They definitely aimed for the luxury market, like Rivian. Who knows how successful they would've been if they aimed for mid-range like Scout. That's the market they claimed to be entering when they started taking reservations. They also could've offered a fleet ready version without the luxury features, but must've decided not to.

> They're difficult to repair

How so? They are far simpler to maintain than a normal F-150. They're new so they do have parts issues for the electronic components, I'm sure, but I think that's a fair trade-off. In any case, I don't think offering a hybrid version makes the vehicles easier to maintain or repair. If anything it's the opposite.

> Parts availability is scarce, contrasted with a regular F-150 (even junkyards are full of spare parts, that aren't software constrained)

I thought one of the advantages of the F-150 was that most parts were shared with the standard F-150? The battery and motors, maybe not.

It has breakable expensive headlights and taillights, that is for sure. But so do ICE F150s...

The point is they're harder to get because they're rarer.

They did offer a fleet version.. the "Pro".

If Chevy came out with a competitive S10 Electric style truck, I'd consider it as well.

The issue at root is that auto demand is a finite, population-based amount. Automakers are all pretty good at margin and manufacturing cost control.

So that leaves the only independent variable that can influence revenue and profits as {average sold vehicle price}.

New entrants face a scale issue: it's difficult to compete with the larger manufacturers' production costs with orders of magnitude less sales volume.

Which is why you historically only saw state-sponsored new manufacturers break into the market (read: Japan, Korea, China).

Electrification turned some of this on its head, but not completely. GM, Ford, et al. can still build just enough mid-market electrics to spoil others volumes, without attempting to build something really good and cannibalizing their own luxury vehicles.

Instead of buying a brand new Geo Metro like you would in the 90s, you just buy a used Corolla or Civic. You end up with a better car and it lasts longer anyway.

That means the majority of the "New" car market has already decided price isn't that important.

Which is why the "average" new car price is $50k and people are signing up for 80 month loans on trucks.

The cost is also kind of crazy between inflated factory and dealer pricing as much as $20k over sticker price. Yeah, there was some early demand, but over-charging really cooled that and the demand overall.

I'm with you on some of the interior features, they're cool, but the overall inflated price is just too much. On the flip side, the Chevy "Work Truck" is kinda too far the other direction imo.

Similar on the more complex exterior, though I actually like it, it's not practical for its' prescibed purpose. If Ford could create a stripped down EV equivalent to Chevy's "Work Truck" at even 50% higher cost, I think it would do very well. They're very good for in-city use in terms of range on a charge, it's definitely good enough for most general tradecraft use, but the bloat and pricing really drag it down. Much like most cars in general these days.

Pretty much the only interesting new car I've seen this year was the Hundai Palasade, which IMO was just a good value for what it is. Kind of disappointing to see Nissan drop the Titan line. While I'd prefer to buy American brands, the fact that is that I don't think they deliver on overall value or reliability as well as competing brands. And it gets muddied further with foreign brands with US assembly and American brands now owned or otherwise operated or significantly built outside the US.

The part with the worst availability is the godforsaken shifter, which happens to be shared with the ICE F150s.

That symbolism goes completely against electric/green vehicles. In other words - people who buy F-150 would never buy electric vehicle and people who are looking for electric truck for work wouldn't buy F-150.

This is an unfortunate trope that is oft repeated by those that live their life in constant upgrade cycles.

The regular F-150 is a pinnacle of value engineering for Ford. It's infinitely repairable for owners. Look around on the highway, you will see hundreds of 15+ year old F150s on the road, and a few times a day I will see 25+ year old trucks on the road too. There are thousands of aftermarket parts for repair or customization. Owners are happy with them, and they recognize the truck as something they buy once and keep for a long time.

If it is any kind of expression of self, its one of "I don't need to be consumeristic; I picked something simple that will last a lifetime."

Is there any car that can't do that though? That's just the weight of 5 adults.

Anyway, my point is that it's been a surprisingly good vehicle that just keeps going. Throw some lumber on the rack after loading gravel, it doesn't care until the suspension starts bottoming out. It's not my first truck, and I'm not tied to any brand, but the overall experience has been so solid at high mileage, that it sets a bar for any future trucks.

I'm just a single data point, and I'm sure there are folks who've had poor experiences, but having owned many vehicles over the years, the F-150 feels particularly robust to me. Honda engines give me a similar feeling. As one commenter described "using in anger", there are some things that will take repeated abuse and just love it. Maybe I've been lucky, but in my limited experience, the F-150 has a well-deserved reputation.

Even then, my minivan can pack some pretty long and pretty large things inside. Meanwhile it's got a better turning radius than most trucks, it has way better visibility, it's far less pedestrian unfriendly, it's got an easier loading height, sliding doors make it easier to fit the back five passengers in and out, the stuff I'm hauling doesn't have to risk getting wet or affected by the outside environment. Seems like the minivan is way superior than a bed for suburban life if one needs such a large vehicle.

I've needed to move homes requiring the need for a 24' box truck more than I've needed to haul a stack of drywall around. Should I daily drive a uhaul truck?

