apparently 20,000 did u the first night

 

Ford has been holding a LOT of Benjamins for new Bronco orders they have yet to fill.......think I'll wait for the movie.

 

The Frunk is to put your generator in so you can charge when you run out of power. heheee.

 

A lot of people talk about it, most people in EVs talk about it. But the 100 Amp requirement doesn't really make sense when Ford is offering the 32 and 48 Amp chargers for home use (IIRC), I haven't seen a 100 Amp offering aside from travel charging, but it may exist. Anyway, you won't need more than the 32 Amp 99% of the time, as you can charge every night when you get home. You aren't likely to consume 300 miles of range every day, if you are it may just not be a good fit. A 32 Amp will recover more than 100 miles of range overnight, which is more than the average user will consume day-to-day.

And yeah, we will need nationwide electrical grid improvements, but we have needed those for decades, with or without EVs. The problem with that argument is we won't go nationwide EV in a year, or five years, or maybe 20. It will be gradual, much like our electrical grid improvements and hopefully individual homes moving to more solar solutions as that tech continues to improve and come down in price. When ICE vehicles came around we had to build a nationwide infrastructure of gas stations, transportation, storage, refining, etc. At least with EVs we already have most of the wiring run. We managed to get gas stations every two miles, so unless we as a nation are just incapable of building anything suddenly I think we will figure out EV supply.

Anyway, yeah there will need to be adjustments and upgrades. But they were needed anyway. If anything EVs came along at the best possible time because we are on the edge of a cleaner energy revolution. If we can make EVs part of the calculation as they size out solar/wind farm/offshore wind farm/maybe even next gen nuclear reactor installs, then the issue will work itself out.

 

The article I read said that the specific system, that Ford intends to sell that allows the truck to "backfeed" your house requires 100A......but I know only enough about electricity to know I don't know enough.

I expect that the future thinkers are already looking at how to retrofit the existing fuel station infrastructure to support EV......would be silly to do otherwise and abandon all that road-adjacent real estate that already exists. The most logical system, I have read about, is where the battery packs become interchangeable, like power tool batteries, and you simply drive into a station that has an automatic system that switches-out the battery in about 5 minutes. Understand these type stations may already exist in Japan. Unless they can get full-charge time down to about 10 minutes, or less, I don't see any other way to support large-scale EV use.

 

That's interesting on the 100A, thinking about it a bit I imagine that is the system they showed off when they said it could power your house. My guess would be that it won't charge at that rate, but as you noted it would be for backfeed to power the house demand, not the trucks. So the capacity of your house is less important. If you buy a Generac standby generator, they usually install an automatic transfer switch and a panel with duplicate breakers for segments of your house you want to run in an outage. I would imagine that is the 100Amp backfeed they are talking about, a Ford specific transfer switch and breaker system with 100 Amp capacity so your truck can run the vital stuff.

The quick battery swap is a neat idea, but it faces some big problems. Tesla did a demo of it years ago, was supposed to be the next big thing. But the connections between battery and car in an EV need to be kept solid, you can't have that connection wearing out after 50 battery swaps and it starts arcing, or losing connection and cutting motor power. That would be a fire or accident waiting to happen. I think that's why Tesla backed off that idea.

Doesn't mean it is entirely dead, but it may require a lot of R&D time before it can really be out there. That's all my understanding though, you said it may already be in use somewhere so maybe they are starting to work those problems out.

 

Quote from the article I read:
"There’s also the complexity of actually feeding the station enough power. Most modern homes are constructed around a 240-volt and 200-amp feed from the power companies. When factoring in 30-amp draws from an air conditioner, drying machine, water heater, and anything else pulling power, there’s not enough juice left to feed the 100-amp circuit required to supply the Charge Station Pro. Older homes may only have 100 amps supplied to the entire service panel. A solution for this is costly: upgrade, or add an additional service line supplied by the power company, which can vary wildly depending on location. Also, a transfer switch will be required to backfill the home’s power supply. Ford has announced a partnership with solar supplier Sunrun to help with installation and home integration, but details have yet to be released."

 

Also, as you stated already, this is an upgrade system and not required to operate/charge the standard Lightning truck.

 

EV's aren't for everyone, and likely won't be for a while. Typical road vacations and long-haul trailer towing won't be practical for quite a while.

But, the courier company of the future, as well as most tradespersons(?), are all ears. Think of the courier/delivery/route company that has a fleet of light/medium duty EV's that park in a building and plug in every night, possibly under an array of solar panels. Think of the money they would save. Or maybe the electrician that MAYBE puts 100 miles on in an average day. His vehicle is used ONLY for his work and doesn't need to be able to drive to Florida nonstop while towing an rv. The biggest markets for ev's is likely going to be more commercial than for home use. The new Ford is the first to really address the commercial side of ev's for general use. Most of what is on the market now is either little speck commuters, or higher end and much more expensive performance type vehicles. Very smart of Ford to get their foot into the market and find a niche.

 

basically "a vegan that secretly eats meat!"