RAM’s New Electric Pickup Truck Aims for Battery Range of 500 Miles | Hacker News Reader

RAM’s New Electric Pickup Truck Aims for Battery Range of 500 Miles

wsj.com

30 pointslxm56 comments

To everyone being skeptical about whether you need that range, happy F-150 Lightning owner here. The rated range is only achievable if you set it to cruise at 65 mph through a level highway on a 60F day with no wind.

In real world, that's never the case. You go 85 mph instead of 65, you lose 30% of the range. The temperature drops to 40-50F, you lose another 20%. You accelerate like you want a 4.0 second car to accelerate, you lose 1 mile of range each time you do that 0-60. You go up a mountain, you lose range. You go against the headwind, you lose range. You try towing a boat or an RV, well, don't even talk about the range to me.

Realistically, winter driving around Seattle at reasonably fast speeds (not recklessly fast, but among the top 10% of drivers) gets you half the declared range.

If you you are a contractor that only uses the truck to haul stuff to local job sites, you don't care about the battery at all. But if you want to occasionally go skiing, or take kids to a national park, or just go grab some craft beer from Portland, that 500 rated miles vs. 300 rated miles will easily make a difference between not having to worry about charge vs. nervously checking plugshare and trying to guestimate how much miles per kWh you will get in the current weather along that route in today's traffic.

One of the most surprising things about getting an EV four months ago has been how little range matters.

Since you always leave home with a full tank and it’s rare to drive more than 150 miles in a typical day any range over that is money I’d rather save buying a smaller battery.

The main place more range helps is with road trips. But even there I run into the human comfort limit before the range limit. My family needs food and restrooms more frequently than the battery needs charging.

If I were to purchase an EV again I’d ignore range and focus more on other aspects.

804km/charge is mostly a pissing contest at that point unless you have some other needs for the batteries. Even assuming it's a realistic number.

For city driving this is true. Though I'm hesitating on some trips to eastern Oregon or Montana we've thought about, it would be easier if Tesla opened up its charging network to CSS EVs :).

The daily commute is a solved use case. That said, extra range still helps reduce the amount of planning needed.

If you end up spending a weekend at a friend's you can easily run out of charge and have to squeeze in a 30 minute errand or two.

In western rural areas of the US, which use trucks heavily, there is no such thing as a reliable 150 mile typical day. And at the common 80-90 miles per hour, 150 miles is not a particularly onerous commute so that kind of routine travel is pretty common. Unfortunately, you have to allow for road closures that incur 100 mile detours in your plans — accidents, weather, etc. That has happened to me many times in places where there is no charging station for a very long distance.

Sure, for a city commute EV works great. If you routinely travel around the mountain west or similar, you’ll want an ICE if you value your safety. The variance in distance, travel time, and road conditions is quite high.

I have no frame of reference for miles and how far they are, however it sounds like you're saying that for most people - who live in suburbia and other high density areas - it's suitable. I'd agree.

How much does it weigh? The electric Hummer passed 9000 pounds.

Saving the planet from overconsumption (emmisions) one giant EV at a time.

Clearly EVs without policy changes aren’t going to move us toward a sustainable planet on any timeline that matters.

What is the harm of large batteries if we completely decarbonize all energy production?

The production of batteries is VERY toxic, its mostly hidden by deveoping country production and ignorance. Ironically the most toxic battery has the highest recycle rate and lithum batteries aren't exactly easy to recycle in comparison to lead acid.

1. Toxicity doesn’t cause climate change.

2. With infinite energy we could neutralize that toxicity at no cost.

Energy is the limiting factor for everything short of cattle.

And even there you have animal feed production influenced by fertilizer, which consumes something between 1-3% of total energy via the Haber-Bosch process.

Please don't move the goalposts. The person you replied to was asking about carbon impact, not "toxicity".

I believe them bringing up toxicity is a completely valid answer to the question. I understood the question as "what else is there to consider if we solve the carbon-derived energy problem?" Environmental impacts fits within that.

lol, im not sure if you dropped the /s or not there are some seriously stupid people out there so it makes it easy

Do you have EVIDENCE that production of batteries is VERY toxic?

What, specifically, is toxic?

How do you measure this toxicity?

How does it compare to, I don't know, digging oil in the middle of ocean, occasionally spilling it into ocean or earth.