A utility trailer could do a lot of that too, if you have a suitable tow vehicle. Sometimes the extra space taken by a trailer is inconvenient.

It's a good idea to use anti-sway bars on, say, a Hayman-Reese hitch when things get technical and loads want to skid sideways.

Rig your trailer right and you can have a removable gull wing hutch for sleeping in / tool security, etc.

IMHO there's more room on a dedicated heavy load trailer than an SUV "truck" bed and there's usually better tie down with a custom trailer as the rope rails run full length for hitching.

You may get away with it but it is not suitable. It doesn't have the brakes or the weight to safely pull a large trailer, and you'll likely burn up the transmission as well. Now, if you're talking about a body-on-frame GM sedan from the 1970s, with a 350 or larger V8 engine, maybe. A 4-cylinder typical family sedan of 2025? Not a chance.

We work in agricultural and mining and have done, in my fathers case, since 1935.

Admittedly he started with horses, bullocks, and kerosene fueled tractors, but hey, we understand engines, how to keep them running, and a host of tangential factors that roll alongside; recovery, survival, first aid, fire fighting, bush mechanics, etc.

Vehicles are maintained, used within their limits, regularly checked before long trips, and routinely clock up 750,000 - 1,300,000 km before being replaced.

To date no transmissions have been burnt out. Multiple long distance trips on sealed and unsealed roads have been taken across the length and breadth of Western Australia - it's reasonably tough country.

As a pro-tip, if you're burning out transmissions pulling loads on a regular basis, I'd suggest parking up to take load facing downhill (and chock the wheels to be safe). That way, when you start up under load you have the advantage of a downhill rolling start. That'll help to prevent spinning tyres, getting bogged, and undue strain on the transmission. If you're not doing it already consider starting off in a low gear rather than relying on an automatic transmission to select for you.

You do understand, I trust, that there's a perfectly usable 6-cylinder class between a stupidly oversized rarely needed V-8 and the woefully under powered 4 cylinder?

We have trucks, we've just spent the last month on district harvest, and we're dropping a modular house in place later this afternoon (GMT+8) - by trucks we mean prime movers + trailer trains (usually two, sometimes three), nine tonne tippers, ex-military scrabblers that can carry 5-tonne of water up bush tracks (fire control) and the like.

Ultimately if you're serious about contracting work of any kind, or even just craft glass blowing / wood working, etc, you get a workshop in a light industrial area or a rural block with space for sheds, drive ways, loading ramps, car sized LNG tanks, etc.

And if your answer is "well you'd go to the workshop and do that"...well there's your answer on where to park the trailer.

My neighbors are doing extensive renovations to their home. Half the people show up in pretty fancy trucks most days. Nothing in the bed, the trucks look pristine with their company branding. Most of the actual people working hard in the house show up in beater Corollas or Civics. When material shows up, it comes in the back of a flatbed truck by the distributor dropping off pallets of drywall or mud or whatever or in some box van. These people driving trucks to their construction jobs rarely actually need pickup trucks for their construction work. Its like arguing chefs need to carry their own gas ranges to the kitchen. The real work often gets done with the company's equipment, not their own personal luxury toys.

When roofers came to redo the roof on my home a few years ago it was the same story. All the sales people drove big fancy pickup trucks to talk and show off proposals on an iPad. I didn't realize a pickup was absolutely necessary for an iPad, but hey I guess that's what it takes. After all others in this comment area think you need a few tons of towing capacity to move a 50lb canoe. A big box truck came to drop off the pallets of shingles and decking to my roof. The workers showed up in beater cars, the supervisors showed up in pristine fancy pickup trucks. Once again, they can easily write off that big truck cost immediately, but a passenger car would take years to write off the depreciation. I wonder why they chose the big pickup instead of the smaller car.

I've got family working commercial construction as well. He also drives a fancy big truck. When asked if he uses it for work, his words were "fuck no, why would I fuck up my truck for them?" He uses it to drive to job sites on well-paved roads, goes to Twin Peaks for UFC nights, and sometimes get groceries.

Residential construction jobs also existed in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and yet pickup trucks weren't the top sellers in any of those decades. Meanwhile in the 2000s onwards pickups and large SUVs hold a good chunk of the top selling spots. I guess we just all work in residential construction?

I've mostly just had that delivered when doing a big job, but I have just laid a tarp before. It's not that big of a deal really. And I don't even bother with a tarp for the smaller jobs, it's already bagged. Just don't grab bags with holes in it, and use the vacuum later. It's fine.

> Or a bed-load of tree limbs and cut brush?

I live in a suburb. The trash service picks up brush. If it's more than what I can fit in a few bags I just put in a bulky trash request and the send a truck with crane to pick up the pile. Welcome to living in a society, it's quite nice.

> Hauling furniture, firewood, lawn mowers, trash

Once again, large furniture moves have been easily handled with cheap rentals. One-off pieces have usually been easily partially disassembled to load even into a hatchback. I've had no issues putting my lawn mower even into my old Accord, they're not that big when you fold the bar down. Spend a couple of minutes unscrewing things and suddenly you no longer need a truck. Not that I need to move my lawn mower much, I'm not in the lawn service industry. I'm also not in the piano moving industry. But maybe most Americans do move pianos on a quarterly basis.

