a range extender sounds like a great idea to me.

I've really been thinking of getting one after my 2019 crosstrek is paid off, but that won't be for a couple of years.

[0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34277725/ford-f-150-range...

It's absolute bonker, the patent got granted. The current state of the patent system is a complete joke.

Completely agree. My coworkers at my current and past job keep patenting ridiculous shit which should be, at most, a blog entry. Not even a conference talk. Definitely not a patent.

We should really bring forth exponential fees for patents and copyright.

Here is the patent in question.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US10773602B2/en

Oh nice, it's a generator module that turns your EV into a hybrid for long-haul trips. I've been talking about this kind of thing for years. Glad it's finally an option.

~~While this appears to be just extra battery, which is fine, I'd really love to see a generator module that turns your EV into a hybrid for long-haul trips.~~

From the link in the original comment:

> The Drive first spotted the patent, submitted in April 2018 and published on September 15, 2020. Its illustrations show a removable range extender that sits in the bed of a truck and looks like a toolbox. Inside the device would be a small motor, fuel tank, exhaust system, and electronics needed to hook it up to an electric truck.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I wasn't paying enough attention.

More importantly, the generator could be rented. 99% of my trips are well within the range of a EV. However for that final 1% renting a generator would be useful to get the rest of the way. Many of those trips are to do other things where a generator would be handy, camping trips for example.

An EV+generator is very useful for those who need a generator: generators are most efficient at 80% of their maximum load, in some cases they will burn more fuel at 50% load than 80%! Thus a generator could charge the EV as needed and turn off.

Yes that would be incredible, especially if there were a standard for interoperability. Imagine just dropping a generator into the frunk, plugging it in, and you're good to go for 500mi instead of 300mi.

A.k.a series hybrid. Chevy attempted this with the Volt - it made perfect sense to me but never really caught on.

I don't understand why series hybrids didn't catch on. They were a complete no-brainer to me (not a car engineer though).

With a regular hybrid you need to have complex clutch arrangements to transfer power from two engines to the wheels simultaneously.

In a series hybrid you'd have a fully electric drivetrain and a fuel powered generator, that could always run at optimal efficiency.

The series hybrid is still more complexity over a fully battery electric. More weight especially. The density/size/weight trade-off of carrying around a gas generator at all times versus how much additional battery you can add for that same weight and better size (because increased density) kind of generally makes gas generators less desirable than just adding more batteries to a simpler battery electric.

I have a ten year old Chevy Volt that I still love and it was a great transitionary option when I bought it ten years ago. I still think it was the right choice for me at the time. At this point, I feel like the age of the series hybrid is already "over", not just because the Volt was discontinued, but because full battery electrics have only gone on to prove their simplicity, what they can do with larger batteries, and everything about the improvements in 10 years of EV development. I wish other people had as an easy of a transition as I had, but I also think that it's better for everyone to just dive in with a full EV rather than a (good for the time, but bad today) compromise like a series hybrid.

The parallel hybrids are really genius. At the heart of the Prius design is a simple planetary gear and two eletric motors that forms a power split device.

What makes it different from a normal planetary gear train is you have a motor generator MG1 on the engine and MG2 one the ring gear. The deal is you have a mechanical power path via the planetary gears. And you have a parallel electric power path between MG1 and MG2 (and the battery). In the end it's a just a CVT.

It's conceptually more complicated, but probably not in practice.

Yeah, the Prius eCVT really spoiled me for any other style of power transfer. Even the smoothest automatic felt like crap after it.

So, naturally, the only choice upwards from there was fully electric for me =)

Series hybrid (not pluggable) is now become popular here in Japan, like Nissan Note, Honda Fit, Daihatsu Rocky, and even minivans. Pros is that the mechanism is similar to BEV so not much R&D cost, and efficiency in city use. Cons is highway fuel efficiency (and lower power than pure ICE) but people not tend to drive highway frequently like US. BEVs are still far from affordable for average Japanese income for now, and plenty of people can't have outlet for rented parking.

It's worth noting that the reason hybrids are popular in Japan is due to Toyota pushing them, very heavily, due to their substantial failure to keep up innovation-wise and not invest in EV drivetrains and platforms. Toyota has gone so far as to print what amounts to propaganda for grade school children to brainwash them into the evils of BEVs.

There is no reason BEVs wouldn't work in Japan. Extensive, highly reliable, fast public transit means range is irrelevant and vehicles can be small, light, with small batteries and small motors. High voltage means a normal wall socket and most circuits provide plenty of power for charging, no need for special circuit installs.

BEVs are easier to produce, are a fraction as complicated, and have very little maintenance and long lifespan. That's another reason Japan doesn't have any interest in them; a massive part of Japan's economic engine is their regulating cars off the road after a shockingly short period of time to export them off to Rest of World (and the resulting parts sales...)

Agree that BEV works in Japan and Japanese motor company (good at making ICE) have incentive to delay transition for BEV. Still, there are blockers to have EV in Japan.

Having normal charging outlet on mechanical parking in Tokyo is difficult. Govt subsidy is now getting available but replacing entire mechanical parking system would be very costly. Non-pluggable hybrid is practical for them. Anyway they tend to not use cars for commute everyday, so they aren't best customer for BEV.

BEV on local cities/rural areas (where most people use car for commute) is very practical especially they have a house, but they tend to not earn much so most BEVs are not affordable for now. They also love minivans that should be extremely optimized for inner space. Nissan Sakura is great for them as a second K-car on family. I wish Japanese manufacturers release more affordable models.

Anyway (cheap and reliable) massive battery supply is the blocker for EV transition that should be solved by automotive company. Toyota can make 40x Prius for one bz4X battery capacity.

> Extensive, highly reliable, fast public transit means range is irrelevant.

You mean BEV for rental car fleet? It's different story. They care vehicle cost very much, but fuel price is paid by customer.

Isn't one of the major inhibitors for BEV adoption in Japan the fact that the power grid is 110 volts and people don't really have three-phase electricity in their homes.

Charging from a 110V outlet is an exercise in frustration unless you pull completely bonkers amount of amps.

On a 230V system you need around 10A for a practical in-home charger, that way you get around 100km of range over night.

No, I don't say power grid is a problem. Car buyer without their own house tend to not own parking place but rent (Here, on street parking is never allowed), so even installing 100V outlet requires negotiation that is difficult. Govt should do the job. Installing outlet for existing mechanical parking on apartment is more difficult. https://living.rise-corp.tokyo/parking-in-japan/

If car buyer has a house, they can easily install 200V single phase outlet unless the house is very old. I'm in this case so I'd like to buy BEV for my next car.

The Chevy Volt could operate as a series or parallel hybrid. So it didn't really save any design or build complexity.

It wasn't a true parallel hybrid in the Prius design sense, and it was only used in a peculiar series of events: it had a belt from the gas generator to help with power situations above normal highway speeds and/or torque in low battery situations or the provided Mountain mode (when concerned about steep inclines). The goal of that mode of parallel operation was to use as much weak torque power directly from the gas generator as possible (which had very weak torque) so that the system overall could save as much battery as absolutely possible so that in moments where you need high torque there was some spare battery for it. (On a steep incline on a mountain is absolutely when you don't want to run out of torque.)

In most operation patterns the Volt was always serial in regular driving and just about never "parallel". (Depending on how you drive of course. Drivers that consistently and regularly drive 80mph or more would have a different experience.)

Compared to a Prius there was considerable design/build complexity savings in the Volt serial design (that sometimes has a low torque parallel connection). Compared to a fully battery electric vehicle however, yeah the Volt was still super complex.

The Volt died due to lack of marketing because GM didn't really didn't want to make it due to cost.

The problem is that all the car manufacturers know that hybrid is a dead end. So, everybody wants to produce all-electric since all-electric is ridiculously cheaper to produce than hybrid or combustion engine cars.

In the meantime, back in the real world, the infrastructure for all-electric is rolling out very slowly. This means that you need to be a short-distance (read: larger city) commuter who owns a house with a garage parking spot (read: stupidly expensive real estate because in/near larger city) in order to take advantage of having an electric car.

So, nobody wants to roll the infrastructure out since that's expensive and there's no lock in. And the manufacturers don't want to roll out hybrids since those are a dead end.

(Good example of the brain damage: The Oceanside train station in San Diego has a couple of electric parking slots. The first problem is that there are too few--every spot should be electric. Second, you are only nominally allowed to use them when you are actively charging. This, of course, is stupid since you're likely to hit your charge maximum sometime when you are 100 miles away by train. Third, there is no useful shuttle from anywhere to the train station so that you could put your car there as a freeway stop and "top up" while you go shop, eat, etc.)

I mention the millions of people who park on the street e.g. https://i1.wp.com/blog.spothero.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...

Or in older apartment buildings where the management will never pay the money to put in electric chargers.

People look at me like I'm a fool for even saying this.

My 2014 BMW i3 does this, at least with the European software on it. It's got a 2-cylinder motorcycle engine in the back that I can kick on at will (the US model, for silly reasons, doesn't give you this control unless you modify the system configuration over a diagnostic port). Works well. I've taken many long trips in it this way.

Edit, for clarity: I have a US model with modded software. Without the mods, the ICE will kick on at ~10% battery. The mods let me start up the ICE whenever I want. But either way, it's more a backup generator than, say, a Prius setup.

The range extender option was reportedly extremely unpopular among buyers. The i3 was also hideously unreliable, with lease turn-ins being practically given away at wholesale auctions.

A substantial amount of pollution and efficiency loss is during warm-up, so activating the range extender when the battery is nearly depleted to maximize the extender's run time and thus maximize energy to pollution (and fuel consumption) ratio, is prudent...

The BMW i3 and i8 worked this way, as well as the Chevy Volt

Right but those were built in, not a module that could be installed only when needed.

Seems more efficient to just have all cars be hybrids, with a small battery that can cover the bulk of daily driving, and then use the generator for longer trips. I'd imagine 90+% of cars are driven < 40 miles per day on most days. Less efficient to lug around a generator all the time? Sure. But right now I'm carrying around 300 mile-range worth of batteries on most of my trips that are 5-10 miles/day. And, users don't need to think or worry about it, engineers don't need to design it, you don't need a winch to install it into your car, etc...

e.g. Toyota RAV4-Prime

The issue with that is that you have a lot of extra weight, parts, and complexity which you're barely ever using. Having a module allows you to only install it when you need it. You could even rent it only when needed, as another person suggested.

You can do something similar with a Prius. Turns out a Prius has a pretty efficient generator in it.

> As long as it has fuel, the Prius can produce at least three kilowatts of continuous power, which is adequate to maintain a home's basic functions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/automobiles/02POWER.html

This is an old article, it's 15 years old which makes it ancient in the battery world. I have a Prius from that generation and mine doesn't have V2G. I can't find any numbers, how many Priuses actually have V2G capability?

It's always been done by connecting an inverter to the big Prius battery.

Here's a link to one company that sells the kits:

https://www.plugoutpower.com/

Don't see anything on that page about consequences for your Toyota warranty. Assuming it's invalidated, this looks like a solution for owners of older hybrids only.

The energy it takes to fill up the tank in this vehicle once could power a house for a week.

Wow. Every household driving an F150 would appear to the grid like bring 7x houses online.

It certainly puts the efficiency of writing a bike for short trips in perspective.

Writing or riding? :)

The grid is sized on peak rather than average loads and at every voltage level spends many hours a day comfortably below a third of its capacity almost everywhere. In places with non-electric heating it can easily be at single digit % load factor on a cold night.

