Fiat/Chrysler says they will be making an Electric Ram.

Reisender wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:

Reisender wrote:
It will take a significant commitment though. GM is finding this out with their Ultium battery factory. Battery production capacity is everything for full up EV production. I suspect FCA will be paying a lot of money to Tesla for the next few years. And maybe that’s the right business model for them. Although sooner or later it will be illegal to sell anything with a tail pipe. Or even drive it into a city which is already getting common in Europe.

Battery production for large scale production of EVs is the biggest limitation for manufacturers (beyond actually getting people to buy them).

A plug in hybrid goes a long way to solve this. The battery bank to provide a 30mile range is 1/10th the size of a bank that will provide 300mile range, so for the same battery supply, they can outfit 10 times as many trucks.

A plug in hybrid is a bit more complicated but they've already worked out most of the details on smaller vehicles and those other parts are better under the manufacturers control to ramp up production numbers.

Agreed. The test drive will be key. Will people want the hybrid with a tail pipe, higher operating costs and likely poorer performance over the full BEV? Time will tell. But in the car market at least, full BEV growth is outpacing PHEV in many regions now.

Time will tell but outside purists, most won't care if it has a tail pipe. I suspect the truck market will be less about the purist and more about the practicality. Most pickups are used as commuter cars with an occasional longer weekend trip or pickup up some mulch at the garden center type use. PHEV would be a perfect match for that.

Operating costs and performance is unlikely to be significantly different. Modern ICE are incredibly reliable and major repairs are rare. No reason to expect anything less of the ICE in a PHEV. Assuming it's mostly used for commuting, you will likely be looking at a $25 oil change once a year (maybe every 2-3years) for at least a decade. Performance as measured by range, will be an easy sell for the PHEV. No reason to expect worse acceleration for PHEV (heck modern trucks are so massively overpowered, it's silly regardless of power train). BEV Cars sales are still anemic and mostly a function of govt rules and kickbacks favoring BEV over PHEV.

None of the manufacturers are going to risk their flagship 1/2ton pickup lines with an anemic truck in terms of acceleration...BEV or PHEV. Too much at stake if it's a slug.