And once again, a small tarp and I've carried plenty of firewood for my fireplace. But once again like the majority of Americans I live in an "urban" area and don't rely on multiple chords of firewood to make it through a winter. But the family I had that did live in a rural area that did mostly heat by firewood just had it delivered. You might as well argue one needs a trailer rated to carry fuel oil or large quantities of liquid propane.

You know what's inconvenient? Navigating urban spaces every day with a giant oversized monstrosity that my kids can't even easily climb into on their own. A vehicle where I can barely open the doors on an average parking spot. A vehicle that gets less than 20mpg compared to 35+ (or even way more than that with my EV). A vehicle where each tire costs $200+ compared to $100. A vehicle where a brake job costs way more than it needs to.

Don't get me wrong, some people definitely have a legit need for a truck. I've eyed them as I've been contemplating the pros/cons of a camper trailer vs. an RV. Some people own businesses that actually need it. But most people don't have a camper trailer or horses or work a small construction company out of their home and yet trucks are most vehicles bought these days.

We have pickups and the minivan and I often prefer to haul with the van. Better fuel efficiency and lower load floor are nice.

What you do is get a regular car that's great for everyday stuff and buy a trailer. You get a flatbed that's what, 4x the size of the one on your truck? And it's cheap, at knee-level, and detachable, so you only pay the cost of inconvenience and extra fuel when you use it, not all the time.

You won't use it much anyway, because a regular car fits more than you think.

> And it's cheap, at knee-level, and detachable, so you only pay the cost of inconvenience and extra fuel when you use it, not all the time.

You can also hook a trailer up to a truck, giving yourself even more capacity. Many people do this. However, people in urban or suburban areas may not have trailer storage areas.

I think that’s more down to choice than possibility. I’ve hauled all those things home from the diy store in my boring Volvo with its roof rack. Had 600-odd pounds of sand in the back just last week.

4x8 plywood isn’t particularly heavy, and little consumer “150 pounds max” roof racks can hold a lot more than they claim.

In northern maine, the "Manly men" have a road pickup, with a giant cab and all the luxury features and a 7L engine, and an entirely separate "Work" truck that actually has normal work truck features like no infotainment and is easy to clean and is not a luxury vehicle.

They only ever drive the work truck into the muddy farm. They might go "Mudding" in their pavement princess and then take it through a drive through car wash.

Then in the winter, when they need to plow the snow, they have yet another truck, usually an old work truck, that they slap a plow on.

Trucks are a lifestyle brand.

They don't tow things other than once a year, and that thing is a giant RV for the yearly camp trip, because they don't actually like camping. They don't need to tow their Skiddoo in the winter because they just drive it all over the state from their back yard, which is great fun.

My dad bought an F350 for "work" that is full of all the luxury options of course, and is usually towing an oversized box trailer full of tools as a work space, but normal people that don't have free rent and have to work for a living just take the damn tools out of the back of the truck before doing the work. But it doesn't matter because that $80k status symbol is "owned" by his company and is treated as a depreciating asset for tax purposes, so he buys a brand new one every 5 years.

Ironically, he actually does tow multiple times a week, but 90% of his usage WOULD be covered by an electric truck.

The entry of Japanese automakers into the F-150 market is instructive. While the Japanese trucks looked similar, the early versions had a bad reputation for slowly coming apart under the typical workload and stresses people put on the F-150, which Ford had been refining for many decades. Those trucks often get used hard, and because people know an F-150 can take it they aren't afraid to use them hard. The median abuse significantly exceeded what the Japanese engineers anticipated. Japanese trucks are much better now but the attention to survivability is a big part of the F-150's enduring reputation.

I've taken the Ford platform through situations where I've seen many other vehicles get destroyed. That's where the loyalty comes from and why it is a default choice for many. Most people aren't using them as hard as I have but it does provide a safety blanket.

Also, the most green vehicle is the one you keep operating over any new vehicle, electric or not. Truck owners tend to measure their ownership in decades.

How do you (I assume american) define it ?

People buy vehicles based on their needs. The F150 is sort of a hybrid between a work truck and a prestige family SUV like a Ford Explorer. If people are doing serious towing regularly, they will probably upgrade to a 250/350 class (3/4 ton or 1 ton). Plenty of people buy smaller trucks like the Ranger, which is basically like driving a crossover mini-SUV with a bed. People who are doing really serious transport may have a flatbed on an even bigger truck, but nobody uses those as family vehicles. I know people who have those little RHD mini trucks, which seems super useful to me.

I don't know Utes, which by googling, basically looks like a midsize (Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma) with a flatbed. We don't really use those.

Actually, it's kind of a market problem. Tons of people I know have expressed desire for a smaller truck like that little barebones Toyota Truck, but they don't make them here and we aren't allowed to import them.

-owner starts you up from the hotel parking lot

-3-5 guys get in, you get your morning coffee via a drive through

-You pick up a 'slip tank' of diesel (think a metal box with its own fuel pump that sits in the bed and holds about a ton of liquid when full). You might fill up your own tank at the same time, typically on the employer's dime.