Plus all the toxic CO2 generated transporting the oil all over the world and then burning it in gas engine.

You don't get to throw around FUD about vague, undefined "toxicity" supposedly involved in making batteries.

When you're CONFIDENTLY making such claims, provide definitions, numbers, supporting evidence and compare and contrast with the thing electric batteries are replacing i.e. the oil industry which involves digging out oil, refining it, distributing it and a few wars to protect it.

I'm not sure I can quantify the harm, especially in contrast to the benefits of decarbonization, but large batteries are heavier, and heavier vehicles:

  - increase road wear
  - increase road fatalities due to larger momentum in collisions
  - require more raw materials for the batteries
  - result in more component wear, mainly tires

Gross Vehicle Weight: Model 3 is 100 pounds lighter than BMW 3 series.

https://www.truecar.com/compare/bmw-3-series-vs-tesla-model-...

Remarkably close. The Model 3 is light all things considered.

Also is gross vehicle weight the right metric? That's the maximum rated operating weight with cargo, passengers and fuel. Curb weight seems more appropriate for a 1:1 comparison.

Is momentum actually what matters in collisions?

Consider a 9 000 pound car at 50 mph. If you are standing there and that hits you you are going to die or be seriously injured.

Compare to a large freight train hitting you at 1 mph. A bit of Googling suggests that the largest freight train had a mass of around 140 000 000 pounds.

The momentum of that freight train would be more than 300 tims the momentum of the car (and the kinetic energy would be 6 times that of the car). Yet a free standing person hit be that train probably won't be killed or even seriously injured by the collision.

Where does the energy come from to mine the materials and to build the large battery and massive truck? How about the energy needed to charge the large battery each and every day?

The same place where stuff comes from, duh!

1. Big “if” on decarbonised electricity. 2. There are a number of other side effects unrelated to carbon emissions that come from driving around in a vehicle that weighs 5 tons. Battery capacity scales linearly with weight, but weight scales exponentially against wear and tear on road surfaces.

Perspective: 5 tons is the lower limit for the US shipping registry.

Just building on this point. Over the last decade or two, it's become real popular to believe that nothing can be made truly carbon-neutral, and the only thing to be done is to constantly shame each other into feeling guilty and using less.

This is false. Completely and utterly false. And it's highly ineffective, as people will overwhelmingly prioritize comfort/happiness over the abstract concept of carbon production. All this really achieves is making the shamers feel like they're doing something, without actually really doing anything.

Energy is one of the fundamental resources underpinning literally everything used by humanity. Energy can be produced/captured in a carbon-neutral manner, and energy can be used to sequester carbon produced by processes that are not carbon-neutral, resulting in effective carbon-neutrality for those processes. And we have oh-so-much clean energy constantly reaching the surface of our planet. Significantly more than would be needed even if every person in the world had the energy consumption of a typical American.

So let's not be dumb about this. Shaming others into using less does not solve the fundamental issue. Solving the fundamental issue solves the fundamental issue. If you truly care about reducing humanity's carbon impact (and if we're not dumb about it, unwinding it too!), please write to your representatives advocating for carbon-neutrality legislation and carbon-neutral energy production. Encourage others to eschew the useless "carbon shaming" approach and focus on the fundamentals. Most typical consumers would simply be apathetic to this approach, but threaten to take away their comforts, and they will fight you. And they wouldn't be wrong to.

somehow a huge chunk of RAM workforce is forced to build a EV truck that is clearly not a good product in many ways.

EVs are great. But not the way they are being built today. Feels like the first movers are making a quick buck.

They're accomplishing that range by using an enormous battery: 229 kWh. For reference a Tesla Model 3 Long Range has an 82 kWh battery. I imagine Stellantis is going to have some difficulty sourcing batteries at that scale.

Is this because they're having supply chain issues with other parts, and can't make more cars with smaller batteries?

Ford caught a lot of crap for saying the lightning started at $35k but it was/is impossible to find anything at that price. The only trims on sale were costing double that at dealers.

These companies just don't have the ability to produce at the scale necessary to sell compelling low cost vehicles like Tesla. Remember Tesla built their own battery plants to do so.

Dealer markups are also a thing though, and have been utterly crazy in the last few years.

> Ford caught a lot of crap for saying the lightning started at $35k but it was/is impossible to find anything at that price. The only trims on sale were costing double that at dealers.

