Electric vehicle war, is gas soon to be toast?

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by 8sPOT

https://www.motortrend.com/news/2025...t-look-review/

New Ramcharger truck coming 2025, interesting concept. Its powered by electric motors but also has an on board V6 engine as a generator, extending the range to over 1,000km. The gas engine will kick in to charge the battery when it gets to a certain level.

Is this something new, or a Chevy Volt in truck form?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Is this something new, or a Chevy Volt in truck form?

More like a BMW i3. V8 has not connection to drive train, only the battery

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

More like a BMW i3. V8 has not connection to drive train, only the battery

That's exactly what the Volt was.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

That's exactly what the Volt was.

Not quite. The Chevy Bolt's engine was connected to the drive train despite some vague and misleading claims from GM when it was released


https://www.engadget.com/2010-10-11-...heels-its.html

[calgarygeologist]

I was just reading some more info on the Ramcharger and apparently when the generator is on and powering the vehicle it is only achieving around 20mpg which seems pretty poor.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Not quite. The Chevy Bolt's renting was connected to the drive train despite some vague and misleading claims from GM when it was released


https://www.engadget.com/2010-10-11-...heels-its.html

Wow, I feel lied to. The marketing for this thing sure stretched the truth. Even the Wikipedia article is misleading in the summary section.

Thanks for undoing the hoodwinking GM pulled on me.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Not quite. The Chevy Bolt's engine was connected to the drive train despite some vague and misleading claims from GM when it was released


https://www.engadget.com/2010-10-11-...heels-its.html

Bolt and Volt are different cars.

[DoubleK]

Seen in the parkade at Whole Foods.

Some jerk cut the cables presumably for the copper inside.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

Bolt and Volt are different cars.

D'oh! I know this. Stupid autocorrect

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Seen in the parkade at Whole Foods.

Some jerk cut the cables presumably for the copper inside.

There's copper in lots of other places too. It's also a culture wars thing. Starting to see chargers vandalized and cables cut all over the place

https://futurism.com/the-byte/vandal...rging-stations

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

It's also a culture wars thing.

That's absolutely not a thing in Seattle. Perhaps in other parts of Washington, but definitely not here.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Since1984

Electric vehicle market is slowing....







https://www.businessinsider.com/auto...orking-2023-10

So numbers are in for October and it's the opposite of what the article suggests:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1724194295362552201

https://twitter.com/user/status/1724194297388417200

https://twitter.com/user/status/1724194299305193892

https://twitter.com/user/status/1724194452808302840

[Bill Bumface]

Is it possible that production just knee-jerk exceeded the continued (large) demand? Impressive if so, and current pricing would indicate maybe that's the case.

[sketchyt]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

That's absolutely not a thing in Seattle. Perhaps in other parts of Washington, but definitely not here.

It hasn't happened in the last year or so, but I've had 3-4 people over the past 4 years aggressively confront me in parking lots (some with my child) about my Tesla, why it sucks, why I don't support Alberta O&G, how it's stupid, etc...
No, I don't have any decals of any sort on it. JFC, I only bought it because car goes zoom. Leave me alone.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Is it possible that production just knee-jerk exceeded the continued (large) demand? Impressive if so, and current pricing would indicate maybe that's the case.

Supply induced demand is a real thing - that's why construction of more lanes on a highway often leads to further traffic congestion as the increased supply of highway leads more people to take the highway.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Supply induced demand is a real thing - that's why construction of more lanes on a highway often leads to further traffic congestion as the increased supply of highway leads more people to take the highway.

I would not call induced demand on a freeway equivalent to overproduction of a good.

Induced demand on a freeway leads to more houses/lots being built and bought because they are temporarily more desirable due to the lowered commute time. This will eat up capacity on the roads until you're back at square one.

The equivalent would be building a bunch of extra houses somewhere that there is no demand for, so the price falls and people buy them.

[photon]

Interesting report on reliability, in theory EVs should be more reliable but it's still early days I guess. Hybrids having fewer problems is surprising since you have the complexity of both systems.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars...s-a7824554938/

There are interesting insights with the reliability of electrified models this year. Overall, hybrids have 26 percent fewer problems than cars powered by internal combustion engines (ICE). Some standouts include the Lexus UX and NX Hybrid and the Toyota Camry Hybrid, Highlander Hybrid, and RAV4 Hybrid.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are more of a mixed bag. As a category, they have 146 percent more problems than ICE vehicles. Several PHEVs are even less reliable than their conventional counterparts, such as the below-average Audi Q5 and Chrysler Pacifica. The latter has the lowest score in our survey, at 14.

...

Electric cars and electric SUVs don’t fare much better, with average reliability scores of 44 and 43, respectively. At the bottom of our vehicle-type rankings are electric pickup trucks, with an average score of 30.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by photon

Interesting report on reliability, in theory EVs should be more reliable but it's still early days I guess. Hybrids having fewer problems is surprising since you have the complexity of both systems.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars...s-a7824554938/

I think there is a likely a "New Model" bias here.

Most EV's and Plug in Hybrids are first generation models, many only 1-3 years old.
New models are always going to have more problems. I would think if you compare new gas models to more mature ones, you'd likely see something similar.

Meanwhile Hybrids are a lot further along than pure EV's and Plug in Hybrids. So they are more mature technology/models.
The fact that they have fewer issues than pure ICE cars is interesting. If you're comparing similarly mature models then is what that is showing is adding an electric component to your drivetrain improves reliability? Could be.

I suspect as you see EV models mature you'll see the reliability/number of issues come down pretty substantially, and they'll blow ICE cars out of the water.

[You Need a Thneed]

Also, What are they measuring for reliability?

Are they counting recalls as negatives? Because for Tesla, most "recalls" are solved by an automatic software download. The problem is fixed while the vehicle is parked for the night at home.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

Also, What are they measuring for reliability?

Are they counting recalls as negatives? Because for Tesla, most "recalls" are solved by an automatic software download. The problem is fixed while the vehicle is parked for the night at home.

The article says they took any issues that users/owners had with the vehicle, but then ranked them and converted them into a percentage.

It started off saying interesting stuff like how they identified an EV has 12 points of issues and ICE has 17... but then when they blended the numbers into a percentage based (likely) on an arbitrary measure, then that analysis didn't seem as useful. Ranking and splitting issues by safety + continued drivability vs minor annoyances would have been a lot more useful than what they ended up with.