-you drive 1-3 hours over dirt roads and ice to get to the work site

-you fill up the heavy equipment from your slip tank, then stand for about 10 hours - you might be idling for part of that depending on temperature

- you drive another 1-3 hours back to the hotel parking lot. the owner plugs in your block heater so your fuel doesn't solidify overnight and you get ready to do it again the next day.

Trucks look impractical when they're getting groceries in the city, but everything about them - the height, the large cabs, all of it - is highly optimized for a particular kind of job. It might not be as common a job as it was when this design rose to prominence, I have no insight as to that, but there is a reason for everything about them being the way it is.

This is way more extreme of usage than 99.99% of trucks made will ever see.

That said, my SO has a large SUV, mostly in that I have trouble getting in and out of a low car now, and I'm no longer able to drive myself. My daughter has a smaller SUV/Truck (Hyundai Santa Cruz) with a smaller bed, that suits her needs nicely.

For that matter, there are plenty of people here that would do well if they could import the Japanese sized smaller trucks, which have a lot of import restrictions.

That said, I wouldn't want to drive such a thing offroad, up and over hills etc. regularly. I know a lot of Jeep/Pickup drivers that tow heavier things than you can with a car and go offroad to places you can't get to in a light vehicle regularly. Being functional for workloads as well is another benefit even if it isn't your job. That doesn't cover tradesmen who need the utility regularly and includes those who live in an apartment and can't otherwise just keep a large trailer parked at a random spot.

And yeah, it might be a status symbol... so is a typical super car, large suv or things like a Range Rover. There's nothing wrong with it, if someone wants to have it and anyone who has a problem with that can fuck right off.

If it's the same person doing the same activities, why would you prefer if it's a large truck instead of an SUV? Shouldn't we prefer people realistically right-size their vehicle choices? If it's just a small person driving around running small errands shouldn't they probably be in something other than a large SUV or a large truck?

Also, you mention the SUV has less utility than the truck. That's all about perspective and needs. I used to drive a large Durango back in the early 2000s. We regularly rented and towed camper trailers a few times a year, so we needed the towing capacity. But we regularly also needed to seat six or seven. A truck would have had less utility for us and been a worse fit for our needs.

IRT small trucks, while import restrictions limit bringing those exact cars there's nothing legally stopping them from making similar-ish small trucks in the US. Examples are like the Santa Cruz and Maverick, but I understand many Kei trucks can be significantly smaller than that. But in the end there's tax incentives for vehicles that have a GWVR > 6,000lbs, so as a company truck fleet machine buying a tiny truck is a non-starter. There's also the image of "not a real truck" of these smaller trucks that make them unpopular with a lot of traditional US truck culture. Between safety regulations, emissions regulations, tax incentives, and the market demands such a truck would probably be hard to sell at any kind of big profit compared to the giant trucks they sell today.

> I know a lot of Jeep/Pickup drivers that tow heavier things than you can with a car and go offroad to places you can't get to in a light vehicle regularly

Sure, I get it. I too know people who actually do take their vehicles off-road, or who actually do regularly haul things or tow their boat to the lake every other weekend or whatever. I'm not against someone buying a machine and actually using it, that's cool. Have fun. As mentioned above, I did the same when I had camper trailers often. But for everyone I know buying a Wrangler or FJ to go do off-roading, I know several who would never do so. For every truck owner I know who actually use it as a truck I know several who just use it to commute to their office job and pick up the kids from school. I know several who bought a big truck specifically because they could expense it better with their small businesses, even when their business was insurance sales or real estate sales or marketing or whatever.

> And yeah, it might be a status symbol... so is a typical super car, large suv or things like a Range Rover. There's nothing wrong with it

There is a lot of things wrong with people massively oversizing their vehicles to their actual needs. It makes our parking lots bigger as they restripe for ever larger vehicles. It makes our roads wider and harder to cross as a pedestrian. It means you're more likely to die as a pedestrian in a collision. It means you're more likely to die in a car accident when a larger vehicle hits you. It means we're releasing more emissions and making the air less healthy to breathe. It means we're worse off just because someone wants to feel big in their big pick up truck.

Imagine if someone had a machine that they could press a button and it would just give them a bit of happiness, but gave your kids asthma and lung cancer, poisoned the water, killed crops, and could potentially kill a random innocent person in a gruesome way. Should they press that button? Are you good with them pressing that button all the time for practically any reason? Do you feel you should have a say on if they should press that button, or how often they could press that button? Do you think you'd probably go around talking to people about these machines and the issues of pressing that button, to try and convince others to only buy the machine and press the button if they actually need to, or maybe buy the machine that poisons us less per press?

Should you have a say when a company excessively releases cancer-causing particulates into the air? Should we have a say when a company releases machines into our communities that have an excessively higher risk to maim and kill the people around those machines? If we should have a say when a company does these things, why shouldn't we when its private individuals doing the same?

