Teslas are road tripped all the time and people tend to love it. There is a YouTube channel called OutofSpec Motoring and he does cross country trips in all kinds of EVs, but mainly Teslas. He and some friends hold the cannonball run record for an EV. The cross country videos are long, but they are still a good watch to see what it's like. It's hardly all doom and gloom. They aren't as quick cross country as a PowerBoost F-150 or 2.7L w/ 36 gallon tank would be, but most people aren't doing cross country trips and the difference isn't so huge as to make the occasional cross country trip unbearable.

Plus, if you have to travel say 800 miles, you will need to stop a couple times with an EV just like a gas vehicle, even if it's just to stretch your legs. Your stop may have to be longer in the EV, but throughout the year you will still come out WAY ahead in terms of time spent refueling your vehicle in an EV over an ICE vehicle for one key reason, you don't have to go to the gas station on your normal day-to-day. Think about your gas station stops, before COVID. You may have gone to the gas station every week if like me you fill up when it hits a half tank, or even if you let it run all the way down, for many they stop every 2 or 3 weeks. Either way, you spend 5 or so minutes there, and that's assuming you don't have to wait for a pump (which will vary depending where you live).

You do this for months, racking up time spent pumping gas. They are small trips, but they do consume your time. With an EV, you charge every night at home and every morning you start full. There are no gas station stops every 1-3 weeks. Unless you go on an extended trip, you are never waiting on refueling. So long term, you may end up spending less overall time waiting on your vehicle with an EV than ICE.

Now before someone comes in with their 300 mile each way trip to the lake they do each week, I get that the above isn't the same for everyone. But as has been said over and over in this thread, the Lightning doesn't have to be for everyone. But if people slowed down and thought about their usage and the entire EV experience, not just the edge case trips or whatever, an EV will generally be better. That is before getting into time you spend changing your oil, or waiting for it to be changed, not a concern with an EV, or any of the other fluid and filters you need to monitor and do maintenance on. It's all time consumed. We have just become used to those things so when we see an EV come along where one aspect of it is more time consuming, road trip refueling, we latch onto that instead of looking at all the areas our time is saved.

 

As far as range, even Tesla admits that the range is reduced by up to 50% in cold weather, and here in Canada, we get -30 degrees every year. As far as cost goes, Tesla sells their vehicles at a loss, they actually make their profits selling carbon credits. Once those carbon credits are phased out, prices will have to rise significantly. But the biggest problems are the electrical distribution system, and the available electricity. Subdivisions are sized for about 10% more electricity than the estimated demand, and most sub divisions were built before electric vehicles existed, so a lot of expensive and time consuming modifications will be required as more people purchase electric vehicles. And some locations already are suffering brown outs due to the air conditioning demand, what happens when all of those electric vehicles need to be charged? And the availability of lithium for batteries is also a concern, as is the disposal of batteries.

 

There is a lot there which isn't entirely true. Any battery can have lower capacity if the battery gets cold enough. It's not 50% though, not even close. A lot of the loss is actually in keeping the pack warm. We had a C-Max Energi and lost about 6-7 miles of EV only range, but that was mainly due to the heater running off the battery and that is a big draw, the battery was in conditioned space. It being -30 in Canada is only an issue to battery capacity if you have to keep your vehicle outside when it is charging, but even then they are getting better about those issues by conditioning the battery before charging begins. Every main line EV does this now, Tesla, Mach E, etc. So your vehicle will warm the pack before doing full charge, and your range loss due to cold weather would be down to if it requires more energy to run the heater. Tesla is tackling this by moving their vehicles to heat pump setup, and it's been very effective. Your stats around battery range loss in cold weather is largely in older Tesla vehicles. As we continue to advance in battery tech and improve components that draw power, like the heat pump example, those penalties will be lower.

Plus, ICE vehicles have range losses in cold weather. We have to add more to gas so it doesn't freeze, which is added cost and complexity AND it hurts mileage on the vehicle. You can see 15-20+% range loss in cold weather in an ICE vehicle.

The neighborhood thing, I would need to see some actual statistics behind that because I don't buy that for a second. Neighborhoods at least in the US range from late 1800 homes up to homes built this year. Electrical demand back in the 1980s was a fraction of what it is today, since they had slightly fewer computers, 65"+ TVs, and even appliances like air fryers, microwaves, etc, weren't as ubiquitous as they are now. Our energy consumption as a society has blown WAY past 10% if what you said about them being sized that way is true, which I would bet a shiny F-150 Lightning that it isn't, at least as an ongoing rule (the 10% capacity was set at construction and never improved). Even if that is how they were sized at development, which I can maybe buy that, energy companies are constantly improving sizing for local grids. Our local electric company was in our neighborhood about a year ago running new lines to ensure every home could get up to 250 Amp service if needed. Not because we asked, or because of EVs or whatever else, but because it's their job to make sure the electrical grid is always sized to be ready for changes in needs. I am sure part of that calculation is them preparing for more EVs, and that's great!

I just get... so tired of hearing these excuses and hand wringing from people about why EVs might be an issue, when all of the issues are solvable. We can improve infrastructure and should be. Like I said in an earlier post, at one point we didn't have gas stations everywhere, fuel delivery, an entire industry built around drilling, refining, and delivering gas. The pure logistics around getting the modern fuel delivery systems in place is mind blowing if you step back and look at the supply chain as a whole. EVs at least get to start with an already in place general infrastructure outline, we just need to make upgrades and improvements, and yet all I get to hear about is how that may be difficult. It's sad to see so many people so ready to throw in the towel over the slightest possibility of required effort if it means we may have a cleaner future.