DC fast chargers are challenging for local grids but home / office based AC chargers with smart charging don't really contribute to grid loading because they only draw substantial power during non-congested periods.

Yes, it is useful to remember that peak load on the Grid is often dominated by/built for industrial users that generally keep somewhat strict 9-5 business days and evenings/weekends rarely see anything close to that same peak. It's why power utilities have almost always had different rates for Peak and Non-Peak electric usage (to incentivize more non-peak usage). Most EVs even have smart modes that let them schedule their charges to best take advantage of cheaper off-peak electricity pricing.

I'm curious how this looks in another context. According to the EIA in 2018 the average Texas home used 14,112 kWh a year.

The EPA/Monroney window sticker for the Ford Lightning claims 49 kWh / 100 miles, so about 1 kWh for 2 miles. So you could drive approximately 28,000 miles on the same power that a home consumes.

Does my math make sense? Did I miss something?

> Every household driving an F150 would appear to the grid like bring 7x houses online

That assumes every household fully recharges that F-150 each day, meaning they drive at least 300 miles per day. Instead, I think it's generally assumed that a household might drive that much in a week instead, which appears to the grid like bringing 2x houses online. Hence the estimates that electric vehicles are going to double the amount of electricity that we need to generate.

No it wouldn't. Bringing 7x houses online is 7x the power usage, day in and day out.

Bringing one battery in that's the size of 7 houses is a one-time fill up, plus the energy expenditure of however much you drive the car, which is independent of the size of the battery.

It's like saying buying a bigger water tank means doubling your water usage.

Average American drives 14,000 - 17,000 miles per year. The top end F-150 Lightning has a range of 300 miles but I think we all know in practice this will be closer to 200-250.

This is all hand wavy math, but If I'm generous on both ends that's about 56 full charge cycles per year. Based on OP math that would be the equivalent to 392 days of electricity for a typical US house. If I am less generous that's 85 full charge cycles or the rough equivalent of 595 days of electricity.

Each F-150 Lightning is the rough equivalent of adding 1.1 - 1.63 houses worth of electricity to the grid.

I can't speak to whether this is a potential problem or not, but I would guess that there would be serious problems if every house in a neighborhood suddenly went out and bought an F-150 Lightning.

Luckily, Ford won't be able to make enough of them for that to be a problem in even the next 5 years. By that time, the grid will have slowly expanded and caught up just like it is now.

California has had issues with their grid but that's not because of people buying EVs as much as it is incompetence in regards to grid maintenance generally.

States like Massachusetts also have higher EV adoption and there are no signs of the grid becoming overburdened. Heck, Texas cities have a TON of EVs also and electricity is still 10¢/kWh from Oncor.

The grid will be fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dfyG6FXsUU

It’s interesting because for a long time electricity needs declined over time. Think things like light bulbs: just getting more efficient. Energy efficient everything has been a major trend.

Now suddenly it’s all electric everything! Heat pumps! EVs! Heat pump water heaters!

I'm a big supporter of bikes, but this is a huge exaggeration. This would only be true if every household was completely recharging and discharging the battery capacity every single day.

No more than adding a swimming pool makes your house look like 7 houses to the water grid. You fill it up once, not every day. After that it just has its replenishment cost.

Not sure it's 7x houses, but it's big enough to make me wonder how states like Texas are going to keep up over the next 5-10 years, with its absurdly low population density and love affair with trucks.

Texas struggles to get electricity to citizens in recent summers. How will it handle the coming electric vehicle wave?

Rural people in Texas won't be buying electric trucks in 5 years. Maybe 10, but I doubt it. Until the electric equivalent of a fast charging gas station comes online in every small town, I doubt we'll see mass adoption in rural areas.

My relatives in rural Texas can easily drive 100+ miles a day just to go to work and the store/errands. If they needed to take a trailer that day, they would likely reach the limit of electric range.

My guess, wealthier rural families will probably get the ball rolling by purchasing electric cars for commuting and keeping the big diesel truck for weekend toy hauling/livestock/etc. This will incentivize some infrastructure in rural communities until city adoption reaches peak levels and we start to see infrastructure spread out from cities to support road trips and road warrior business commuting.

Power outage at my house right now and I have my fridge running off the 1500W outlet on my Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Only an 8kWH battery but it’s good enough to run the fridge just wish I could run my well pump as well because no running water really is the worst. And when the battery depletes the cars ICE kicks in as a generator.

This kind of thing is only going to get more necessary as the weather becomes more volatile. This outage is likely fallout from the historic storm that went through Ontario and Quebec a bit over a week ago.

Hmm, my Outlander PHEV doesn't have the 1500W outlet - I must have a lower trim.

Cool that you can do it though. I believe there was a demonstration of using this vehicle as a backup generator during an outage, but I don't think it was ever commercialized.

Yeah it's annoying it's only on the upper trims. I pushed my wife to spring for the upper trim and while I find many things about this vehicle disappointing (compared to my Volt which is far superior, technically), the outlets are handy.

The thing is though that the Outlander has a CHADeMO port (strangely, I can't imagine ever using it to charge). CHADeMO is bidirectional. In theory a vehicle-to-house system could be built with it, providing 400V DC which you could run through whatever inverter you want.

I say in theory because it doesn't seem like there are commercial products out there that will do this at this time. And CHADeMO is now a dead standard. But YouTuber sensation Benjamin Nelson has done it DIY with his iMiEV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBV9CIVN0fs ... but I can't say personally I'm eager to DIY it myself, because, well, 400V is scary.

My power is now back on :-)

> The thing is though that the Outlander has a CHADeMO port (strangely, I can't imagine ever using it to charge).

I read that it was a requirement by the Japanese government to have Bi-di charging to prepare for situations where the grid went down due to emergencies (i.e. earthquakes). It's pretty silly for rapid charging though, since you should only add 80% to a measly 8kWh battery. I've done it just to entertain myself when I run across a CHADeMO Electrify America station.

> Benjamin Nelson has done it DIY with his iMiEV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBV9CIVN0fs ... but I can't say personally I'm eager to DIY it myself, because, well, 400V is scary.

Nifty, but yeah, I'm not messing w/ hacking 400V either.

It may be possible to run it off of a 1500w AC source. Compressors/pumps need a lot of current for a very short period of time to start, and much less power to run. Sometimes you can use electronic trickery to "soft start" a pump, Google "soft start" + your water pump - if your pump is 1/2hp or less, it's likely possible to run the pump off a 1500w supply.

Alternatively, you can add a pressurized well tank for $300-500 usd that will supply you with 25-35 gallons of water without power. Not an unlimited supply, but even a little water is much better than none.

The existing pump is likely running off 230V while the Outlander provides 120V AC. I'd also need to rewire it all so I can actually plug it in.

I do have a pressure tank already (which is actually due to be replaced). But it's really only enough just for a few hand washings (and accidental toilet flushings) and then we end up out. Long run I want a more resilient setup. As soon as I start working again I want to get quotes on a solar panel setup for on my shop, and hopefully some kind of battery backup. Or even better or in addition, a CHADeMO V2H into the house so I can run the whole house off the Outlander.

“At scale, when these vehicles are enabled to send energy back to the grid, flex alerts and notices of grid emergencies will be a thing completely of the past,”

He cannot possibly be that ignorant. Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

Transforming a Lightning into a home generator requires Ford’s 80-amp charging station and a $3,895 home integration system from Sunrun Inc. Installation cost for the Sunrun system varies according to the home and location. The charging station comes with the extended-range version of the Lightning; it’s a $1,310 option for buyers of the standard 230 mile-range version of the pickup.

A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars. What kind of idiot is going to shell out six grand just to drain his truck battery for the same purpose?

Grid failures are usually very short. If paid well, most people would be fine to use their batteries to smooth out a 10 minute failure while backup generation is turning on.

Where I live in the Midwest, power failures are very rare. When they happen it is usually amid a major thunderstorm or snowstorm, affecting thousands of customers, with obvious obstacles to getting crews out to fix things. Power goes out... it might last 8 minutes, it might last 8 hours, it might last days.

At that moment, backup power (obtained at considerable expense) is precious. The utility may have to pay far beyond "well" to buy it.

It's not short in a hurricane zone. Weeks of no power after a strong hit is fairly common.

I wouldn't want to pay that much because a stand alone battery probably costs less, but if I could pay $500 for some kit that let me use my tesla as a power source for my house at night I would be very interested. This would make sense to me as I have panels to charge it during the day, having a few KWH at night time would be pretty efficient.

The stand alone batteries are too expensive right now.

> A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars. What kind of idiot is going to shell out six grand just to drain his truck battery for the same purpose?

The kind of idiot that wants to generate income through arbitrage by storing energy in his EV when prices are low and selling it back to the grid during peak hours when prices are high?

Don't forget the kind of person buying this kind of vehicle today also probably has a multiple car garage.

How long do you suppose it's going to take to make back their investment? For it to pay off in ten years they'd have to be making fifty dollars a month from arbitrage.

People that buy $100k EVs aren’t worried about ROI.

FWIW, Ford has sold out of these for the next 2 years, so they must be doing something right.

Or very, very wrong, since it's Ford and they cannot meet demand for a truck.

Even Tesla can’t meet demand for EVs.

With all due respect, Ford has long experience in manufacturing and they are not meeting demand for the F150 Electric or the Maverick. They also had problems with the Bronco (non EV).

An 15 mpg gasoline truck might use $100,000 in fuel over its lifetime. Buying a $40,000 electric truck pays off really quick. Selling power back to the grid is just gravy.

Electricity isn’t free. You should include that in your comparison costs.

It also varies. It can be over 50 cents some places and under 5 cents in others. In comparison, people complain how much more gasoline costs in California compared to elsewhere, but the difference between $6 and $4 doesn't really affect my $100,000 figure all that much.

So I can do the electricity math for myself, but not for others.

Overnight in Texas it often is free in the wholesale markets.

That is 300,000 miles at $5/gallon. I don't know what gas prices will go to, but very few trucks go that far before they are scrapped - they absolutely can go a a lot more than that, but most do not.

Yes, "might" is carrying a lot of weight in my comment. A good number of trucks do hit 300,000 miles.

In Texas should electricity prices go sideways again it might take very little time.

But honestly I don't know, it's not something I've looked into. If prices become increasingly variable coupled to demand and impact of generation source at time of use, I imagine it could be quite lucrative and that might be a useful incentive to get effectively decentralized peaker plants in the form of grid-tied residential batteries caching cheap cleanly-sourced electricity.

Assuming that no more than 50% of the 100kWh battery is used, and a full use of the 50kWh every day as part of diurnal power management, that's $0.032 / kWh.

$32 / MWh wholesale is an arbitrage that could be done on many days in CAISO today. I don't particularly think that people will use that much of their battery or do so every day of course but it does show that it's not an orders of magnitude implausible scenario either.

If you use the battery for internal use (i.e. use it to run your AC during the day) you'll save more than the wholesale price difference from your utility bill (since consumer prices are higher than wholesale). A lot of this thinking assumes that you'll have the battery plugged in ready to operate all the time though, and doesn't consider accelerated depreciation on the battery (if that's a problem, I'm not sure).

That kind of idiot would hopefully also not do the math on how many cycles electric vehicle batteries can take and thus how much such a battery pack depreciates per cycle. In all but the most extreme grids, the amount of depreciation is vastly larger than the amount of money you could possibly hope to gain by arbitraging electricity prices. There is a reason that true large-scale storage is so far almost exclusively the domain of pumped hydro, which has a much longer life in terms of cycles than batteries.