I've said in my previous comment, if you actually do drive around in places where you need the ground clearance, when you actually do tow things, when you actually do use the bed in ways that are needed, fine by me. I see lots of trucks doing actual truck things as well. But the vast majority of these vehicles aren't used in these ways. This is the problem I'm talking about. I've had someone say to me they needed their pickup truck, no other vehicle could possibly be used because sometimes they have to carry their kids bicycles around and the only way that could be done effectively was in the bed of their truck. There was someone in the comment section here suggesting a truck was necessary to take a canoe someplace, as if that's something only a truck could do. The craziest thing about that canoe story, I've heard it from several other people as well, incredible this is a common idea it seems.

- To be able to help your friends move.

- To be able to purchase supplies and move big things over long distances.

- If you raise horses, you have to have a truck to pull your trailer.

- If you own a tow behind or fifth wheel, you have to have a truck to pull it.

- If you like canoeing or camping it is a lot easier if you have a truck.

- If you live in a seriously rural area, or you enjoy hiking, you will need a truck or other vehicle in order to reach your home or many other destinations. I've gone up mountain roads in a Camry, and it's not a great experience.

- To comfortably haul a family

The vast majority of people don't have horses.

The vast majority of people don't have a fifth wheel.

I've tossed canoes on top of a focus hatchback. You don't need a truck to go canoeing. A canoe is like 50lbs, you don't need a few tons of towing capacity to carry a canoe. I've also gone camping in small cars. Get this, I've gone camping with just what I've carried in person for many miles! You don't need a few tons of towing to go camping.

I comfortably carry multiple kids and a spouse in vehicles other than a pickup truck. In fact, other vehicles have generally been comfier and easier. In the minivan the little kids can easily get in their seats and buckle up on their own. In the truck I had as a rental, there was practically no chance they had to climb in on their own, much less open the doors.

And yet trucks make up the majority of the most sold vehicles in the US.

I do all these things with my Camry, I'm pretty sick of having to park 5 miles down the trail, and I wish I had a truck.

When I was working at Boeing, my lead engineer explained it to me this way. When the airplane is flying with a payload (note the word "pay" in payload), the airline is making money. When the airplane is sitting on the ground, it is losing money at a prodigious rate.

The point of making an airliner is so the airline can make money, and that means minimizing time on the ground and maximizing time in the air carrying payload.

Readers might enjoy this, though I can't find the conclusions section at a glance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKf8smvGsA

"The Truth about Electric Towing" - The video author says that weight doesn't make much difference, but aerodynamics does. Towing a big flat piece of plywood that weighs 50 pounds but catches the wind is much worse for your range (or MPG) than towing an entire second truck, if the towed truck is aerodynamic.

Side note, if he set the parking brake when getting loaded then the second tailgate denting might not have happened. It'll also help save the transmission.

My guess is that grid operators are offering more money than carbuyers, with the wild popularity of solar and wind.

But that doesn't address any of your other points, and I can't imagine a business owner that has very little incentive to change how they're buying vehicles to even care about the Lightning if they aren't seeing their friends or themselves in the modern minivan that's called a truck today, just electrified.

The nice thing about diesel, in case of emergency is you can have a couple of filled jerrycans around so you can always move if needed. I like the reliability, it feels more anti-fragile, if that makes sense.

I wonder if the Gibraltar company that produces Toyota trucks for UN [0] is going fully electric anytime soon, if ever.

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[0]: https://www.offgridweb.com/transportation/toyota-gibraltar-t...

How many times has this been a problem for you?

I live in the north-west Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar. An area known as the Golden Triangle [0].

About once a month or so we don't have electricity for a about 10-12 hours or so.

I also experienced a quite big earthquake here about a year ago.

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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Triangle_(Southeast_Asi...

* Bed size is fairly small

* Towing capacity is low (Just 1000lbs)

* RWD -> AWD

I liked the idea of buying a barebones truck and customizing it myself, but if it can't tow much, can't carry much, and can't go off-road, it's only really a truck in terms of its shape.

The vehicle itself may be a runaway sales success but if there's only or two locations in each major state where you can get it serviced, that runaway success will be extremely short-lived.

In theory the simplicity means that it shouldn't be difficult to partner with any independent shop... No complicated or proprietary software theoretically means that any shop with tools and a lift can do the work.

Time will tell, though. I remain optimistic and eagerly await delivery of my truck.

Why? People always say this. AWD doesn't help you stop faster. It won't help you get around the corner. You aren't on a racetrack.

Buy better tires. A real set of winter specialized tires will do better than any powertrain option. If you are absolutely insistent that no really you are totally special, get studded tires.

The best snow performance I've ever had out of a vehicle came not from the AWD trucks people around me owned, but from $34 walmart winter tires on a Dodge Neon. Because being light is a benefit.

Or, and this is the big one, stop being so bad at driving! My mom would spend $350 a tire on the best best best snow tire money could buy and fill it full of studs and still feel like she was out of control in the snow, because if you put your foot down on the pedal, any vehicle with more than 20HP will spin the tires.

Learn how to steer in the snow and slightly out of control. It's pretty intuitive IMO and fun.

Just be gentler. Press the pedal less to start. Or don't, modern ESC has no problem modulating the throttle for you.

So I don't get stuck lol

> Or, and this is the big one, stop being so bad at driving! [...] because if you put your foot down on the pedal, any vehicle with more than 20HP will spin the tires.