That's a big problem across all of automotive right now. Wait until the recession hits.

> Remember Tesla built their own battery plants to do so.

Ford built their own city.

[1] https://corporate.ford.com/operations/blue-oval-city.html

My dealer wants to buy my 3 year old Forester for the exact price I bought it at. I don’t think we can deduce anything sensible from the market right now.

My insurance company paid me $6k more than I paid for my last vehicle when I totaled it. I agree that there's a high level of irrationality in the new and used vehicle markets.

I’m not sure it’s irrational. It’s probably completely rational given the market. It’s just bizarre and very abnormal.

Wow though. $6k above purchase. Did that immediately have to go into another comparable vehicle or could you walk away with it?

Once the insurance company pays out you can use the check to roll a bomber joint and smoke it for all they care, it's your money. Their business is concluded.

It’s probably because pickup truck buyers are going to be the hardest sell for electrification because of range anxiety and general number chasing. Also they have room.

Pickup trucks are big and carry loads. They won't be very aerodynamic so to get decent range out of it you need a bigger battery.

The Mercedes EQG SUV isn't very aerodynamic but then that's not the point of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC6Q4Fge3uE

Weird that no one wants to build a proper PHEV truck. I suppose hype based sales trump reality based ideas.

I wonder how these heavy vehicles will do in crashes with compact cars, and what safety rating they will have.

Electric pickup trucks are an insanely priced novelty until they figure out towing performance.

except they really aren't because the overwhelming majority of truck owners either never tow anything at all or limit their towing to utility class trailers that could just as easily be pulled by an Outback with a trailer hitch. Edit: To expand on this point even further, 1500/150 class trucks (the market niche most full sized truck owners inhabit and that these vehicles are targeted at) are complete bullshit for towing anyway. Hook up to anything heavier than a compact car on a tow dolly and you're begging to smoke the transmission.

Correct, the rest of the world carry and tow stuff without those type of trucks just fine.

Just give me an electric Durango with that type of range and I’ll be happy.

>the Ram 1500 REV, will offer a battery option that aims to deliver 500 miles in range

>The Ram electric pickup, shown off at the New York auto show on Wednesday, is expected to go on sale in late 2024.

Ram also plans to offer the pickup with a standard 350-mile range battery, and introduce a still-undisclosed variant at a later date,

Archive: https://archive.is/oCnhv

EDIT - ADD;

Ram 1500 REV: Everything We Know About the EV Pickup With a 500-Mile Range : https://www.pcmag.com/news/ram-1500-rev-everything-we-know-a...

Fat EVs may cause 'more death on our roads' – watchdog : https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/ev_weight_ntsb_death/

[ 83 days ago - 1 comment ] : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34361909

Please simplify the exterior a la the Cybertruck. Modern trucks are ridiculous with their impractical, ornate, exteriors.

The Cybertruck is the ugliest vaporware since the Phantom gaming console.

It would fit in just fine if we lived in a Minecraft world.

Ram's goal is to get current truck buyers to buy an EV. That is not an easy task. Making the truck look entirely different from every other truck on the road isn't a great way to do that.

> Ram's goal is to get current truck buyers to buy an EV. That is not an easy task.

True. Especially since the Ram brand's thing is a bigger and higher hood than anybody else. You can't see anything at ground level closer than about 20 feet. In an electric, there's nothing under the hood, but there's still that huge hood up front.

> Please simplify the exterior a la the Cybertruck. Modern trucks are ridiculous with their impractical, ornate, exteriors.

Imagine thinking the Cybertruck isn't ridiculous.

I still unironically love the shape of the Cybertruck, even if I think it probably won't be that great as a work truck (which would be why I buy it - have a cab-chassis ute now for general "put a half ton of gravel in the back" use).

Like it's just so weird and different.

I am not sure what do you mean by impractical and ornate? Almost every feature is carefully planned and unless it provides aero or some other benefit, it is generally considered wasteful and unnecessary. that being said, it isn't a minimalist kind of a vehicle.

Most ornamental details, I'd guess, are superfluous -- but isn't the general shape of most vehicles driven by crash tests?

.. and unique ability to make every pedestrian/ cyclist / other soft target simply disappear from sight.

In case it wasn't clear I took a jab at the horrible visibility of the tank like vehicles that the US appears so fond of.

The Cybertruck appears a lot safer than some of these behemoths.

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