FORD F-150 EV announced

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by RustyLugNut

Medium and heavy duty pickups that hotshot time sensitive loads come to mind. Batteries are chemistry limited. Sure, lose some of your payload to get yourself a 500 mile towing range. That's fine for contractors who put around a work site drinking coffee and surfing their tablets. Some of us idle the diesel with a 6000 watt inverter running a work crew all day and into the night. Then we pull the 20,000 lb trailer to grab another piece of machinery to bring back to the shop 200 miles away. Of course, this is in the middle of the Mojave desert. Not a charging station in sight.

I'll take my concentrated energy in a jug.

I was limiting the conversation to an F-150.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by ME_Andy

My guess is, Ford is just starting on the design of this truck. They had to make the announcement now, though, because Rivian was making them look silly.

Almost anyone can make a concept vehicle and take it to auto shows. Actually tooling up a factory and mass producing a vehicle is another story.

There is a reason that the only new manufacturer in the USA is run by a billionaire that doesn’t care about making money.

[aerostealth]

https://electrek.co/2019/01/17/const...tric-volvo-ce/

New electric construction equipment coming online.

[aerostealth]

https://electrek.co/2019/01/29/cater...-battery-pack/

Caterpillar 26 ton electric excavator.

[aerostealth]

https://youtu.be/DfULm9uLgH8

For Phil Knox, "The Ascent of Man", episode 11.

[ldjessee00]

It is funny, that this idea that electrically driven vehicles will not work for every situation. There were similar arguments made about fuel powered vehicles over horses 100 years ago. And seemed to hold true until WW2.

In the span of 50 years, the ICE was developed until it was far superior in all most all metrics that it was silly to think that a horse would out perform any ICE truck or other vehicle. Farm equipment, transportation, even logging switched over from horses (where you would think the remoteness, the removal from readily available fuel source, etc would have kept horses as a much better means of transportation).

Funny how those same arguments are being used for why electrically driven vehicles will not work for construction or some other specific use case... If an EV semi (tractor-trailer) can go 100+ miles pulling 50,000 lbs, why would EVs not be able to pull 20,000 lbs 400+ miles?

Unless hydrogen or fuel cell technologies become cheaper and much more efficient, I just do not see them competing with the advances coming with batteries. I am not saying that there could not be some advancement that causes fuel cells to become suddenly cheaper or more efficient, just that it does not look that way now.

And I realize that unless a society makes it a priority to remove ICE vehicles from the road, they will be around for many years to come.

If the promises of solid state batteries are only half as good, it will be a huge game changer and energy storage will become lighter, more dense, and probably give vehicles the range desired.

Just my thoughts.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by aerostealth

https://electrek.co/2019/01/17/const...tric-volvo-ce/

New electric construction equipment coming online.

Large vehicles have been electric for some time. The electric powertrain is smoother and causes less transmission problems.

Getting a dragline to run without dragging around a power cable is a bit more challenging. But they are working on it. The advantages and safety of NOT dragging a power cable are so large ...

Our mining machines are about 1250 HP. The sections that run too slowly to effectively run on electric, have electric motors driving hydraulic pumps, which drive the mechanical tracks at ... maybe 1 foot per minute ... something like that. No one around here is looking to convert this to battery electric as yet. The battery pack is just too darned large to run it for a 12 hour shift.

Our scoop trams, or haulers, are a big diesel engine driving a hydraulic pump. The 7 foot diameter wheels are driven hydraulically, the 6 yard bucket is raised/lowered and articulated with hydraulics. Changing that out to an electric motor, a controller, and a big battery pack to drive the hydraulic pump instead is under way ... but like every other EV conversion, the battery costs are up-front. So you need to budget 10 years worth of fuel to pay for 20 years of lower maintenance and lower-speed charging.

We're getting there. Not near as fast as some would like. WAY faster than others would like.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by ldjessee00

Unless hydrogen or fuel cell technologies become cheaper and much more efficient, I just do not see them competing with the advances coming with batteries. I am not saying that there could not be some advancement that causes fuel cells to become suddenly cheaper or more efficient, just that it does not look that way now.

In industry, re-fueling infrastructure is already there. High power charging is not.

So a fuel ... like the hydrogen that is somehow stabilized in a glycol of some sort ... that I read about this month ... would be great. The vehicle tank stores enough energy for 12 hours of shift plus a bit of safety factor, the fuel cell stack does it's thing and produces electricity for the big machine, and no one needs to breath exhaust or worry about diesel leaking onto a hot engine and starting a fire in an underground mine.

AND there is no chance of it leaking explosive gases like hydrogen storage tanks ... or releasing as much CO2 as burning natural gas would anyway .. like using natural gas as the feed stock for the fuel cell.

If a fuel cell system like this could be shown .. which should be easy .. to be a lot safer and make the air quality better .. it would be installed as a test case. After being proven in the field, all new equipment would be powered this way. It would still take 20 years to replace all of the equipment, but there would be no question that it was happening, and happening as fast as the capital budget would allow.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by thingstodo

So a fuel ... like the hydrogen that is somehow stabilized in a glycol of some sort ... that I read about this month ... would be great. The vehicle tank stores enough energy for 12 hours of shift plus a bit of safety factor, the fuel cell stack does it's thing and produces electricity for the big machine, and no one needs to breath exhaust or worry about diesel leaking onto a hot engine and starting a fire in an underground mine.

Here's a link to the story if you are interested

https://newatlas.com/electriq-global...er-fuel/57488/

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by ldjessee00

It is funny, that this idea that electrically driven vehicles will not work for every situation. There were similar arguments made about fuel powered vehicles over horses 100 years ago. And seemed to hold true until WW2.

Still holds true today. Horses can go lots of places where wheeled vehicles can't. Even when they can go the same places, you can pretty well trust a trained horse to do its part of the job, where with a dirt bike or quad, you have to be driving it every second.