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Comment by thatcherc

8 hours ago

It's weird to see a new vehicle announced like this that's not an EV. I wonder what it's like launching a gas truck when new battery-powered trucks are looming in the distance (or already here).

40 comments

thatcherc

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herbst  8 hours ago

There are many great EV cars. But when you have a trailer or caravan we still talk about a heavily reduced range (and often they aren't allowed to pull at all, or weight limits get a problem, at least in Europe)

  • analog31  8 hours ago

    The interesting thing in the US is that a lot of pickups, possibly most of them, are purchased for regular daily driving. None of the people I know with pickups have trailers.

    • skippyfish  7 hours ago

      I find it somewhat amusing that this attracts a lot of ire, but most of us would prefer a 2,000+ sq ft suburban home with a lawn when we could live comfortably in a 500-700 sq ft apartment, like people do in most European cities.

      Ultimately, life in highly developed countries is largely about the wants, not the needs, and different cultures emphasize different wants. The tech culture of the SF Bay Area doesn't glamorize big trucks, but it glamorizes making millions of dollars with no regard for privacy or social impacts of the tech we build.

  • yellowapple  3 hours ago

    Gas vehicles suffer from that range reduction, too, as my brother-in-law learned the hard way last weekend during a road trip we took to Idaho and back (wherein he was towing a camper-trailer).

nonethewiser  8 hours ago

I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t an ev. Very aggressive price point for a new IC vehicle.

  • doodlebugging  5 hours ago

    I agree though I kinda wish it was a hybrid. Maybe down the line that will happen. The price point is a valid point and it ticks all our boxes - 4WD, manual transmission, not huge. I've priced out components for one of my trucks and $21500 is not gonna buy all of the running gear. I expect that none of this truck's drivetrain will use custom parts and that all of the critical drivetrain parts will come from existing supply lines for simplicity and ease of hitting their "repair in your driveway" messaging.

    The guy is probably gauging interest through reservations and prepping his lie sheet (marketing data) to present to existing supply chain providers to try to earn discounts on volume orders.

    I hope it all works. We will likely reserve one or maybe two. Our existing small truck, a 4WD Ford Ranger with manual transmission, is long in the tooth and I'm tired of dicking around with it.

    • fragmede  5 hours ago

      Kind of like the Local Motors Rally Fighter, which was a kit car that kept costs down by using parts from existing cars instead of designing their own from scratch.

      1 reply →

jmspring  7 hours ago

There is a market for it. Cheap. Good range on a tank. 4WD. I've got a 2016 Tacoma TRD Offroad. It's only got about 115k miles (bought it new). I'm not planning on replacing it - toyota hybrid numbers for their trucks suck and an in kind replacement would cost me almost 2x what I originally paid (yes new tech, blahblah). $35k in 2015, $70+k now. Gas isn't going away and rural areas (I've lived in a few) often don't have charging options.

stackghost  7 hours ago

I say this as someone who will be buying an EV as his next vehicle:

EV proponents have a strong propensity to gloss over the very real drawbacks of battery-only vehicles:

- Towing anything outside of charging infrastructure/away from the highway rest stops is not feasible because of the range reduction, which in USA/Canada is a major reason to buy an SUV/pickup. Why buy an electric vehicle that can't tow your boat to the lake where there's no charger?

- Mileage goes down in the summer and way down in the winter, because the battery packs need to be cooled/warmed.

- Mileage evaporates slowly, even when the vehicle is "off", making these vehicles fundamentally unsuitable for, again, going pretty much anywhere you can't plug it in. When I was a teen we used to take week-long canoe trips into Algonquin Park. Imagine trying to get the kids home from camping on Sunday afternoon, you're an hour's drive away from the nearest city but oops the battery pack is dead because it's been self-discharging and cooling itself the whole time you've been camping. No thanks.

- Venturing far away from the charging infrastructure (camping, rural road tripping, jobsites/camp) is risky. If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, you can get a ride into town, fill up a jerrycan with gas, and then extricate your vehicle. If your battery-only EV runs out of charge in the middle of nowhere, you are completely fucked.

EVs are great, and when my 2013 TDI finally quits I will likely purchase an EV, but they're just fundamentally unsuitable for some use cases.

  • binkHN  6 hours ago

    You said it yourself, they're fundamentally suitable for most use cases. Yes, for the near future, there will be many use cases where gas is superior.

    • stackghost  4 hours ago

      Sure. But I think the "near future" to which you're referring is going to be a longer tail than many EV maximalists expect.

      I would be shocked if IC-engined vehicles were no longer being produced in 2050.

greenavocado  7 hours ago

My pickup truck burned 9 miles per gallon when I towed a 35 foot RV. Consider the energy flux and you'll quickly see how hopeless it would be to tow with a battery powered truck.

  • otterley  6 hours ago

    Not everyone who owns a pickup tows with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a minority of owners who do. Some just need them for hauling plywood, others because they like the aesthetics.