(Before anyone brings up the Tesla battery in Australia, that is an edge case where the grid needed more capacity for grid stabilisation. Almost anywhere where you would find one of the electric pickups from the article would also have a stable enough grid that you cannot replicate that with the car battery.)

Cycling a battery from 75% to 25% and back puts very little wear on the battery. A battery might have a 3000 cycle lifetime, but that's a 100% -> 0% -> 100% cycle.

3000 cycles is already 10 years at just under 1 cycle per day. Adding an order of magnitude more cycles by cycling between 75% and 25% gets you a century. Something else is going to die first.

Lithium Ion batteries degrade very little with low C mid range charge cycles. The time/temperature/SoC degredation is greater. Hence why you don't want to leave a battery sitting at 100%.

Someone else linked this battery earlier: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48...

5kwh for $1500 with 3000 cycles is $.10/kwh. I'm oversimplifying here as the real cost is higher, but the arbitrage opportunity only has to offer ~$.20/kwh to be generally profitable with a battery like that.

Some time of use plans are already there daily. I don't think the person taking advantage of this sounds like any "kind of idiot".

I think this is a actually a key selling point of this car: people are buying this specifically because they can run their house using it.

Your assumption is that your battery is going to suffer enormously. That's probably not the case. Batteries do relatively well if you don't stress them with enormous loads. Relative to driving the vehicle, powering your house is a very light load. Ten days is quite long. You won't be driving that long on a single charge for 100kwh battery.

And it would of course be highly unusual to be running your house for extended periods of time; at least not unintentionally. And even then it would not be worse than simply driving the car to the maximum range. You might want to drive to a supercharger after a few days. If they are still functioning of course. And if things get that bad, most petrol stations will also have issues powering their pumps.

But if that somehow is a regular thing in your life, invest in some solar panels instead of a generator. That should cut down on the running cost for that truck as well.

I worry about keeping my Tesla topped up about as much as I worried about my previous gas cars.

Six grand seems like a lot but if the price came down then I could see using the top half of the tank to shift grid power use to cheaper rated hours or use home solar later in the day.

The general public doesn’t understand lithium battery cycle life.

$6k to connect a 100kWH+ battery to their house is a drop in the bucket to the $100k they paid for the vehicle, and compared to buying the batteries outright as a home backup option.

It’s the killer app right now for EVs and homes with solar. A Tesla Powerwall is like $13k for 10kWh. You’re getting something 10x capacity at a fraction of the cost.

Here is a 5kWh powerwall type thing for $1,500: https://signaturesolar.com/shop-all/batteries/eg4-lifepower4...

Buy a nice server rack and three of the aforementioned and there's your "powerwall" for less than half the price.

That doesn't include the charger, inverter, rack, or wiring. Add another $1500-2000 for all that.

Obviously sold as the $13K Tesla Powerwall doesn't include an inverter either. They upsell you to a "Powerwall+".

Also:

> Tesla’s residential energy products will be sold as a bundle and will exclusively work with one another. This means that Tesla Powerwalls will not work with other manufacturer’s solar panels. Additionally, Tesla will not sell any of its Solar products without a Powerwall,

Are those the same solar panels that Walmart is suing Tesla for causing fires?

First off, safely using a generator to power eg your home furnace requires some costly wiring and installation of a transfer switch (yes you can do it more jankily but let’s please not.) Moreover: this installation does not compete with the cheapest portable generator at Home Depot, I assume it competes with a dedicated standby generator. Those are much more expensive, and run closer to $3k without installation (which is way more: they require a pedestal and a bunch of hardwiring and a dedicated fuel tank/gas connect.) I looked into a standby generator after an all-day wintertime power outage: it was both annoying and cost-prohibitive. If I could protect my home pipes from freezing in such a future outage by using my existing vehicle, that would be amazing. My threat model here is not “prepper looking for weeks of regular grid independence”, it’s “cheap and clean way of keeping my pipes from freezing during a 1-3 day wintertime power outage.” If I can amortize the electrician cost of installing a charger while also getting this feature, that’s even better.

Exactly and on top of that, building in this capability as new battery technology emerges will only expand the benefit. Graphene Aluminum Ion batteries as well as solid state batteries are expected to both increase energy capacity and expand the lifetime of the batteries themselves.

I'm not going to be a 1st year buyer of a Lightning but I'll probably be a buyer as soon as the newer batteries start getting introduced.

We just had a massive power outage last weekend. (In fact, there are still people without power). The neighbors inquired into the cost of a whole home natural gas generator. $15K for installation sometime this year, $25K to get it installed this week.

It should be <5k to install. Of course depending how far you need to go for the gas run etc.. but it's only maybe 1-2 hours work for someone with the gas line, and 1-2 hours work for an electrician.

Source: Have a whole house gas generator

The 15K quote was for the generator + installation.

A transfer switch should cost a few hundred bucks by a licensed electrician - not costly. I picked up a 1200W generator for under a thousand bucks and a few cans of propane to store and run it on. I can power most of my home, including my mini-split, on it. The whole ordeal was simple and inexpensive, unlike trying to get a truck to do the same.

1200W is nowhere near enough to power most homes. Do you have a small condo?

Sorry, that's a typo (I was shopping for microwaves) - I meant 12,000W or 12 kW.

A transfer switch is not required.

The $30 lockout tabs are simple, safe and code-compliant.

Nothing janky about them and also no unnecessary complexity.

10 days ago I had a 3 day power outage, and lost all the food in my fridge.

Generators are a giant PITA. You need to use and maintain them regularly or they're going to be broken and filled with stale gas when you need them. For something you only use once a decade or so, that's a big ask. Better to have something you use daily, like your truck, so you know it works.

A half charged vehicle is no problem during a grid failure. That's 150 miles. An EV gets better mileage in a traffic jam than it does at highway speeds, so it's a true 150 no matter road conditions. Also remember that you don't have to find a fast charger -- EV's can be trickle charged off a normal 115V outlet, and that's usually easier to find than gasoline during a crisis. All the gasoline stations around me last week either had multi-hour lineups or were out of gas.

I own EVs, though Tesla doesn't do this (they want you to do a powerwall instead, which starts at 10-20k).

Instead, I have a whole house natural gas generator. No gas to go stale. It powers my entire house. And it costs similar to this.

Maintence: Every 2-3 years, it needs an "oil/filter" change.

I have never had one before this house, but wow it is nice. We seem to be on some flakey power lines, we have lost power ~8 times in the previous year, ranging in duration from 1 hour to 2 days.

"Maintence: Every 2-3 years, it needs an "oil/filter" change."

This seems suspect to me. The ones I've seen call for it once a year or every 24 hours of run time.

Every 24 hours of runtime would be insanely wasteful. A quick Google for a Generac manual shows they recommend annually or every 125 hours, whichever comes first. They do recommend an oil change after 30 hours to replace the break-in oil.

The Onan/Cummins LP generator in my RV requires an oil change every 150 hours or annually, whichever comes first with the first oil change after 50 hours.

Ah, I probably forgot the 1 in front. But the annual thing still stands. Every 2-3 years is not something I've seen recommended.

I believe the reason for that is no engine oil manufacturer warranties their product longer than one year.

However, engine oil these days is very high quality and should last longer than a year.

0: https://youtu.be/T-yt5a1cWd4

My parents have one of these. They work great, but have a few limitations:

* the oil typically needs changed every 100 hours of operation. That was fine, until an ice storm knocked out power for 11 days to my parents house.

* if you live in an earthquake zone, most likely after a major quake the gas lines will be down.

Are you basing your "every 2-3 years" on something the salesman said?

You are using your backup generator a lot, you need to seek out the maintenance schedule for your model and ensure you are following it!

In my area, Generac [1] and Kohler [2] are what everyone uses for their homes. The maintenance schedules are much higher than every 2-3 years. Good luck :)

[1] https://www.generac.com/service-support/faqs/maintenance-kit...

[2] (Page 60) https://resources.kohler.com/power/kohler/residential/pdf/tp...

Based on my experience running all manner of clapped out junk with engines 2-3yr for an engine that sees dozens of operating hours per year and runs on propane/natgas seems fine. You're not pampering it by any means but you're not neglecting it either. Engines running on gaseous fuels tend to have really clean oil.

I'd be more concerned about things nesting in it than anything else.

I’m basing that on the manual that came with my generator, but I’m glad you as a hacker news stranger knows more than the actual person who read the manual.

i'm not a fan of those "true milage no matter what conditions" a half charged EV up north during winter would cut that 150 miles to 75 miles (at around minus 10 celsius which is common in Canada). i wouldn't dare to go very far with that.

It all depends on your use case. It can get below zero F here (northern Minnesota) for weeks at a time, but I don't regularly drive more than 10 miles round trip.

As a second/town vehicle, a cheaper EV sounds great for conditions I can't use the e-assist cargo bike.

In my experience, at -20C you lose about 10 miles of range to get the car up to temperature, plus about 20% of range to keep the car at temperature.

> and that's usually easier to find than gasoline during a crisis. All the gasoline stations around me last week either had multi-hour lineups or were out of gas.

I'm shocked at how many people overlook this. I've had the same experience, as our "crisis" situations tend to be combined with widespread gas shortages. EVs are surprisingly convenient during most of those.

It wouldn't be fun to depend on a supercharger or other DCFC during that time, though... but maybe not significantly worse than gas even then. I've been in those gas lines.

Just look at the situation in Ukraine.

There are cities where pretty much all gas stations are literal holes in the ground from being blown up. On the other hand most apartments do have electricity and the only vehicles on the road are military or EVs.

If your power outages are "once a decade or so", "do nothing" seems like a reasonable (likely optimal) point on the response curve if you're not dependent on electricity for literal survival.

This is our strategy in Cambridge, MA with some overhead supply lines, but it’s very rare to have an outage over an hour [the last one I recall was about 10.5 years ago]. We bought a few extra flashlights after that one.

> You need to use and maintain them regularly or they're going to be broken and filled with stale gas when you need them.

My trick is that, instead of buying a gas or battery leaf blower, I just drag my generator out to the street and plug in a leaf blower to clean up my grass clippings. I do it often enough that I know my generator still works.

> An EV gets better mileage in a traffic jam than it does at highway speeds, so it's a true 150 no matter road conditions.

You don't live in snow country. While winter reduces ICE vehicles' range as well (this isn't meant as a slam against EV's), you may lose 40% of your EV's range just due to cold weather. A multi-day power outage could easily drain what remains.

Also, ice storms cause a lot of power outages. This isn't a hypothetical for large parts of the country; power outages are more frequent in the winter.

Personally, my response is a variation on "do nothing". I have propane around for cooking and heating water, and I have a clean-burning kerosene heater to help keep the house warm-ish if we can't run the furnace for an extended period of time.

worth noting that the electric F-150 does not use a heat pump yet for some reason so cold weather performance will probably be poor.

I'm not sure why anyone is making EVs without heat pumps - that is something Tesla pioneered years ago - and seems to be the obvious route to take for heating.

Worth noting that the electric F-150 was designed and built in Michigan, where they have brutal winters, and are presumably aware of the effects of cold on EV systems, having tested these vehicles in the cold.

with 1 powerwall and 4kw solar, i could get through 3 days just by turning off the AC and the hot tub.

i'm sure it was way more expensive than a generator, but a generator doesnt generate daily profit for the next 20 years either...

PS i've also done 3 day camping trips in my EV so if i needed AC i could have it any time.

True. Most of these truck owners when faced with an outage will simply run an extension cord from the 120v outlet on their truck to their refrigerator until the power comes back on. Nothing wrong with that solution and it costs $20.

