The chevy/gm ev trucks have bigger batteries.
I'm a current truck driver and very excited to swap out my ICE truck for a Slate next year. I need something that can haul my trash to the dump, grab a load of wood chips for the garden, and bring home the occasional sheet good from the home store.
I agree with your assessment as it applies to the Cybertruck or F150, but not the idea of an electric truck. Some people buy trucks because they need a light-duty hauling solution; unfortunately, the market seems to only want to sell luxury SUVs that happen to have truck beds.
On the other hand, I've never experienced being able to just haul something without a little planning first, so I don't miss it.
You just need to cover the bulk of uses, not every last thing you might need to do. I think the light SUV + utility trailer is a pretty good sweet spot, even better for many things than a pickup truck on its own. Like have fun lifting 20 sheets of plywood up onto a pickup truck and back down, assuming you've even got one with a full length bed that can support that whole pile.
And sure I'd think larger trailers get to be a hassle to move empty by hand, but isn't that what having more equipment is for? And isn't that well into the tier where you need a truck for a tow vehicle regardless?
If we can get some affordable electric trucks in the US, it will be very interesting to see how the more rational segments of the market react once they are no longer priced out.
Work trucks are a very different market than for passenger vehicles. Their usage is a lot more consistent and known. This means that electric works very well for some work trucks and very poorly for others.
The other aspect of work trucks is that they're generally purchased by very conservative businesses who don't want to buy the bleeding edge, they want several years of reliability data before committing. The F-150 Lightning was cancelled just as that data was starting to come in.
Of course, most F-150's are sold as passenger vehicles rather than work trucks. Along with almost all Cybertrucks.
1. People who need to haul stuff in the bed
2. People who need to tow stuff behind them
3. People who buy them for some form of self expression.
Electrics are probably fine for people in 1 & 3. But for 2 I have yet to find one that both tows and gets range.
1. People who need them for work. 2. People who need to carry bulky loads 3. People who need to tow. 4. People who buy them for some form of self-expression.
The only real use case for electric trucks, imho, is construction site supervisors who do most around-town driving but may occasionally need to haul stuff. Their towing range is absolutely abysmal (F150 Lightning range dropped to about 90 miles when towing a moderate trailer!).
I live in the PNW and you see people not using their trucks as trucks every single time you go out on the road. This includes urban areas.
I’ve owned an F150 and an R1T and for camping, overlanding, snow trips, etc the Rivian is hands down the most capable vehicle I have ever driven. You couldn’t pay me to go back to a Ford
But process of replacing a radiator on a Rivian really isn't any different than replacing one on a Jeep.
Most people who work on any vehicle don't know what the fuck they're doing, there's plenty of people in Autozone buying their 3rd O2 sensor for their Jeep that's throwing a P0420 as well.
It just looks too weird.
It doesn't help that nearly all chargers are arranged such that I'd block important parts of the parking lot for half an hour if I was towing when I needed a charge, then I have a complex back out (where something is behind me that I need to avoid). Most gas stations are designed so my trailer might block a pump from someone else using it but otherwise I'm not in the way.
Depends on why you're towing something. My brother-in-law is a contractor, for example, and the first thing you do when you start your own contracting business is buy a big ass pickup and a trailer to haul all of your tools and materials to your job sites.
Agreed on the chargers though, sometimes it's difficult to use a charger even with a normal-sized car just because every manufacturer wants to put the ports in a different, weird and quirky place on EVs.
The only actual difference is time you need to charge. Pull through charging stalls are ubiquitous where I live
And I just don’t know…how often are people towing loads over 100 miles regularly for this to be a problem? Where I live I see pavement princesses towing the occasional boat or landscapers towing gear and rocks.
Neither of those is going to max out the range on an EV truck in an average day
It's basically irrelevant in pedestrian collisions because the pedestrian is already taking ~95% of the impact even from a lighter car and the <5% difference between that and an arbitrarily heavier vehicle is completely dwarfed by any of the other variables like the speed of the collision. For a pedestrian it's better to get hit by a freight train at 35 MPH than a 3000 pound vehicle at 39 MPH.
The quality of the vehicle is actually quite high.