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bigflamingtaco t1_is3fw6q wrote

Reply to comment by silentapples in A breakthrough in electric vehicle battery design has enabled a 10-minute charge time for a typical EV battery. The record-breaking combination of a shorter charge time and more energy acquired for longer travel range was announced today by Wagamaga

No, it doesn't. No one wants a light duty truck that weighs 9000lb and needs to be recharged once an hour or thereabouts just so they can tow their work or travel trailer. It's going to be a while before EV's are the solution for all things transportation related.

The most important innovations are going to be weight and size reductions. EV batteries are fat pigs taking up a lot of space and adding tons of weight.

The F150 lightning weighs 600lb more than my similarly equipped truck, but can only go for an hour and a half with a trailer. That's just not an option when an ICE driveline will give you over 4 hours with that same load between refills.

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silentapples t1_is3lyud wrote

Good thing everyday people dont need super duty road queens and just use small cars for transport. Just because its got little utility for one industry doesnt mean it wont solve a problem in another.

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Dragoness42 t1_is3r1nf wrote

Yeah towing and hauling are going to be the last places that electric overtakes ICE's. But they'll likely get there eventually.

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bigflamingtaco t1_is5naga wrote

I agree, it's just not going to happen by 2025 or even 2035. Most of the amazing improvements to batteries that get announced take at least a decade to put into use, when they don't come up against conflicts that prevent them from making it to market, like an inability to scale and bring the cost down.

We've also got some infrastructure woes that need to be resolved. The amount of throughput needed to have corner electric stations that can recharge vehicles like they fill gas tanks is insane, almost no cities have anything close to that kind of power capability, and we know infrastructure takes forever to get updated. Even if everyone were to sign contracts right now, there aren't enough works to make all the components and to install everything within a decade.

EV's are advancing at a great pace, but ICE is still going to be around for some time.

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wowthatssorude t1_is3lgo0 wrote

Yikes didn’t know it was that dramatic. Luckily battery tech will keep incrementally gaining. This is why a lot of people are way too (soon) optimistic. It’s the future yes. But we’ll play it like the internet. 1995 internet to 2022 internet wasn’t overnight . But I’m sure going from 2015-2035 will be similar for electric vehicles. Isn’t density increasing about 5% a year. It adds up. And I don’t know if that 5% is accurate. Up or down.

Anyways I didn’t know the hauling was that poor on the lightning. Maybe the big semi’s can make it work sooner?

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Kelsenellenelvial t1_is3sdsc wrote

Yep, the energy density of batteries is a long way from hydrocarbons, where most of your reactant can be pulled from the atmosphere on demand. To some degree you save some weight on drivetrain and ICE, which can go into a bigger battery, but you get a lot better range increase by upsizing a gas tank than a battery.

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T-Rex_Woodhaven t1_is488y6 wrote

I guess we better give up then since this one part of many hasn't been solved yet. Then the example is "my decades-tested ICE vehicle lasts longer than one of the first EV trucks ever on the market". Yeah.

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selfish_meme t1_is4e1hc wrote

With the extended range battery it's almost 3 hours towing

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bigflamingtaco t1_is5ln5w wrote

Towing... a utility trailer with a lawnmower in it?

Check out TFL's tests on YouTube. You aren't getting 3hrs of towing on the extended battery with anything but a small trailer. Their larger trailer cut it to 150 miles. If you're dragging a travel trailer through the wind, will probably see 100-120 miles.

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selfish_meme t1_is7rc9j wrote

I read a review by insideev's where they towed a campervan, that's where the number came from, that may be better aerodynamically though, apparently weight is not such an issue, but simply enclosing a trailer then would give enourmous range benefits

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bigflamingtaco t1_iscttde wrote

If you can find that, I'd appreciate a link, didn't see anything on their website.

Geeky Schmidt towed a small Airstream camper, and it cut his range in half. Unfortunately, that's not the typical camper as those things are ridiculously expensive, and they also sit low to the ground, which limits where you can go with them.

I average 20mpg unloaded, 10mpg with a 7ft wide cargo trailer. Although I wouldn't tow a camper at 70mph like in the above situations, a typical hard side camper is 8-8.5ft wide and sits about two feet higher at the roof. At 60 mph, it's also going to cut the range in half, or worse, depending on the trailers actual dimensions and amount of junk attached to the exterior.

Camp-inn did an aero study of their teardrops and found their trailer that curves at the corner side walls in the front cuts through air better than the traditional teardrop style of cutting at the top and bottom. Probably has to do with how the air becomes turbulent exiting the sides of the vehicle's. Would like to see more mfg's try alternate designs for better aero, including stuff like lower skirts and those things the truckers put on the rear of their trailers.

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