Exactly. One can live without AC for a few days almost anywhere in the US and deal with the discomfort. If you can power a refrigerator and then have a general purpose light / charging out, it will get most reasonable people through a multi-day outage and not be vulnerable to NG supply disruptions.

A quick note: It should cost more than $20. When fridge compressor cycles on, it can draw up to 20A. Extension cord wire gauges are based on 1) length and 2) amperage and depending on home layout, you'd might get away with a 50 foot 12 gauge cord ($40). If it's 100 feet, you'd want 10 gauge ($100+). It'll vary by cord and refrigerator, and there are many extension cord sizing guides freely available.

> it can draw up to 20A

can being the operative word - the LRA (Locked Rotor Amps) of a typical fridge/freezer's compressor might be that high, but starting current is not unless something is hideously wrong. I've never metered mine, but I have ran three fridges and a deep freezer off of a 2200/1800 (start/run) watt generator with zero issues, and plenty of headroom left. The generator has tiny dip when the compressor kicks on, and then it jumps back.

You are correct that sizing cords is very important, though, and something that most people don't do. Also if you have a roll-up extension cord (the kind with multiple outlets at the end), it's vital that it is completely unrolled when in use, so the cord doesn't heat itself.

I run 12 gauge splitters --> 14 gauge for individual loads, but I also know exactly how much those loads are pulling, and have verified it's within safe limits for the wiring.

It's worth remembering that a house's wiring is almost always 12 gauge, and is rated for 20 amps assuming the correct outlet.

I thought most recent US houses were built with 14 gauge wire which is only rated for 15 A? It's cheaper than 12 gauge and code-compliant (at least in my state).

I used 12 gauge in my house on purpose but sadly I don't think that's the norm.

That very well may be true - I've never had a house newer than about 20 years old, and they've had 12 gauge everywhere.

Most recent houses I've seen are using 12 gauge for outlets and 14 gauge for lighting. 12 gauge is mandatory in many locations, since 20 amp circuits are the minimum by code. Either way, 12 gauge is always safe obviously.

That's exactly what I did; lighting got less power hungry as we moved away from incandescent so there was no reason to continue to use fatter copper there. But it would have been legal to use 14 gauge/15A for every circuit in my house in New Mexico; I chose to use 12 gauge/20A for outlets instead.

Not actually true, to be clear, for outlets. Yes, the majority are allowed to be 15 amp circuits, however there are a few circuits (notably, ones in the kitchen) that by code (any recent code, NEC 2007 or beyond I think) that mandate that they be 20 amp circuits.

Notably:

* Kitchens must have at least two separate 20 amp circuits (for use for small appliances on countertops, traditionally) for general use

* Fridges need a dedicated 20 amp circuit

* Microwaves need a dedicated 20 amp circuit

Beyond that, yeah, absolute minimum is 15 amp throughout the house.

I built my first house in 1997 so my memory of NEC is mostly from then. It seemed ludicrous to run 15A circuits especially to kitchens and bathrooms, so I didn't. It did require GFCIs in the usual places back then. I built another house in 2007 and by that time AFCIs were required in bedrooms.

The code does seem to get a bit better over time.

True. I was exaggerating a little. I'd never use a $20 16 gauge Harbor Freight extension cord for anything important, especially if it's over 2 meters long.

It was a great point, though. And, my pedantry aside, having your car - which bring all the benefits of an EV - be a decent electrical backup system and replace a standalone inverter generator (at least $1k, and you'd have to buy appropriate extension cords, anyway) or a whole-home standby (at least $15k) is an exciting prospect and great solution for a really large number of US households.

Honestly, the fact that every consumer hardware store sells racks upon racks of 50+ ft 16-gauge extension cord is obscene. I upgraded my 60 ft lawnmower cable to 12-gauge for safety reasons and was shocked to discover my lawnmower wasn't just safer but also visibly more powerful, which I didn't think was possible.

Folks, spring for one or two good 50+ ft extension cords. You don't need a lot of them and the cheap ones are bad for your equipment and your safety.

  > wasn't just safer but also visibly more powerful

All that energy that used to go into heating up the extension cord, are now getting to your tool.

I personally argued with the guy who installed my EV charging station, because I wanted thicker wire and was willing to pay for it. I don't want wires heating up, I don't care if it's code compliant it is energy wasted that could go into my EV. And the thicker wire is not much more expensive nor difficult to work with.

>Honestly, the fact that every consumer hardware store sells racks upon racks of 50+ ft 16-gauge extension cord is obscene.

I can't help but face-palm at this sort of hand wringing. It might not be "right" but it works.

If the 16ga cords regularly melted people wouldn't buy them in those lengths, they wouldn't fly off the shelves, they'd get stocked in lower volume and you'd see less of them on the shelves.

The fact that they don't melt themselves even when used with fairly substantial appliances (large-ish homeowner sized table saws and compressors, all manner of portable power tools) is a testament to how conservative the official recommendations are.

>and was shocked to discover my lawnmower wasn't just safer but also visibly more powerful, which I didn't think was possible.

Voltage drop

For lots of things it's fine, yes, but for tools I would not try it. My brother (a contractor) had two compressors die from undersized extension cords before learning about properly sizing them. More resistance --> lower voltage --> motor spins slower --> pulls more current --> compressor electronics die.

I'll grant you a contractor's usage of any tool is much higher than a typical homeowner's, there's still no reason not to get the beefier cord. Buy once, cry once.

I just mean it's really silly you can go to a Canadian Tire and there'll be a 10-amp 82 foot extension cords for sale right next to the 12 amp corded lawnmowers, and if you want to satisfy the spec you'll have to search all over the store for contractor-grade hardware.

Good introductory video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_q-xnYRugQ

> ... risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

To be fair, most folks who own pickups usually own multiple vehicles as individuals, and that's not even counting the other household members.

I don't know what they're getting at with "at scale", but it seems like a good idea for "rugged individuals" with a battery-powered big truck. What else are the going to do with a pristine, washed-every-week, empty pickup truck that never carries anything and is more of a status symbol than anything else?

I know a family in Canada who has frequently power outages.

It would be perfect for them.

Easy to use, easy to maintain and stabilisng their system.

They like to drive trucks like these as well.

Of course EVs might become a standard backup/stabilisation part in our ecosystem and currently everything ev is still more or less bleeding edge but why do you mind if people start investing in this type of technology over others?

Shouldn't you be happy about it?

> Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

Sure they will — especially the families that have 2-4 of these trucks, which are plentiful in areas you do not live.

> A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars.

Any links you can share?

This is probably what they're referring to: https://www.harborfreight.com/9000-watt-gas-powered-portable...

It's Harbor Freight, so you get to roll the dice on whether or not it'll work when you need it to. It's also loud (like noise complaint from your neighbors loud).

Ah, I was thinking it was a reference to some 9kwh inverter ('electric generator') for under $1K, which sounded incredible...

I was going to share a link to a harbor freight 9kw generator for $869, but now I see that that is 9kw starting power and only 7.2kw continuous...

That's true of any brand tbf. My 2.2 kW Honda is rated at 1.8 kW continuous, which conveniently is 15 A @ 120 VAC.

A 9 kW generator that costs $1000 is going to be an open-frame, bottom of the barrel model. It'll be loud as hell, won't have an inverter so it runs at 3600 RPM (or 1800 RPM if you're lucky enough to have a 4-pole) constantly regardless of load, and as others have pointed out, requires a lot of maintenance. Not to mention, ones that large usually weigh about 200 lbs / 90 kg, and are not frequently hooked into your house's circuit so you will have to haul it out and hook loads up. Hope you understand how to safely run extension cords with heavy loading.

I have a 2.2 kW Honda that does have an inverter, is absurdly quiet, and sips fuel. I also have an extended fuel tank for it so it can run overnight. All of that, plus adequately sized extension cords, was somewhere around $2500. It's also still a pain in the ass to set up when it's necessary, but at least I get to run fridges, freezers, LAN, TV, fans, etc. I also have to do monthly load tests, source ethanol-free gas, rotate gas supplies, and practice running extension cords to everything so I'm not confused in the dark. Lest you think all of this is unnecessary prepper beliefs, I live in Texas (for now - about to move), and it has been required far more often than I'd like.

A standby generator that can run an entire house will run you $15-20K with installation, and that assumes you have natural gas plumbed to your house already. If you don't, you'll have to bury a LPG tank, or have an unsightly blob in your yard.

This feature of the Lightning is the major draw for me, and I am seriously considering it once they've proven themselves for a few years.

A serious question. If power outages are that common that you need to have this backup, would you not consider a bank of LFP batteries and an inverter before you think of using your car for this? In case of a grid outage/emergency, having a car that is untethered to the house is handy right?

It's not the same, but my parents back in India have a few Lead acid batteries hooked up to an inverter to supply backup power when power outage occurs (about once a week). They have been doing this for decades now. I'm just wondering why a larger scale version of this with LFP batteries and may be solar panels to charge them wouldn't work where you are..

It might make sense to have both. Its rare to see a home backup system that has as much capacity as this truck. It'd effectively extend your home capacity and also provide a resource that could be charged away from home.

We don't have many grid outages here, but the ones that happen tend to happen around large weather disasters. Commercial areas, often with DCFC tend to get restored a little more quickly than more distant suburban residential power and tbh, most people aren't driving that much during those periods anyway.

Comparisons to developing countries usually forget about demand - the average electrical demand in a typical Indian home is hundreds of watts to a few kilowatts depending on how affluent the home is.

The average north american home has several kilowatts of connected loads, not to mention equipment that must run such as heating/cooling, large fridges and myriad electronics.

Banks of lead acid batteries can indeed work but they are large, may leak and always require some sort of hazard protection. You can get around all of this in a country with lax standards but are unlikely to do so in the west.

True. My parents actually have their apartment wired for "power groups that can run on inverter" and other power groups that will be without backup. Their power needs are substantially lower than an average American and European household. That is why I was wondering if this idea could be _scaled_ up.

I would not go around recommending anyone to buy Lead acid battery banks today. I'm in the midst of getting rid of the ones at my parents' too.

However, I found these LFP batteries where I live - NL for about 1K Euros [1] . They are 2.5KWh. Two or three of them and an inverter ought to be a good as reasonable backup for an American house dont you think? LFP batteries dont catch fire like the Li-Ion ones tend to. No worries about oil maintenance. They come with 10 years of warranty. What is a downside to this that I am missing?

[1] - https://greencell.global/en/lifepo4-batteries/4097-lifepo4-b...

It can certainly be scaled up, there are lots of models of 5 kwh lithium iron phosphate battery packs in server form factor for ~$1500-2000, 6 of those in a server rack and you have 30 kwh for ~$10k.

Oh wow that sounds like a great way to convince the wife to let me have that homelab :-) By any chance you have any links to share for my research?

This one’s pretty popular: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48...

And is made to work well with this kind of inverter: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-6-5k-off-grid-inverter-6500ex...

(They have a smaller 3 kw inverter for about half the price)

Check out diysolar forum. Google it. Lots of very good information.

Also watch Will prowse on YouTube.

Seconding this, Will’s channel and forum are excellent.

Here's a nice overview of setting up a 30 kwh battery and inverters to charge/use them: https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/48v-complete-system-bluepr...

The only 2 disadvantages of LFP batteries are that they're a lot more expensive than lead-acid and heavier than Li-Ion for the same energy.

But they can withstand many more cycles than Li-Ion without wearing out. If you can afford LFP, they seem ideal for a home backup situation.