 

I really want to see the specs of the commercial truck. Doing rough math on the Lightning XLT vs. the regular XLTs we used to buy for work (we switched to Ram in our light fleet) it is probably $10k more out the door after taxes, tax rebate, title, reg, etc. for the Lightning version. For driving 1,500 miles per month (which is probably high for most users), with gas being ~$3.30 a gallon right now, one would save ~$140 per month on gas ($200 for fuel vs. $60 for electricity to charge) for ~$1,700 per year. Add in savings of ~$250 per year of not having to do oil changes, and you save ~$2k per year, giving a break even point of 5 years. The commercial version would obviously be much closer in price to begin with so you would start saving money earlier compared to the gas truck, but I don't know how it would compare in features to the current XLT.

 

I get your points but others, myself included, are tired of hearing that EV's are going to solve all the world's problems when each and every one of them requires mining of precious resources for parts, labor to construct, power generation infrastructure to move and recycling infrastructure when they die. EV's simply shift one set of challenges to another set of challenges.

 

If the truck's battery packs are capable of providing the power needs of the average house, for 3 days, I doubt your $/mile calculation is correct. I saw a recent segment on Motorweek where they have found an EV in their fleet had roughly the same cost per mile to operate as an IC vehicle, when they tracked the actual cost of charging the EV.

 

I hear ya, Lithium mining is hardly ideal, I have my own concerns with EV production, trust me. The only reason I bring up the points I do is that it's always improving. We find new and cleaner battery manufacturing techniques, there will be different battery chemistries that rely less on harmful mining (like Tesla moving away from batteries that require Cobalt). Everyone wants to compare EVs right now to ICE vehicles right now, and I understand why, but EVs are in their infancy in terms of actual manufacturing and development when ICE vehicles are over 100 years of constant R&D. EVs may even take the form of Hydrogen powered in the long term, which is still an EV, as the core idea is an electric motor driven vehicle and not ICE. Power source will evolve and maybe drastically change, but I don't get the complaints if the only alternative those complaining about EVs can realistically come up with is to just stick with ICE. Fracking and oil drilling is hardly free from issues. The costs and added pollution of transporting raw crude is huge, then you have the refining process, also nasty. Then you have MORE transportation to get it to gas stations. At the gas stations you have fumes and spills and electricity consumption to run the fuel pumps. Then it goes into a vehicle that burns the fuel, more fumes and nastiness, that's before getting into oil changes, fuel filter replacement, the list is a mile long.

EVs have comparable areas of pollution in their construction and ongoing energy supply, but at least in those areas it is improving. More renewable energy is coming online to charge EVs, we are getting better at replacing cells instead of entire packs when a battery pack wears out which cuts down significantly on new resource requirements. It's improving at a breakneck speed, and the complaints about EVs from five years ago rarely apply to the EV you buy today. A lot of info I see about them spoken of negatively is super out of date, but at the same time it was true only a few years ago.

I don't claim EVs solve all problems, I just take the stance that they CAN be a better answer long term than ICE.

 

Well, as fossil fuel sources are finite, there is obviously going to come a time when their use is not economically viable. I am not against EV's, just not my thing and it is obvious I don't buy into the environmental savior hype. I think Ford is doing the right thing with the Lightning by making it more of a mainstream product than some niche vehicle like the Cyber Truck or new Hummer that are simply show-pieces for the wealthy (admittedly many high-end IC vehicles serve the same purpose). I realize that I will have to get on board, at some point, and the Lightning, or something similar, is likely my kind of product. Until then, I will enjoy weekend drives in my supercharged Mustang....even if an EV may be "faster", in some cases, you can't replicate the sound and feel of an well-developed, high-performance V8 air pump.

 

EVs aren't really going to be environmental saviors, at least you and I using them, because right now all the ICE vehicles in the world owned by private citizens COMBINED is pretty low on the list of contributors to greenhouse gasses and environmental impact. It's crazy to think that with, I believe, over a billion privately owned vehicles on the road. But the reality is there are companies that contribute more to global pollution and greenhouse gas production than all of us combined, and that should be the focus. There is a huge effort, funded largely by those companies, to make saving the environment something you and I need to do every day by buying this vehicle, or recycling, or whatever. Those things ARE good, I am not saying don't try to make your local environment better, but the real worldwide polluters are trying to pass the bill and responsibility to us.

In the US, passenger cars and light trucks make up 17% of greenhouse emissions. almost 70% of the rest is electricity generation, industrial combustion, and transportation (commercial use). The remaining is split between agro, residential, and light commercial.

Here are the top greenhouse polluters in the US:
https://www.peri.umass.edu/greenhous...-index-current

While even the top of the top may have "only" about 2% of total annual greenhouse emissions, and it's like 2%, so what. You have to keep in mind that it's just ONE of those companies, and how you could run your truck full throttle in your driveway for your entire life and never come close to the emissions they will put out just this year.

Anyway, that's getting off-topics obviously. I just wanted to throw in that I am totally with you that I don't think EVs alone are going to save the world. But every piece of the puzzle has its place.

 

I don't believe our thinking is very far apart. All of us are fighting millions of years of evolution where survival, while extending the least amount of energy, is encoded in our DNA. Therefore, most people, tend to gravitate toward to most expedient solution to any challenge even if it might not be in the best interests of long-term survival........enjoy the weekend....I'm out....