> Learn how to steer in the snow and slightly out of control. It's pretty intuitive IMO and fun.

> Just be gentler. Press the pedal less to start. Or don't, modern ESC has no problem modulating the throttle for you.

Don't patronize me. I've lived in Iowa for 35+ years, I know how to drive in the snow.

I'm on board for a house that cost less than 50K.

Ford having set my expectations at a $40k starting price, I canceled my order.

EVs are inherently pretty simple machines. All the complexity is in the battery, and China’s crushing everyone at battery tech. It’s not even close. It’s like a human trying to beat a polar bear in hand to hand combat.

They really need to deregulate the auto industry and let us buy the Yugos with a Jetsons battery. America is a poor country now. Nobody can afford used cars in this economy, never mind new ones.

Slate is very far from DIY.

A DIY Slate would be conversion kits/service for existing trucks.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(vehicle)

Man, Tesla apologists are rewriting reality now.

In no way shape or form is Tesla interior even remotely good.

If Tesla had a good heads up display on the windshield that you can operate through steering wheel controls, then it would be another story.

Other then that, its also not subjective that materials that are used are sub par. Steering wheels start to peel WAY early.

I paid 50K. A comparable powerboost was 10% more expensive.

> They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable

Huh? These share a lot of parts with a regular F150. Just not the motor.

> They're loaded with useless/barely-functional interior electronics that are poor copies of Tesla

You mean it has a normal infotainment system like every other F150?

> excessive exterior accent lighting, badges, over-complicated blinkers

Are we talking about the same truck? Aside from some trims with the light on the tailgate, I don't know what you're talking about. ICE F150s have the same sorts of lights and badges and as far as I know exactly the same blinkers.

> single-charge range issues are pretty much non-existent (for non-towing applications).

Hey, we agree on something after all.

Is this due to the parts problem?

So many companies will not prioritize serviceability unless mandated by law.

Ford is “expected to take about $19.5 billion in charges, mainly tied to its electric-vehicle business” [1].

If serviceability was the problem, that sounds like a solid incentive to get it right.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-takes-19-5-billion-c...

The way I see it is if there was sufficient enforcement of regulations around spare parts and serviceability then there's no way Ford could have stood up a factory that spat out a bunch of electric trucks without also producing a bunch of spare parts so the unreasonable delay to end users trying to repair their vehicles didn't occur.

I don't have to worry about getting a car battery or sparkplug because these things are standardized and mass produced. That's due to regulation.

The regulations just don't go far enough and the enforcement of them is obviously lax in 21st entury America

> * They're difficult to repair. A regular F-150 is designed to be repaired; these things are designed like iPhones to be disposable.

Add in the crap tow range and it looks like Ford upmarket, as it's known to do, and failed. Just reading these points makes me think that it was designed to fail.

Based on my personal experience traveling, there's a more practical reason for the political divide.

I spend a good portion of my life in rural parts of the US these days, where most of the residents are pretty conservative. But these are also parts of the country where I get nervous when I'm on 1/4 tank of gas. If you're routinely out in places where the nearest gas station might be > 50 miles away, you also see a dip in e-vehicles for very practical reasons.

When I'm at home in a city, it makes perfect sense to own an e-vehicle: typically I'm only driving a few miles a day, and the car spends most of it's time at my house or in a parking garage. When I'm out on business, and driving across hundreds of miles of barely inhabited land, I cannot imagine the stress of having an electric truck. It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that.

In rural parts of the country, especially when you're out working, you can easily be putting on mileage combined with being far enough away from a charger that it just doesn't make sense to have an e-vehicle.

At 100 miles of range, you only have a couple of blank spots.

With third party chargers, there's really only one blank spot in Montana. At this point, the range is already a solved problem.

Earlier this year, I did experiments with placing stations manually on the map and using the US road networks to calculate the isolines. With just about 70 more stations, you can make any point on the public road network in the entire contiguous US lie within 50 miles of the nearest charger.

So the charging availability is likely going to be solved completely even during the current shitty admin.

> It's not just about being 50 miles from a gas station, it's about the time it takes to charge on top of that.

At 325kW charge rate (common on recent chargers), you're looking for maybe 20 minutes to get enough charge to reach your destination.

I've had several situations in the Mountain West when roads suddenly closed <25 miles away from my final destination (and fuel). Some of these required upwards of 100 mile detour on rural roads with almost no civilization. That detour was not part of the original range calculation. For an EV the detour may not even be an option, you have to go backwards to a major highway to find a charging station that may be in range.

Hell, I've nearly come up short in an ICE vehicle a couple times. I try to keep 150-200 miles of spare range on my vehicle when I am in that kind of country. That is hard to do on a typical EV.

Plus the additional anxiety of trying to figure out if dropping temperatures will add massive downside variance to your initial range estimate.

I'm not really against electric anything, but not following the logic of the examples in this comment.

Then after 3-4 hours of driving (200 miles with towing) you stop for 20 minutes to charge to 80% and continue on your journey.