I've considered it, yeah. The truck's other advantage of course is that it's a truck. I have an older Honda Ridgeline that is perfect for me in terms of size (I don't tow anything, but frequently load the bed), but it is horrible on fuel consumption. 14 MPG (~ 17 L/100 km) or so is common for around town, 20 MPG (~12 L/100 km) on the highway if I'm lucky. With fuel costs rising as much as they do, it starts to make a little more sense.

The ROI on a new one would still be extremely long, but it starts to become more justifiable as features like this are added. If Ford makes an electric version of the Maverick - their small truck - it'll be a very easy decision, assuming it can still power a house.

On the other hand, I wonder if it will be able to compete with ICE trucks for pretty standard truck-things like towing. If it's anything like my Tesla, the range is going to fall off precipitously the moment anything touches that hitch, and if you're not graced with a California winter, doubly so (it's really a shame Tesla puts so much of its engineering in one locale or else it might've been more pressing to solve for this). And I'm guessing public chargers with room for a trailer/boat/etc are few and far between.

One test[0] put it at roughly half the range (150-160 miles) when towing near its rating of 10,000 lbs.

Personally I don't tow anything, I just use the bed to haul stuff, so I would probably see a minimal loss of range. Also, inter-city travel is unlikely to be affected as long as you can get back home at the end of the day.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/2022-ford-f150-lightning-...

> One test[0] put it at roughly half the range (150-160 miles) when towing near its rating of 10,000 lbs.

That's not bad.

> Also, inter-city travel is unlikely to be affected as long as you can get back home at the end of the day.

Agreed, but stuff like camping and boating is going to be limited, which is too bad because a giant battery would really open up the options for camping.

This isn't a truck for people gallivanting across the country with a camper in tow or the kind of guy that the local Sunbelt Rentals manager is on a first name basis with.

This is a truck for someone who has a commuter sedan and a Toyota Tacoma or Honda Odyssey parked in their garage somewhere the houses cost a million bucks and there are more Black Lives Matter signs than black people, i.e. the kind of person who would have bought a crew cab half ton a decade ago if daily driving one didn't make them feel like a backwards hick poisoning the climate.

I'm sure it will "do truck stuff" as well as any other F150 (OEMs don't play fast and loose with the reputation of flagship products like the F150) but the range will obviously be subject to the same tradeoffs as every other EV. but these are demographics that break out in a cold sweat at the idea of cramming five people in a compact car. They're gonna use the thing at a fraction of it's capability. Towing 10k will be a once a year thing if that. That should be fine for now as most buyers will just want to tow to home depot or the boat ramp.

The range will creep up over the coming years as batteries get better until finally the EV truck also makes sense guy who's towing the camper cross country.

Actually this is a great truck for people "that the local Sunbelt Rentals manager is on a first name basis with." They often are working on projects with a generator, and typically are not far from where they sleep at night. The truck hauls tools from the hotel where they spent the night to the job and that is about it. Then they plug the tools into a generator - which this truck is.

I definitely know a lot of people who have felt torn between their guilt about ruining the planet with their gas guzzling SUVs and buying an electric vehicle from a company whose founder--though he supports gay marriage, drug legalization, environment, immigration, science, etc--says snarky things on the Internet. They would leap at the opportunity to buy a large electric vehicle from a company whose founder merely bought a newspaper and used it to spread racist propaganda.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Antisemitism_and_Th...

It would be cool to drive this setup to my mom’s or a friend’s and just take their vehicle for the week. Sub them out as needed for a charge.

Would be cool if a mass grid failure resulted in a callout for electric cars to drive over to a community centre or whatever.

At least in California, the fire code doesn't allow you to have a bank of batteries without building a dedicated room with active fire suppression for them. You need to prove (to your local fire department) that your array of batteries won't have a thermal runaway.

So, conveniently, the F-150 is a tested, self-enclosed array of batteries :).

> source ethanol-free gas, rotate gas supplies,

Convert your generator to run on propane. In my experience, propane tends to be more available during natural disaster power outages than gasoline. And it's way less messy. But make sure you have a sufficient number of tanks in advance. Those tend to disappear when there's an outage.

> practice running extension cords to everything so I'm not confused in the dark.

Have an electrician install an inlet outside your house along with a transfer switch:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Reliance-Controls-10-Circuit-30-...

Instead of the transfer switch, your may also (depending upon your local code) be able to go with a simple lock out device in your panel like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Generator-Interlock-Kit-Breaker-Panel...

I would, but you lose about 400 watts due to the lower energy density of propane/LPG. This is already a small generator, and I usually am running it very close to its maximum.

If I had a bigger unit (Honda also makes a 3000 watt and 6500 watt model), or just had two of these in parallel, it would be worth consideration.

Re: transfer switch, again if I had a bigger unit I'd consider it, but I can run so few loads it didn't seem worthwhile. This is basically to keep food from spoiling, internet/TV going, and fans so we can sleep somewhat comfortably.

or just had two of these in parallel, it would be worth consideration.

--- That actually doubles your risk of failure, better to go with one big one.

It also doubles your likelihood of having at least one working generator in the presence of failures. Depending on how many of your loads are critical, it might be a better bet to have two in parallel. Best case you can run more, worst case you can run the essentials just like now. Also it might be a cheaper upgrade path. Instead of throwing away or reselling the existing smaller generator to buy a larger one, just add another of the same thing you already have to your system. Finally, you could have three smaller generators and get N+1 redundancy for cheaper than two larger generators.

The failure rate of Honda generators is vanishingly small; not a concern to me. However, when you step up to the 7000W (I forgot that they've discontinued the 6500W in favor of a bigger one) unit, you also get a 240V outlet, which makes wiring it into your house much more convenient. If you get a soft-start kit for your heat pump/AC, it can even run HVAC.

Honda is not the only game in town. I've been happy with my Champion. I have a non-inverter model because it was the only thing I could find days before a hurricane, which I then converted to natural gas. Champion has a few dual-fuel inverter models:

https://www.championpowerequipment.com/product/200994-4650-w...

I did the inlet and cutover switch install myself as well. I've got dual sub-panels but the circuits I wanted to power were all in my basement, so I've got it wired up for my kitchen fridge, a basement chest freezer, basement sump pump, and a few light and electrical outlet circuits. I can't run my normal HVAC, but I can run a portable HVAC I purchased that's sufficient for my basement in a pinch.

I was in Miami for Hurricane Andrew and have some fun stories about generators, extension cords, and siphoning gasoline out of our cars.

Meanwhile my uncle on Long Island is having a whole-house generator installed this summer, including burying a propane tank. I think he's spending something like $15K on that.

My problem is a bit different.

I have a healthy amount of solar but don't want to buy batteries (even in truck form).

The solar needs AC from the mains for some reason.

Is there some way to hookup a small generator to make the solar happy and then use the solar for power? (Yes, I'd have to disconnect everything from the grid.)

Let's assume that I don't try to use too much power. Will the solar be damaged if I don't use enough?

My problem is a bit different.

I have a healthy amount of solar but don't want to buy batteries (even in truck form).

The solar needs AC from the mains for some reason.

Is there some way to hookup a small generator to make the solar happy and then use the solar for power? (Yes, I'd have to disconnect everything from the grid.)

Let's assume that I don't try to use too much power. Will the solar be damaged if I don't use enough?

>Will the solar be damaged if I don't use enough?

Something will be damaged or the whole system will shut down. Typically grid-tied systems do not have the ability to dump excess power or throttle down panels to provide partial loads. You would be better off installing a proper battery-backed inverter, but depending on the wiring and design of the existing system, that might mean replacing everything except the panels, which is likely quite expensive.

>A 9 kW generator that costs $1000 is going to be an open-frame, bottom of the barrel model.

Not even close to bottom-of-the-barrel. In fact, pretty standard, and can last forever.

>requires a lot of maintenance.

Lots of maintenance? Like what, changing the oil and plug once a season?

>If you don't, you'll have to bury a LPG tank, or have an unsightly blob in your yard.

You seem to have very particular tastes about "sound" and "looks", so go ahead and spend $20k for a backup system. But don't try to tell people it can't be done for far cheaper, because I've been running my house on a backup system with a $1000 Generac portable coming up on a decade. The generator I replaced was from the 70s.

An open-frame generator under load is going to be somewhere around 72-76 dB, and that's usually measured at around 20 feet. That is entirely too loud to be running overnight in a neighborhood when everyone's power is out, and thus things are dead quiet. Inverter generators, especially good ones, are more like 50-56 dB.

Maintenance requirements are usually spec'd by runtime; mine is oil change at 20 hours for break-in, then every 100 hours. It's not difficult, but it's annoying. Beyond that, if you aren't running it at least quarterly (I do monthly), you're risking it not starting when you need it. Not to mention the aforementioned fuel requirements - ethanol free is sometimes hard to find, and you need to keep a mental note of when you bought it so you can rotate fuel supplies.

It comes down to personal taste and willingness to be loud in your neighborhood, sure. If I'm going to spend the money on backup power, I first and foremost don't want there to be any question about its reliability. I trust Honda's engines and electronics. I also don't want to piss off my neighbors, or make myself an easy target of theft, so it needs to be as quiet as possible.

That seems awfully expensive for a generator… our 22kw generac was ~5k … I guess we spent about 1k digging trenches and laying conduit…

But that was it … installation is nothing more than installing a 100amp breaker in your panel … and the $30 lockout tab.

Homeowner work.

I'm relying on this blog post[0] that was originally posted to r/homelab, which stated $20K for purchase and installation of a 27 kW Generac.

While I am comfortable running new branch circuits and panels to code, I suspect most people are not.

[0] https://blog.networkprofile.org/generac-rg027-install-27kw-1...

You make it sound like I can soon see the sequel "Mad Max: The Plains of Texas".

>Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle

You underestimate the optimistic zeal of LARPers, who will be smug about just having the possibility.

>He cannot possibly be that ignorant. Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

It seems like the context was small and medium farms, where that might be more palatable since they probably have several vehicles.

> A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars.

For just the generator, yeah.

Then you need cans for the fuel and somewhere to store it. And you need to maintain that fuel by periodically pouring it into a vehicle and refilling the cans. Even with preservative, it's good to do that yearly. If you don't own an ICE vehicle, I guess you have to find a neighbor who does, and who won't be suspicious that you're offering them a bunch of gallons of free gas?

And even with all that, it still needs oil changes and test-runs, or it's liable to not work when you need it.

And even with all THAT, most generators that large absolutely guzzle fuel. Ten or twenty gallons might get you a day, maybe two? And that's a LOT of fuel to store, when you consider having to refresh it.

If you can just use the vehicle you already own, and the battery pack that you already charge, ALL those concerns go away. You've got tons of power. It's already proven to work. It's already wired into the house. And the little maintenance it needs, you're already doing because it's your daily driver.

This approach is not without its downsides -- if you go out to run errands, the house loses power until you return -- but the benefits may outweigh that for a large number of people.

> He cannot possibly be that ignorant. Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

Well, that cycle part is important, as I'm still not clear on the warranty implications of actually using this vehicle's battery for stationary storage.

However, outside of that, I don't think its fair to call it ignorant. Grid emergencies are often related to excess consumption for really specific periods of time. Our local utility sends out alerts asking for reduced consumption during peak just to save them some $$$s, as spot prices can be very high for brief periods of time.

We also have TOU plans available where the peak rate is more than $.20 higher than the off peak rate. There are plenty of people that would gladly pocket that difference in exchange for burning through ~25% of a battery. And because its not an outage, but rather a cost issue during peak, they'll just load back up right after the "emergency" subsides.

I'd still really like to know what the warranty for this style of usage looks like.

> What kind of idiot is going to shell out six grand just to drain his truck battery for the same purpose?

