Chevy, Ford... going into electric trucks.

Reisender wrote:

Bedlam wrote:

time2roll wrote:
I honestly would not plan a trip where more than one charging stop en-route was necessary for all the reasons mentioned. I think they could have done better to charge to full 100% at every stop but again that takes even more time. Probably 300 miles per day is a practical limit when towing. Even then you need a smaller and low profile trailer.

With any luck the Tesla/Ford/Chevy trucks will have 500+ mile range so that 200 towing will be possible. Probably not the first batch.

One of things I wonder about is charging time with a higher capacity battery array. Will there now be 3 hour recharge times rather than 1.5 hours if I can double my range? At the start of a charge cycle you can dump in amperage much quicker than when at the top off stage, so I know this is not a linear time to capacity line but at some point you will be hitting the limits of what the charger can supply and the maximum input charge amperage the battery chemistry can absorb.

Something I have wondered about as well. One of our EV’s has a 30 KWH battery. It is limited to 50 KW charging speeds. But because it’s rather small I don’t remember ever spending longer at a fast charger than 20 minutes. Now fast forward to a 1/2 ton EV pickup with say 150 KWh battery. If it’s a Tesla it will be able to charge at V3 Superchargers with 250 Kw limits and V2 speeds of 150 kw . Non Tesla’s will have CCS stations with theoretical 350 kw limits but there are presently very few of those in the wild. The vast majority are 50 kw or 100 kw units although apparently there are more and more 200 kw units being installed.

For what it’s worth. In our immediate vicinity, say 75 km, there are a half dozen new stations in the last couple months. With the exception of one they are all 200 kw cabinets but software limited to 100 kw. The one exception is a couple of 25 KW stations in a fairly remote area that are serviced by a single phase line. That would be a slow charge on a big battery. We have charged there but only long enough to walk the chihuahua and go for a pee. Maybe 10 minutes.

It will be interesting to see the first reports on real world charge times with these trucks and their larger batteries.

Range when towing and re-charging turn around will be an issue for Tesla, Ford, GM, etc. trucks.

My benchmark will be my ICE tow vehicles whose MPG drops by 50% when towing my RV less on steep canyons and strong head winds.

If EV truck nameplate range of 500 miles and drops to 300 with a tow, this is still better than my ICE truck as the range drops just by 33%.

I time my refuelling stops for lunch and my total turn around time is 45 minutes to an hour. Again, my benchmark for EV truck recharging.

I read somewhere a 10-minutes battery swap for a fee of $50 to quicken recharging turn-around. Never heard update on this since.