For gas this isn't a problem because gas stations are not just within a certain radius of me, they are on my route. But in your map, one of the towns I'm frequently in would require a 75 mile detour to charge, which doesn't really work.

If you're up in Neah Bay, WA (and I have been out there in the past so this isn't a fantasy scenario) and suddenly realize you need to charge, you need to drive over an hour and ten minutes to Forks, WA. But they only have a 250kW charging station, so you're going to need to wait 30-40 minutes. Now if you need to get back to Neah Bay, you're going to spend a total of 3 hours.

And, for my case, Neah Bay, WA is closer to the nearest charging station than where I most typically am for work.

If you are traveling, through then you just plan to have enough charge to reach the next charger (50 miles away in Forks).

I know that area well, I travel through it every several months. It also does not have a lot of gas stations, and the existing ones are about $1.5 over the regular price per gallon.

This leaves mostly mountain passes around the Sierra mountains. And by some strange coincidence, they have plenty of superchargers in the vicinity.

The rest of the country can be, to the first order, considered flat. E.g. elevation change between Charlotte and Charleston is mere 300 meters.

It turns out friction and drag are still things. On a pure downhill you would be able to roll, but it's not as good as going down is bad.

I also found that the car did a lot worse rolling down hill than my mini-cooper manual when I just put the clutch in, which got up to hairy speeds. Heck vehicle seemed to have more inbuilt resistance to just rolling than the fire engine I've run down that hill.

Overall I got 90 total miles of range and hit the flat at 10% battery. I was able to get 290 miles driving in seattle with the same vehicle.

For instance, one pedal modes (across manufacturers) tend to much highly favor regenerative breaking over friction brakes. Of the models I've driven such modes often seem to give you better feedback in the sweet spots of the pedal curve when you are just rolling and not braking/accelerating.

Additionally, in my experience rental cars are more likely to be in sports modes when you pick them up (I think some of the rental car places may even do this as policy to make customers happier when they rent them?), and down shifting them to more balanced energy modes (Ford's is called "Engage") can mean a huge difference in practical range.

I have several fun to drive relatively fuel efficient cars that are sunk costs. I work from home, they're just getting old. I have a pickup to go do dirty things like duck hunting.

The ev seems great for driving to work (I work from home) or around town. I was very unimpressed with it's short trip range and efficiency on a hill (whole trip empg was 44). I spent half as much time at the charger as I did driving. I'm sure it'll get better. Much higher charging speed would help a lot (Mach-e is limited to 150). The extended range battery would help.

Any other sub 3.5s 0-60 under 70 evs out there? If you can't tell I don't care about pure efficiency, I care about a fun to drive car that's got better efficiency than an IC and a usable range.

Many EVs are just as fun to drive in "balanced" modes as they are in "sport" modes, but your efficiency goes way up. Rental cars seem to think you want "sport" modes that are more inefficient because you want to rev that 0-60 more than you want better trip range. That's maybe a good way to sell the EV as fun to drive, but it's not a great way to sell the EV as useful for long trips.

The trick is the EVs already offer both experiences in their software (because they can, because that's how they work), you just unfortunately need to learn the manufacturer-specific ways to change driving modes to get the most of what you want out of a rental car rather than what the last customer wanted or what the rental company thinks you want without asking you. (If you want both experiences knowing how and when to change modes is even more critical.)

And this was during the wintertime, so with a reasonable amount of heating.

This involves crossing the Cascades.

In general charger penetration appears slower on the East coast to me.

In addition, for superchargers, you can see real-time stall availability, so if a particular site was crowded, you could just opt for the next. (Easy enough to do since there are so many).

[1] https://www.americantrucks.com/pickup-truck-owner-demographi... [2] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/04/21/suv-and-pickup-purcha...

Getting caught out in the middle of nowhere with a dead EV because conditions beyond your control changed the range requirements is a nightmare scenario. ICE trucks do much better in these situations.

Won't charge you fast, sure, but can be the difference to charge you enough to make it to the next stop, in some cases.

Im legit suprised this isn't a thing yet. I saw the Rivian gear tunnel when it got first announced, and I was almost sure that they are gonna offer a generator+fuel tank to fit into there for range extension.

You can do an efficient diesel or multi gas 1 Cyl engine, and you can make a system where you can put one or 2 of them in the bed along with any aftermarket gas tank, and now you have something that is "mission configurable".

If you need a truck for work, you're probably going to be towing in it. Now, some of those guys who are hauling are gonna need a 250 or a 350, but a lot of them will do just fine with the 150.

Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly.

In addition, it's 2 hours to the nearest big city. So as a practical matter, you're adding an hour to your trip every time you go into town. I like Teslas a lot, but gave you ever been on a road trip in one? It's pretty brutal.

Plus, I feel like, aesthetically, there is a weird block. I would have no problem dumping a load of sheetrock trash in the bed of a new gas truck. For a brand new electric truck? It kind of feels wrong, don't you think? Maybe that is just me being a Luddite, but I really don't have a sense of an electric car as a tool, the way a good truck is.

I think EVs are great as a recreational car, or a useful commuter in the city. I've never seen a Rivian doing blue collar anything.