This one, I already have. I paid more than that for two Tesla powerwalls. I use them for load shifting. I charge at night when electricity is cheap and use them during the day. They already paid for themselves in savings. Oh yeah, no more power outages either.

Same, though I also was due to replace my roof from 1991 and got a solar roof. It's great having a $0 electric bill every month and we've had four outages since my system went live and my house hasn't gone out at all. It'll be a few years before it pays for itself considering the price of the roof as part of the entire system - we live in a forest and power outages are very frequent so the cost for convenience is worth it.

A dedicated house battery is not the same as using a vehicle battery.

They already paid for themselves in savings.

How? Where do you live that electricity is that expensive during the day and arbitrage rate is that high to create a thousand dollars a year in savings? I run my AC 24 hours a day at fifteen or more degrees below outdoor ambient on a decent sized house, with appliances that are better than twenty years old, and my total yearly electricity cost is under two grand. This math doesn't work.

> Where do you live that electricity is that expensive during the day and arbitrage rate is that high to create a thousand dollars a year in savings?

I live in the US, where the federal government subsidized half the system cost (at least when I installed it) via tax credits. I save about a 100 bucks a month on electric, since I can charge my car at night at a discount, which requires a special meter enabled by the system.

You still need hardware in the house to power it from a generator, basically a switch with a safety interlock. If you just wire it up in a dumb fashon you are sending voltage back out of the house and down the street, with a wide veriety of untintended consequences possible there.

The kind who might be out of power for more than 3 weeks due to a common natural disaster, has two cars, and wants a backup to keep the stuff in his fridge and freezer cold after the local gasoline supply is depleted. Like folks who have been hit by a major hurricane. Everyone else, who has a gasoline generator, doesn't run them 24/7 unless they've got natural gas. They run them to keep their food cold and charge their phones then shut them off.

I would be willing to use some cycles if I’m remunerated. Do you know how much electricity costs during peak times in Ercot? Dollars per kilowatt-hour. I can work from home for a day or two if I get $100…

On top of the $4k you also have to figure out how to get your power provider to agree to the change. For my solar system, i was lucky enough to get one of a few seats in my state before they were all taken. I highly doubt every energy provider is even prepared for this.

I genuinely don't like this, in part because it is so good.

Society continues cramming unnecessary, yet surprisingly useful features into bigger and bigger cars. With each feature, it brings people 1 step closer to thinking that they actually need what is effectively a murder tank in their house.

In the US, power outages are a once every few years kind of thing. Most truck uses are similarly once a year sort of uses. These trucks are by and large purchased by rich people in suburbs, who never so much as use 1% of the features they offer. Yet, people end up solo-driving these same over-bloated tanks for their commute and ferrying around a couple of people.

It makes the roads riskier (already biggest contributor of youth death), increases road wear by 4x (weight squared) and leads to the general inefficiencies that come with car-centric design.

Note: This doesn't apply to those in rural areas.

You've clearly never lived along the Gulf coast.

During natural disasters like hurricanes, this kinda thing can be a life saver. Many people buy diesel generators for these kinds of situations. This is a marked improvement.

How does Japan survive regular Tsunami with their tiny Kei cars?

Are you asserting that Japanese people do not die by tsunamis, that lack of electricity doesn't attribute to deaths, or that tsunamis don't knock out the grid? Or a combination of those three?

I'd affirm that lives would be saved with more backup power options. Whether Ford's solution is effective is TBD, but more power options overall is a good thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...

I live in a major US city and my power goes out at least once every couple of months, sometimes for hours at a time. I have installed several UPSes on important electrical things (servers, routers, modem) to avoid the hassles that come with regular power failures.

(Not that the Lightning would be a big help here - these outages very rarely last a day or more - but it’s not the case that outages are rare events.)

Reminds me of this story: How Canadians Derailed a Train and Drove It to City Hall for Power After a Brutal Ice Storm[1]

https://www.thedrive.com/news/39378/how-canadians-derailed-a...

> “That new customer to trucks is really being brought in, in my mind, by the Mega Power Frunk and by the Pro Power Onboard,” she says. “And some people are just truly, really interested in this product as a backup generator.”

I don't know, we're an average family with a mid-size SUV and looking around for EVs, there is not much that is not a downgrade in capability. Model 3s are too small compared to a SUV, while X and Y cost a 100 grand. I wonder if this F150 interest it's because it's at last a big EV at a very affordable price.

(Edit: I misread the X&Y costs: X is over 100, Y is 50-60)

>Model 3s are too small compared to a SUV, while X and Y cost a 100 grand

Uh? Model Y AWD Long Range costs $64,990 in the US before gas savings and incentives. https://www.tesla.com/modely/design#overview

My apologies, I must have looked at the Model X data twice. I'll make a note.

Y is getting more expensive, but is definitely still below 100k

At current gas prices, the lifetime TCO of a $70K Model Y is the same as a $40K gasoline SUV.

That’s not taking into account the lower maintenance costs is it? Massively fewer moving parts in an electric vehicle “engine” aka drive train means less things to break. The recommended service for a Model 3 or Model Y is every two years. No oil changes or alternators or fan belts etc.

People buying new cars don't care about lifetime TCO. They care about getting a trouble free 5-10yr.

Maintenance costs on all vehicles (not just cars) are dominated by the stuff closest to the road, tires, brakes, wheel bearings and suspension/steering components, and stuff like that.

Lifetime TCO is the correct metric. Yes, a new car buyer is probably going to sell the car after 5 - 10 years. But he's going to be selling it to somebody who really does care about costs. If they didn't care about costs they wouldn't be buying a used car! So the second buyer is probably even more willing to pay a premium for an EV than the original buyer is.

Example: Save $2000/year in fuel costs with an EV, the EV has 3 owners, each for 5 years. The last owner should be willing to pay a $10K premium, the second owner a $20K premium and the first owner a $30K premium.

You have significantly less brake wear on EVs that use regenerative braking (like Teslas). In fact, you use them significantly less due to the regen braking. It is easy to get really rusty brake pads post carwash because you use them so little. It is always recommended to make a point of using your brakes for a few days post carwash so this doesn't happen. All the rest of the time you can use one pedal driving for almost everything.

it probably is, you can try it out here if you'd like: https://keemut.com/tco

I will say I don't really know how they come up with the maintenance numbers for EV or ICE. For a 2022 CR-V they quoted $7k for maintenance over 5 years which seems pretty high(4y/60k service plan would be under $2k easily from what I'm seeing), whereas a model Y over 5 years was at $700 which would be less than the cost of a single set of efficient tires rated for a vehicle as heavy as the Y.

Right, but the E F150 is listed at under $40k, and is bigger/has more utility. I was wondering how much the price contributed to the interest, vs. the extra outlets and backup capability.

And the lifetime TCO of a $40K F-150 is lower than a free 15mpg truck. Insane. No wonder they have a massive waiting list.

Too small for what? If you need to haul construction equipment or whatever, a decent pickup is mandatory. If you need to shuffle kids to soccer practice and the grocery store, pretty much any 4-door care will do fine.

Too small for trips where even a midsize SUV is bursting at the seams with stuff. This seems to require a model Y at a minimum, but a F150 seems like a dream come true.

I've done loads of road trips with a family of 4 as both a kid and a parent and we never didn't fit in a 4-door. SUVs weren't even widely available until the 90s. Station wagons or minivans are more efficient for maximizing space for size. SUVs exist almost entirely for aesthetics.

> we never didn't fit in a 4-door.

Well of course, presumably if you didn't fit there would have been no trip :-)

while I don't see me buying one of these, its the most interesting auto feature I've seen in a very long time. I don't want backup power for when the grid fails, I want primary power for a small cabin I'm building far from available grid power. (I can get grid power run to my land, but it would cost me way more than this Ford to run the lines.)

The Hybrid F-150 with the generator option may be a much better option in that situation. A spare can could prevent you from running out of power and ending up stranded. Or you could drive out to quickly refuel.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a35152752/powered-hous...

You could probably get a gas powered generator and use it all your life for that usage while still polluting less than if you bought a whole ass 3 tonne car

A 1 ton gas car is going to pollute far far more than a 3 ton EV charged from the average American electricity mix, and that mix is not particularly clean, even.

Personally, I’d prefer not to have a generator nearby. Storing fuel, noise, exhaust—all things I’d prefer to avoid. And as I said, this is not the vehicle that will solve the problem for me, since nobody yet makes an EV that would work for my usage, but when they do make he EV I want, this will be the primary feature I want. I was planning to setup solar at the location to charge a small battery for an hour or so of power a day if I spend a week at the location, I can plug the truck into the solar to trickle charge during the day.

I'm interested in an EV for similar reasons but I also live in a remote mountain area where batteries, generators, and even propane tanks grow legs.

So the fact that my entire off grid battery system would travel with me when I'm not at home is a huge benefit.

I recently chatted with a tow truck operator who owns an electric vehicle himself, and he was spooked by the fire risks; he had just taken a course about how to avoid causing electrical fires when towing EVs, which evidently can start weeks after damage is inflicted, and shuddered at the idea of an lithium ion fire starting in someone’s garage. Never really thought about the fire risk now that really huge lithium batteries are getting more common.

All towing industry people are spooked by the fire risks.

While lifetime fire risks are probably lower EVs so far seem more likely to catch fire "without a good reason".

I powered my house for a couple days with my hybrid Camry on much less than a single tank of gas. Hooked it up to the breaker through an inverter.

The "generator" in this setup automatically turns on and off according to need. Mostly it was off.

I wasn't running the house at full normal electrical usage. No AC. Kept the lights and fridge and computers on though.

Of course you can do this with any kind of car. But a hybrid (not a pure electric as in the article) is surely ideal.

It really puts into perspective just how much energy our vehicles us, whether electric or ICE, when the battery from a single electric vehicle can power everything in your house for many hours/even days.

It's only enough to power a house if you don't use A/C, electric dryer or range.

i.e. just lights and electronics, which don't take much power.

And you are comparing it to driving a full day BTW.

I am too lazy to do napkin math on this, but the article implies it can run a home with AC for days.

> Ford says the Lightning can fully power an average home for roughly three days. “That’s a house like my house with AC, Xbox, kids going crazy leaving lights on everywhere,” Linda Zhang, chief engineer of the F-150 Lightning, tells Bloomberg Green. With more frugal use, the Lightning could keep a home running for up to 10 days, she says.

A typical A/C uses 5kW, and this has around 100kWh, so that's 20 hours of compressor-on time. That's maybe a day or two, so yah, that's pretty accurate, especially if you buy the model with more power.

Wow.

Powering a house for days is a very broad statement. Does this include things are that electrified such as a central air conditioner and/or heat pump? Electric water heater? Electric clothes dryer? Maybe the last two would be considered a luxury in an emergency situation but I've lost power for 3+ days twice in the past two years during a major snow/ice storm. It's brutal not having a heat source and if you live in a hot climate I'm sure it's equally brutal in the summer.

That's a good point. It really depends on usage, though it's not unfair to just use the average when writing an article. And by that standard, 'a few days' is probably fair.

During the winter, that kind of battery capacity could power us for a couple weeks. Everything other than the furnace blower is natural gas. During the summer, ... well, fortunately we don't need air conditioning here to survive (one-off 117F events notwithstanding).

