I don’t think heavier batteries with less battery life are gonna do much for Americans.
Not unless we can get into small vehicles real quick- and given that the chicken tax has been imposed by executive order since 1964 I don’t see that happening.
Not unless we can get into small vehicles real quick- and given that the chicken tax has been imposed by executive order since 1964 I don’t see that happening.
What an unbelievable waste. Why hasn't this cold-war relic been long abolished?
How do you make a big car move further? Simple, you put a bigger battery in it. Those nice trucks that Ford is producing now come with enormous batteries. The main issue with that is that it drives up the cost and reduces the market size. So, Ford is doing what Tesla is doing: find cheaper/heavier batteries and offer the same product with less range in the lower price segments and reserve the premium batteries for the more expensive models. That way they can sell big cars to people that want to buy the biggest car they can afford. Never mind it will only go for 150 miles or so. You want 300+? Buy a better car. With a lot of the EVs in the market, you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on extended range versions. The difference is mainly the battery size and weight.
Plug in series hybrids might be a good stop-gap, as they're cheaper and solve some of the range and size issues current EVs have. You can have a smaller car, still capable of good speed and range, and at half to a third of the cost of an equivalent performance EV.
For anyone not aware of the term, a series hybrid is an EV drivetrain that has a smaller battery and an auxiliary petrol generator onboard to fill the battery if it gets low, or you demand more power from it. At first thought, that sounds ridiculous, but we're talking about compromises to fit specialty requirements here, and in that context they make a lot of sense. (also good EV conversion potential, since all you do is upgrade the battery and ditch the petrol engine once battery prices make sense)
Hybrids have a role in the market for the brief period of time that battery production capacity is not large enough yet to replace them with cheaper EVs. But they are inherently more complex and costly to manufacture and drive. So, that's not going to last long.
All diesel trains do this to avoid needing giant gearboxes, mining trucks use it to cut weight, modern ships use it to enable articulating motors.
Now we are slowly reaching the point where it becomes desirable even for car-sized vehicles.