I drive a Camry btw

That said, we have an F250. I'd love to have an electric truck, but I use mine for towing almost exclusively. If I'm hauling a trailer hours away, I really don't need to deal with the hassle of stopping along the way to charge. I've yet to see a charging station set up for conveniently charging an electric vehicle with a trailer.

When we lived the Bay Area a decade ago, we had a Nissan Leaf, one of the early ones. It only got 95 miles to a charge if you were lucky, but for commuting in the South Bay we absolutely loved it.

Here in Vermont? F250 and a Subaru. I'd love to make the second an electric, but no one actually makes a good AWD electric Crosstrek equivalent that's actually designed for dirt roads and not the city.

My general impression is the product class of a Rivian / 150L is probably closer to a Ford Raptor than it is to a work truck. But interesting to hear that may be changing!

If you're buying a Raptor, that's a luxury purchase for sure. But I do know people who use Raptors to haul, so that kind of makes sense.

With the exception of the most ridiculous of chromosomemobiles, I think most people make a very rational calculation about what they will do with their vehicle, even if it's just being able to help somebody move a couch that one time. Usually it's more than that. And towing is a huge part of that equation.

Not a Tesla but a different EV. I've taken it on about a dozen road trips over the years. It's been fine. I pull off the highway, plug in, go grab a quick snack, get back in the car and go on my way. On a several hour drive it adds an extra 20 minutes assuming I'm not stopping at all in the ICE, not that big of a deal. And honestly I should be doing that stretch break, and I'm often stopping for a meal anyways.

The rate of charging is a curve, where at a low state of charge you can dump a lot of energy into very rapidly. When its nearly full, you can't charge it as fast without risking damaging the battery.

This is a massive simplification and not quite what's really going on, but think of the battery having a lot of holes to stick electrons in. If the electrons you're pumping in don't smoothly find a hole, it might damage the battery. When the battery is low, there's lots of holes, electrons can just fly in and they'll probably hit an empty spot. When its nearly full, you have to carefully put the electrons into the holes or else you'll damage it. This is kind of what's going on with charging speeds.

So you probably see these charging times of over an hour or whatever to go 0-100%, but the more important stat to look at is the 0-80% charge time which is often like 20 minutes. That 0-80% time will often be like 20min but the 80-100% can often be another hour or more on top of that.

When I stop to charge the car on a road trip the time I take is usually like 10-20 minutes. There's no reason to spend more time than that, because the charging speed drops dramatically that its not usually worth it unless I really need that last 20% of range. Which I usually don't, because there's usually other spots to charge. And then I get where I'm going and the car will be sitting for a few hours and can charge at whatever speed it wants, I'm not needing it.

FWIW though, I spend way more time in my life pumping gas in my ICE than I do waiting on my EV to charge, even including the time I've spent on road trips on the EV. This is even with my EV having significantly more miles on it over the past few years. Its a question of if I spend an extra 15 minutes a few times a year or more than five minutes every other week.

Hey now, my 8 year-old Pixelbook still has 2 more years before it's out of support.

Maybe 50 road trips? Usually hundreds of miles, with the longest at 1000mi. Literally the easiest road trips I've done in my life.

If you're stopping often or long, something is wrong with your setup.

But that's like rich people. Nouveau rich sport designer fashion to show off how much money they have, but true wealth doesn't need to show off like that. If the tech lead came in with a battle hardens Chromebook running a distro they created on crostini, I would respect them more, not less.

The first tire rotation on my car was free, and the next two were about $60 total. The first tire rotation on my wife's car was free. We're both going to need another rotation in a couple of months. Other that that, the original wipers on my car were squeaky and I replaced them for about $40. Oh! And I replaced the cabin air filters myself at the 7500-mile service intervals.

When we lived in a much bigger city, there were time-of-day rates and assistance with the cost of putting in a charger offered by the local for-profit utility. The kWh rate was just over 3X what we're paying now and even that is cheap compared to some regions.

Insurance doesn't seem cheap but we moved from Farmers to Amica and there are a bunch of discounts for having cars with lane departure warning, collision avoidance, etc.

I expect to replace the tires at 40,000 - 50,000 miles based on what other people report they get with their original tires. I do get sad little postcards from the dealer about having our cars serviced because there's no oil changes, the brakes should last forever because of regenerative braking, there's not a catalytic converter to steal, etc.

Trucks have the following advantages

* Can drive most anywhere due to high ground clearance and 4wd. This comes in handy quite a bit. Having 4wd + weight + all terrain or appropriate tires means being able to leave the place during a winter storm versus being snowed in.

* Can carry big things or dirty things. Motorcycles, mountain bikes, furniture, landscaping supplies, and so on, without being limited in where you can go or how fast you can go while towing a trailer like you would with an SUV.

* They are safer for the occupants. Can't control if other people drink and drive. Can control if you survive or not if you get hit by a drunk driver.

They are pretty much the only consumer good whose price has outrun inflation over the last fifty years.

I know a lot of city kids think trucks are some obnoxious luxury good, but they're basically a functional requirement in most of the (very large) country.

Which is why new pickup truck models are so often not fit-for-purpose as a working truck of any kind. Like an EV F-150.