The extended range version has a 131 kWh battery, the average American household uses ~900 kWh per month. So yes, it could power your heating or cooling for days in addition to everything else. A big home central air system will pull 5 kW and won’t run 100% of the time.

kWh is power over time. When planning a power backup solution you have to account for spike loads, building code inspectors will insist on it. For an average central air conditioning system the outdoor refrigerant compressor has a locked rotor starting amp requirement of ~80A (typically). According to Ford the max amp feed back to your home from the truck is 80A. Building code will let you hook up your outdoor unit only in that case, the inside air handler will not be allowed because (assuming internal is 15A) you would be asking for 95A. You will most likely require either load shed devices or a transfer switch which will most likely not include your whole home or your AC/HeatPump. At least by building code.

In America anyway, you size based on FLA, not LRA. NEC Article 430[0].

My heat pump's compressor has a nameplate LRA of 134 A, and a FLA of 26.4 A. The breaker is 50 A.

[0] https://www.ecmag.com/section/codes-standards/motors-motor-c...

I don't believe electrical codes have anything to say at all about the sizing of emergency generators.

The assumption is apparently[0] 30 kWh/day counting as "full usage," giving 3 days of runtime. Rationing that can give you up to 10 days, implying 9 kWh/day.

I have a full electric house in central Texas, and my daily usage in the summer is around 2000 kWh, so I could get about 1.5 days of power if I did nothing to ration it. If you have a gas water heater, stove, dryer, etc. it'll obviously stretch out.

[0] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/40695/the-electric-ford-f-150-...

EDIT: s/daily/monthly

What are you using (and how large is your house) that draws 2000kWh a day? This is an amazing amount of power draw. The average monthly draw for a house is under 1000kWh.

Just guessing, but based on context, I think they meant their daily usage results in 2000kWh per month.

Correct, added an edit.

2000kWh a day? Our apartment houses family of 4 and we spend 2400 kWh a year (incl. electric stove)

I have a small p.v. with lithium (BYD LiFeP) backup, just to ensure fridge/freezer/home IT and phones/light/VMC in case of outage, AC-coupled classic inverter to do more and recharge in that case.

Honestly IF Vehicle2Loads systems became spread AND an open standard I might evaluate them because EVs are NOT cheap and NOT cheaper than ICE so far, but probably they will, for artificial or natural reasons, or anyway due to lack of gasoline/gas they will be needed anyway. Surely the claim of powering for days is a bit exaggerated, more than a bit, but surely with a p.v. combined might be a way to save money in case of very unstable grids witch again is not the case so far but probably will due to various factors...

One thing I doubt is the vehicle to grid application for MANY reasons like:

- inverters too small and not quick enough to stabilize the grid

- I doubt any operator accept energy injections from countless set of moving inverters, home p.v. is normally checked BEFORE allowing to connect to the grid, vehicles move can't be checked up front

- I doubt owners want to give their energy to the grid from expensive batteries

> - I doubt owners want to give their energy to the grid from expensive batteries

Well, of course it would have to make financial sense. Since you want those batteries anyway for driving long distances (say, more than twice the distance of a regular commute is not something most people do daily, but they'll want to be able to go quite far so most cars have quite big batteries), that is a sunk cost. Might as well put them to use on days where you don't want to drive far and electricity is expensive (no sun or wind, or high gas prices or so).

> EVs are NOT cheap and NOT cheaper than ICE so far

That surprises me. You say you've got a "small" PV installation, how small is small? From what I've heard of PV installation owners with EVs, the per-kilometer cost over the lifetime of the car is much lower, you just have to be able to invest in (or loan) the up-front costs of both and that's what makes it prohibitive still. Does the math not work out for you in that way?

I'm in France, if that matter, small in my case mean 5kW, but that's not the reason, the reasons are:

- I already have ICEs cars (two actually) 4x4 and living in the Alps where a 4x4 in winter is very comfy

- at actual rates, and re-sale values (witch is practically zero for EVs here) amortize the price of available 4x4 EVs is simply fantasy

- at my actual car usage (not that much WFH and doung far less trips than before) amortize the price of available 4x4 EVs is simply fantasy

Essentially my ICEs cars work flawlessly and STILL have a re-sale value, a new EVs, a little one, little in price terms, but not so little to be unusable here, perhaps can be paid back in the near future, still not now, surely not a model X or a Volvo. My math simply do not count just energy prices, especially since now/so far I travel not enough, but the TCO.

With my small p.v. I can power my house "A-class" i.e. new, insulated very well etc, for almost all loads, water heater system is a big enough cumulus that does not need energy at night, heat-pump (just ~1kW) and classic resistance, so if the Sun shine I can go for resistance or resistance+heat pump, if not but still there is a bit of Sun the heat pump only. It's driven by the inverter so regulate itself depending on current home micro-grid load. Cooking does not demand so much, washing machine, dishwasher etc can normally both run 100% on self-consumption when the Sun shine. Looking back, now, I would made an 8kW p.v. I have enough space for it, but back than just few years ago I do not think that was needed...

"Do you really need to do X when you could easily do A,B,C and get Y?"

Sometimes things are just fun, interesting, and cool

The comparison to the Powerwall is certainly appropriate given the subject of the article, but I think the author should have also included the battery capacity and price of one of Tesla's vehicles to give a sense of how much Ford is advancing the state of the art.

So it sounds like they want to design the truck to send power to the grid when needed.

I don't know about you, but in a blackout I'd want my truck fully charged, and not being remotely drained by the grid operator.

The fine print is where it all kind of falls apart.

It says they recommend SunRun for every aspect of the grid modification, including utility coordination.

Well, these are the states where SunRun operates... https://www.sunrun.com/solar-by-state ... And their advertising doesn't mention EV plug installs anywhere so you are in DIY/SOL territory for half the country, and in for a unique experience if in a good one

A couple acres of pasture will, using grass, turn solar energy into carbohydrates, which will power a donkey -- no rare earths or complicated supply chains needed. With enough donkeys, your transportation even becomes self-replicating -- so much for gigafactories.

I don't understand why the worse technology won here. Pack animals are a much better solution if you really want to be prepared.

They even do better in the rugged mountains from which you will inevitably have to snipe at the federales with your jezail.

Think about it.

Controlling 130kw is a big ask for current automotive-grade software. Insurance companies will argue for replacement parts to be OEM or risk of dropping your fire coverage.

There are trade offs to something like this.

Some downsides…

It’s not going to cover you for a multi-day outage very well. Where I live that happens every few years.

You can’t use the truck to help people out (can happen in outages, especially if it’s storm related) and power the house at the same time.

Most of my life I’ve lived someplace with multi-day outages due to storms. What markets well isn’t really the best practical on the ground solution

Still absent from the article is any mention of how the warranty is handled for a vehicle being used heavily for this purpose.

This adds a lot of value for cases where a house that has a continuous sump pump loses power during a storm.

This truck honestly looks great, and $40k is a practically unbelievable price point. Great job, Ford.

I'm holding out for a cybertruck, and will happily pay $100k for it, but...I dont't want to wait 3 more years. I kindof need a truck now, and if I can get one of these fords...

So can a diesel or propane generator, and they can do it indefinitely, and for much cheaper.

EVs (and consumer solar to a large extent) are an elaborate and clever ruse to externalize the costs of maintaining a weak and aging power infrastructure grid on to consumers while actually reducing energy independence (reliance on rare and expensive parts to fix batteries and proprietary equipment). The environmental "benefits" are far from a foregone conclusion also - how many precious metals are mined under slave-labor conditions to create battery storage? What happens to them en masse at end of life?

Sure makes for great virtue signaling to drive a 3/4 ton "electric" truck though. The smug feelings EV owners enjoy apparently suspend all logic and common sense.

I don't think I want my powerwall to leave when the power is out if I need to run to a store or anything else. There are great reasons to install your backup power.

You can have both, with the car serving as extra capacity when it's not out running to the store. Heck, drive your car somewhere that has power, charge it, then drive it back to refill your home batteries.

I wonder if aluminum-air primary batteries could be useful for home backup. The energy stored in aluminum anodes is very large.

I guess that's interesting. But I wouldn't exactly look at that metric when deciding to buy an electric vehicle.

Why not?

If you wouldn't use it, it wouldn't be a part of your decision-making... but there are a very large number of consumers of pickup trucks (and future electric vehicles) who are, as it turns out, not you, and a lot of them would benefit from this feature.

One thing to consider is this solution requires 200A panel. Probably tack another $5k on if you have a 100A panel.

I don't think it'll cost $5,000 USD to install a 200A panel. Though the results are a bit all over the map...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cost+to+install+200a+electrical+pa...

As low as $150 and as high as $4,500.

For a data-point: a decade ago I paid $1800, the cheapest of 3 quotes, for a 100A panel replacement, in an average priced locality. No service upgrade involved, just replace an old panel with a new one.

For reference, I've been watching threads over the last few months on reddit electrician/askelectrician subreddits. $150 probably won't even buy you the copper to do a panel upgrade, or the permit.

A service upgrade is going to take around a day of electrician time, and those aren't cheap.

You'll also need to get the utility to run 200A service to the meter.

A meter base is going to be at least $60. A new load center (industry term for breaker panel) ~$200. You're probably also going to need to install an outside main service disconnect, required by code in most locations now. If you get power overhead, you will probably need a new weatherhead and related. You likely will need new breakers, $15-$30 each for 20 of them, and you may need to go with some AFCIs at $50/pop for bedroom branch circuits (required by code in many locations now). If you have any sketchy wiring on those bedroom circuits you may need to do troubleshooting on those or re-run them.

You are probably also going to need to put in an external cutoff, required by code in most locations now.

A huge variable right now is supply of both equipment and electricians in some localities, so that may drive prices up.

So, $5K in some locations and for some situations may be high, it may also be low for others. A fair range, based on what I've seen, is probably more like $2500-$7500. The $2500 end is going to be a pretty recently built house that somehow didn't come with 200A service.

This writer seems to be confused about the difference between a generator and a battery.

So you drain the battery of your mode of transportation in an emergency or you do it in non emergencies and dwindle away your cycle lifetime?

And title should be "will power" not "can power" as its not in production.

Except that it's completely impossible to buy one.

Advantage: you can leave the house to get more electricity.

Disadvantage: while you are away from the house, it gets no power.

With all of the discussion going on there seems to be one thing that people are missing:

This is the BEGINNING of the technology.

Ford is the first to offer this, but now the rest of the companies will be falling all over themselves to compete. The competition will foster better and better technologies over the years, and as a result we'll have modular, bi-directional power systems for all sorts of purposes.

And THAT is what's so great about this.

I'm not so much excited about the F150 itself (as I wasn't excited about the Tesla Roadster itself), but rather about where this is going to lead over the next decade.

That's what they said about Concorde too.

The march of technology is not always inevitable.

Also the case of nuclear medicine, which will probably be a thing after a century from now.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

"They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown" - Carl Sagan

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you lose, then you're forgotten about, then you're yet another example of survivorship bias.

Oh I know. All my life I've heard people go to great lengths about why it can't be done, why it won't work, why there's no point in trying.

It's like the negativity gives them a raison d'être.

The negativity can serve a positive purpose, by reminding whose optimism blinds them towards the little details and hurdles that could prevent success. I've been the naysayer in many successful projects and I think that my negativity played a small role in their success.

I'm not sure what you mean by "nuclear medicine", but for me that brings to mind radiotherapies for cancer and radio-imaging (either X-rays or radioisotope tracers), both of which are very much part of modern medicine.

There are radioactive isotopes that are useful to deliver to cancer cells.

We have no way of manufacturing enough volume of said isotopes under the current weapons/energy framework of nuclear materials.

Can you provide a source? I have not personally heard of a substantial shortage of radioactive isotopes for medical use, nor have I heard of cancer patients going without therapy because of a lack of available materials. I am quite interested in peaceful use of nuclear materials, so I'd love to learn more about this!

