Pickup of the Future?

What is the longest drive you’ve made in a day? How bad has cold weather hurt your range?
Too long. I drove 27 hrs straight through from NC to CO. Stopped about every 2-3 hrs to charge usually 30-40 mins. Would catch quick naps while charging. Cross country trips have always been in summer, so not much cold weather impact experience, but I’d say you generally will lose 10-15% efficiency in colder weather. If you run the heater (which I tend not to do), then that sucks power as well because you’re using electricity to specifically generate that heat vs. redirecting otherwise wasted engine heat. I will tell you that head winds in WY can have a 20% or more impact on the efficiency. There a good website (https://www.evtripplanner.com/) to help calculate range based on numerous factors such as car, battery size, tire size, payload, speed, wind, outside temp, inside temp setting (impact of running heat or a/c), elevation changes, etc, etc. It’s far more accurate than relying on just what the car says. It was hugely important in 2015 when I got my car and there weren’t near as many supercharges as there are now. There were some segments where it was sketchy as to whether you’d make it or not. I’d run it down to less than 5 miles of charge on a couple of occasions. That can be pretty nerve racking! With the smaller battery in the Model 3, they’ve now had to infill those longer segments on the major interstates.
 
Towing is definitely problematic for electric cars/trucks. Adds a significant load and will reduce range. Larger trucks will allow more space for bigger batteries, but it won’t be enough to offset the extra load of a trailer. Expect 20-30% efficiency loss or more when towing. On the higher end if whatever you’re towing also adds a ton of wind drag in additional to payload. Towing my SxS which has a full windshield on a flatbed trailer will definitely reduce the 400 mile range on a Rivian down to 300 or less. Just something I’ll need to plan around. Rivian has not made any announcements yet about charging network. It would be awesome if they could cut a deal with Tesla to use the superchargers, but I’m not holding my breath on that one. It’ll likely be just leveraging the existing networks such as Blink and ChargePoint. Some of those are free, some you have to pay. And even their level 3 chargers tend to be slower than Tesla Superchargers.
 
I couldn't see driving an EV pickup until the range is 500-600+ miles between charges, I like to rip through my road trips. My wife could drive one for her commute and around town, but it's still a hard 'no' for me and likely will be for quite a while.
 
Perhaps. The first computers took up an entire room. Now we have smart phones in the palm of our hands.
Absolutely true. Swapping batteries may be the thing that makes them feasible. Just saying that I'd take the odds on fast charging long before swappable batteries. Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.
 
There are a variety of pickups to meet individual applications. I could care less if my current truck will pull a 8-10k lb trailer. It doesn't even register on my GAF meter. Prior to that, I did care. I had a 2500 diesel with a manual transmission and exhaust brake because that's how I used it. It's silly to think every pickup has to meet that benchmark.
Obviously you didn't read my post where it said "I" like to use my truck as a truck.
If you want to use your truck to haul cotton balls that's up to you.
 
Obviously you didn't read my post where it said "I" like to use my truck as a truck.
If you want to use your truck to haul cotton balls that's up to you.
If it's a pick-up shouldn't it be made to use as a pick-up? How long would that charge last if you hook up to an 8-10K lb trailer?
Personally I like to use my truck like a truck.
I think they are being made for people who have $$ to blow on useless crap so they can say "look at me, I've got an electric truck". Just like idiots who pay $100k+ to drive round in a Tesla.

Please refer to your first bolded sentence. That's a blanket question if I ever saw one.

What do cotton balls have to do with anything? Not every pickup has to meet the same application, just like we have different guns, dogs, etc. Close mindedness isn't becoming.
 
Agree! I think they’ll have to go public in order to raise enough capital to ramp up production (hopefully!) next year. They got half a billion $ investment from both Ford and Amazon about 2 years ago, but that will mostly be used up getting to final design and manufacturing prep. They’ll need lots more cash to make the leap to production.
They seem to really be shying away from public funding. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/riv...th-the-first-all-electric-pickup-and-suv.html
 
I don't have anything against them, and I can see legitimate uses for them. I'm just not a fan how many people advertise these vehicles are "saving the planet."

Planning your recharge route is obviously needed on longer trips and is doable as you point out. But for me all it takes is one power outage or "out of service" sign and then you're in a pickle.
If every driver in America had an electric Truck or Car our grid would never handle the load. Electricity bill would skyrocket and we'd probably be burning coal at power plants again. It ain't feasible, no matter what Sleepy Joe Biden and Pocahontas Warren say,
 
If every driver in America had an electric Truck or Car our grid would never handle the load. Electricity bill would skyrocket and we'd probably be burning coal at power plants again. It ain't feasible, no matter what Sleepy Joe Biden and Pocahontas Warren say,
The other side of that coin is that we're working for a local PUD to install a ~10mil hydrogen facility as a means to "use" all the excess hydropower they generate every year but the grid can't support or no one will buy. Localized conditions are vary significantly.
 
The company has raised about $6 billion in funding so far. Rivian closed on a $1.3 billion funding round in December and had raised at least $2.2 billion before that, Reuters reported at the time, citing data from Pitchbook.

Wow, couple those billions with the billions already in Tesla, and Nikola as well as elsewhere in the EV space and interesting things are going to happen.
 
I had planned on driving my trundra the rest of my life. But I'm thinking hard about getting on the wait list.
Just wish they tested it on snow, ice and sub-zero temps. That'd be more realistic than rock climbing.
 
And what hunter wouldn’t like a nice integrated seat to change your boots (and a storage compartment to throw them into...
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It’s cool to see all of the creative things these electric car companies are doing with the spaces previously wasted on unnecessary things like engines and drive shafts. :p
 
Given what’s happened with Tesla and Nikola stock prices recently, these guys will have no problems raising more money. I think they can now probably get as much VC as they want without having to go public.
 
It ain't feasible, no matter what Sleepy Joe Biden and Pocahontas Warren say,
Your point would carry more credibility if you simply left off the name calling and R/D crap at the end. All that does is say to anyone reading it is “the writer has an agenda, therefore take their comments with a grain of salt”.

I think you actually have a good point worth considering. But for the life of me I cannot figure out what some people on here hope to accomplish with all the name calling and polarizing political rhetoric.
 
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