Supersonic passenger flight is having a Renaissance. It's actually an example of the argument your arguing against. They did say supersonic flight was going to happen. It just took a bit longer than we thought.

I'll believe it when I see it. For now it's some companies that have never delivered a production aircraft promising that they'll do something great. Meanwhile, on paper, it's less efficient, more expensive, less practical, more dangerous, and the benefit over regular flight is questionable (cut flight times in half? Is it really worth the effort?)

"More dangerous" probably warrants some investigation given the stellar safety record of Concorde compared to almost any sub-sonic commercial airliner flying today.

I didn't mention Concorde specifically, but supersonic flight in general. But anyway: the "stellar" safety record of Concorde is: 20 were built, 1 crashed and burned killing all on board. Let's compare it with a plane that has been flying since the same year: the Boeing 737. Of the more than 10,000 that were built, there were about 185 hull loss accidents, of which 83 included fatalities [0]. That's a ratio of less than 0.0083, compared to 0.05 for Concorde. Not exactly great. I'm pretty sure that if you compare it with deaths by trip or by distance traveled it's gonna be even worse.

I think Concorde was pretty cool, but let's not kid ourselves. And I'm not even gonna mention the track record of the Tu-144.

[0] https://www.quora.com/How-many-737-planes-of-all-models-have...

Yeah but that's not how statistics work. 20 concords isn't a large enough sample size to pull statistically signifigant conclusions from.

Furthermore, the crash you reference was not a result of a design flaw or the "suoersonic-ness" of Concorde but a combination of human error (they took off too heavy for the conditions) and an accidental strike of an object on the runway left by the previous (Boeing) plane.

It's no doubt that several of the accidents you reference in your stats are design flaws, it only takes one to make it worse than the concords perfect record (excluding the one crash because it was a combination of human error and failure of another plane). So in reality, adjusting for non-design related failures, the concord has a better safety record than any other commercial airliner.

That's my point. Comparing the safety record to other commercial planes is kinda pointless, since so few were built and they were used so little (and even then, one managed to crash and burn). If the 737-MAX had seen the same use, I'm sure we'd never had uncovered the design issue that caused the crashes either.

And "any other commercial airliner" includes planes like the 787 and the A380, which have literally never had an incident with fatalities.

Boom, Bombardier, and maybe some others are developing aircraft but we don't really know the final cost both in planes, fuel, and whether passengers are willing to pay that.

It's a Renaissance when more people are flying supersonic than were in the Concorde era.

Since the number of supersonic passenger flights† in the last twelve months is zero, this is premature.

† offer not valid for rockets

Supersonic flight has superlinearly more drag than subsonic flight. IIRC, n^4 or n^5, while drag was normally n^2 kinda thing at subsonic speeds.

Concorde was progress, but backwards progress in terms of what matters in terms of global warming (etc. etc.)

You can reduce some drag by flying higher (thinner air, less drag effects), but that also requires more fuel to reach higher into the atmosphere. So its just inefficient all around.

It was both designed as a luxury experience and to take as little time as possible. These goals are fundamentally at odds.

The sound barrier is a stark nonlinearity in air travel.

Electric cars have nothing of the sort. The future is evidently one of modest improvement toward a steady state for existing lithium chemistries and the motors which they drive. There's room for quantum improvement in battery chemistry but I'm in camp Goodenough, I expect in 20 years 90% of vehicle batteries will be a lithium cobalt or lithium iron phosphate pack, as they are now (let's ignore the surprising number of lead-acid cars in China as the evolutionary dead end which they are).

We're somewhere in the comfortable middle in terms of technology, and right at the starting line industrially. Most of the economies of scale are yet to come.

GP argument is Elon's position as well that technology does NOT inevitably advance forward.

We forget how the Egyptians built the pyramids, or how the Romans built the aquifers or even how to land on the moon.

Unless we're actively working to improve and to build on top of prior advancements, technology will not inevitably advance.

GPs post is two sentences and one of them is about the Concorde. I believe it was fair to stick to explaining why that isn't especially germane to electric autos; it isn't.

Neither are ancient burial mounds, moon landings, nor in fact the Roman ability to build underground lakes, which we will never recover since they were unable to do so.

I know you meant aquaduct but of course California has put the Romans to shame in that department.

This illustrates what energy waste these cars are. Disgusting in times of climate change.

Every gas truck replaced by an electric truck is an improvement over the status quo. Americans are in love with trucks, and the ones most in love with their trucks are the ones most primed by their media to resist measures to address climate change, so if this can get them on board with electrification then it will be an incredible victory.

Ford went all out with the F-150 Lightning, they put their A-team on it and actually made a truck that non-truck people might want too.

Especially when it's fully compatible with the huge 3rd party addon inventory for the F-150.

Presumably this includes fuzzy dice!

Blackouts are not climate driven. We are retiring unfavorable sources of energy like coal and nuclear faster than we are bringing new sources of green energy online. It's fucking stupid.

edit: According to the WSJ, the coming blackouts this summer are due to Green Climate Policies, not climate change: https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-summer-of-rolling-blac...

This is a self inflicted wound due to bad policy.

> Blackouts are not climate driven.

That's a bit of an absolute statement. Blackouts can happen for a lot of reasons, some of them are related to climate and climate change. Bigger weather events like floods and windows can take out power lines or dams easily.

I believe the original statement is correct. Blackouts are not climate driven. Blackouts can be weather driven.

I don't think it makes sense to see them as disconnected.

Example: "Climate change leads to more extreme weather" - World Meteorological Organization

Source: https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-relate...

Sigh. As with many things, we don't really know what is and isn't caused by "climate change." Why for instance does CA now have so many fires but TX has fewer? Could it be climate change? Sure. Could it be the major differences CA enacted around forest management that TX didn't? Sure. But all you ever hear about is climate change.

It's hysteria and it covers up other real issues.

There's many studies that show that the number of extreme weather events went up significantly in the past decades around the globe. This is way more global and longer running that some policy in some US state.

Example: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/extreme-weather-events-have-inc...

And the sun also greatly increased its activity over the last 100 years. Anthropomorphic climate change is still debatable.

https://www.space.com/2942-sun-activity-increased-century-st...

From the article you linked:

"During the last few decades, the solar activity is not increasing. It has stabilized at a high level, but the Earth's climate still shows a tendency toward increasing temperatures," Usoskin explained.

He suspects even if there were a link between the Sun's activity and global climate, other factors must have dominated during the last few decades, including the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The article also made an absolute statement calling the blackouts "climate driven". That's inaccurate.

Ehhh, some blackouts are demand driven, and climate change is increasing our HVAC demand. You certainly have a point, but I think climate is still a factor.

According to an actual source, the WSJ, the coming rolling blackouts this summer are due to green energy policies: https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-summer-of-rolling-blac...

> Transforming an F-150 Lightning into a backup generator means you can keep the lights on during blackouts. > ... 9.6 kilowatts of carbon-free electricity generated onboard...

fail. it’s a mobile battery, not a generator. For a modest extra few $1000s it can be grid-tied and used as a battery backup.

I predict grid-tying will not look like a virtue when the public utility decides to tap into the owner’s battery to make up for generation malinvestment...

Isn't a battery a type of generator, to be pedantic ? There is not electricity stored in a battery, just a chemical state that happens to generate electricity.

While that is true from the perspective of electrical engineering, I think it is reasonable to expect that "generator" colloquially refers to an engine that converts fuel into electricity. Since you can't really "pour fuel" into a battery (at least that I know of), I personally wouldn't call it a "generator".

The most charitable interpretation is that “generator” just refers to something that keeps your house powered when the grid goes down. It serves exactly the same purpose to the end user as a real generator so it doesn’t really matter what happens behind the scenes.

And that it’s carbon free because in theory it could be charged by purely renewables, especially likely if you have personal solar, vs a real generator which is only burning fuel.

It’s just a clever use of the term for editorial value. I think it works at communicating the use case in the article. No need to ver analyse it.

Fuel cells are batteries that you pour fuel into.

Energy converter, if you want to be pedantic. For practical purposes it's storage.

>I predict grid-tying will not look like a virtue when the public utility decides to tap into the owner’s battery to make up for generation malinvestment...

Then limit or block exporting out to the grid.

You need this anyway for safety.

Also, safety will probably also dictate you must wait for the utility to finish using your truck battery before you disconnect it. You’ll probably have to request a disconnect and wait for generation or OtherPeoplesStorage to come online…

It’s true that a generator converts motive energy into electricity, but in the context of a worksite, or a household, it fulfils the same outcome.

The article is being clever and recontextualising the concept, because that’s what cements a use case in peoples minds.

> The article is being clever and recontextualising the concept, because that’s what cements a use case in peoples minds.

Awesome! Gotta remember that line when I make shit up! Hurrah for This brave new world where a sufficiently recontextualised concept reveals a whole new consensually derived factual basis for persuasion.

> I predict grid-tying will not look like a virtue when the public utility decides to tap into the owner’s battery to make up for generation malinvestment

It sure looks like a virtue when the public utility already taps into grid-tied rooftop PV arrays, generating income for homeowners and cleaning up the grid.

If adding energy storage to homes allows the grid to require less fossil-fuel burning peaker plants, while generating income for those homeowners, why wouldn't this be rightfully seen as a virtue?

My main concern is that the compensation be appropriate for the added wear and tear on the grid-tied EV batteries. Assuming this is addressed, it seems like a good thing.

> If adding energy storage to homes allows the grid to require less fossil-fuel burning peaker plants, while generating income for those homeowners, why wouldn't this be rightfully seen as a virtue?

Hmm, imagine the scenario where the truck owner inconveniently runs out of battery charge on the highway because the utility depleted it in favor of increasing generation. While all of your scenarios may seem virtuous to you, it’s not necessarily incorporating the perspective of the person who actually paid $1000s for the privilege of being left on the side of the road…

To me it feels like a bummer. Not to you?

I don't really understand where you're coming from here. In the hypothetical situation you describe where the person is exclusively relying on this grid-tied vehicle for all their transportation needs as well, I'm inclined to say they made a poor choice.

A lot of Americans have multiple vehicles, it's those I expect to most exploit this option. Driving a giant pickup truck for all your needs isn't particularly pleasant, it's kind of an ideal vehicle to leave grid-tied most the time until you need to haul something big/heavy/filthy.

It’s not hypothetical that a person would buy a pickup truck and expect to use it at all, heheh. You chose to reframe it as “the person is exclusively relying on this grid-tied vehicle for all their transportation needs as well”, which is framing an argument I did not make. I think that’s some kind of rhetorical fallacy on your part.

Please help me to recontextualize such an inane counter. It’s like you have no response at all and just reframe things so you’ll have something to refute.

That’s dishearteningly dishonest for HN.

  > Please help me to recontextualize such an inane counter. It’s like you have no response at all and just reframe things so you’ll have something to refute.
  >
  > That’s dishearteningly dishonest for HN.

I'm the one being dishonest? To attack the conversation itself when you can no longer substantiate your view is a bad faith technique as old as the hills.

I wonder why you're being downvoted, because what you say is quite true.

Recently, I declined purchasing a solar system for my home, because it would not provide energy independence when the grid is down as I had envisioned. Instead, it required a device from the power company which would "allow" me to use my own energy storage, but also give them full access to the same resources. I saw this for the obvious scam it was - power companies sharing the burden of costly infrastructure with consumers through clever marketing and federal tax "discounts". It's not a stretch of imagination to apply this logic to other independent energy mechanisms like gasoline engine cars and imagine the implications on our autonomy.

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