General vehicle thread

[Gman]

If someone really wants to make a usable pickup with an electric motor they should make a Plug In Hybrid with a gasoline or diesel generator motor under the hood.

Plug it in to your home charger and when you are driving to work or around town, it runs on the electric motor only.

But if you are on a long trip somewhere, the generator kicks on to charge the batteries.

And as a plus, the generator can be used when you are camping in the back country both to charge the batteries of the truck and to run other electrical stuff. Win-win.

I would totally go for something like that.

So basically a truck with a drive train similar to the Chevy Volt. That always made a ton of sense to me since it doesn't have hard range limitations.

[Martinjmpr]

So basically a truck with a drive train similar to the Chevy Volt. That always made a ton of sense to me since it doesn't have hard range limitations.

Yup. To me it makes a lot more sense than an all-electric truck. An all-electric truck is a city-only vehicle. Which is fine, for businesses, etc, who can park the truck at a charging station each night.

But IMO, touting all electric vehicles for things like off-roading or trailer towing is bound to fail because the limitation on battery power and charging time are absolute deal breakers and unless there is some revolutionary breakthrough in battery technology, there is no future in it.

By contrast, PHEV trucks are practical and would appeal to a lot of people (including me.) It would be even better if the generator motor was not attached to the truck at all (basically working like a diesel/electric locomotive) where the only function of the gasoline or diesel engine is to charge the batteries. This eliminates the need for a transmission and in theory, at least, means you can make a generator that can be swapped out fairly easily.

For example, you could have a small generator for "home" use. The purpose of that would be to start up and charge the batteries if, let's say, you got stuck in a traffic jam or it was really cold or hot and the heater or AC was consuming a lot of power.

Then, when you get ready to drive the Family Truckster to that Yellowstone vacation, you put in the 'big' generator that produces a LOT of power to charge the batteries. Likely the engine will run constantly as you are pulling your 4,000lb travel trailer up a high pass. Obviously it would require a decent sized fuel tank but since there is no transmission, there should be room for one, wouldn't you think?

Then when you get to the campsite, if you are fortunate to have a 50a power connection, you could figure a way to use that to charge up the truck for day trips (and would still have the gasoline engine as a generator in case the electric charge wasn't enough to keep the truck rolling.)

Or, if you were boondocking (camping with no electric hookups) you could even plug the trailer into the generator on the truck to power the AC or whatever you needed - the only limitation then would be how much fuel you have (and the "generator engine" under the hood would likely be much quieter than even a 'quiet generator' meaning that, if needed, you could likely run it all night as it would be no louder than an idling vehicle engine.)

I can't think of any reason why this WOULDN'T work.

[Jer]

Yup. To me it makes a lot more sense than an all-electric truck. An all-electric truck is a city-only vehicle. Which is fine, for businesses, etc, who can park the truck at a charging station each night.

But IMO, touting all electric vehicles for things like off-roading or trailer towing is bound to fail because the limitation on battery power and charging time are absolute deal breakers and unless there is some revolutionary breakthrough in battery technology, there is no future in it.

By contrast, PHEV trucks are practical and would appeal to a lot of people (including me.) It would be even better if the generator motor was not attached to the truck at all (basically working like a diesel/electric locomotive) where the only function of the gasoline or diesel engine is to charge the batteries. This eliminates the need for a transmission and in theory, at least, means you can make a generator that can be swapped out fairly easily.

For example, you could have a small generator for "home" use. The purpose of that would be to start up and charge the batteries if, let's say, you got stuck in a traffic jam or it was really cold or hot and the heater or AC was consuming a lot of power.

Then, when you get ready to drive the Family Truckster to that Yellowstone vacation, you put in the 'big' generator that produces a LOT of power to charge the batteries. Likely the engine will run constantly as you are pulling your 4,000lb travel trailer up a high pass. Obviously it would require a decent sized fuel tank but since there is no transmission, there should be room for one, wouldn't you think?

Then when you get to the campsite, if you are fortunate to have a 50a power connection, you could figure a way to use that to charge up the truck for day trips (and would still have the gasoline engine as a generator in case the electric charge wasn't enough to keep the truck rolling.)

Or, if you were boondocking (camping with no electric hookups) you could even plug the trailer into the generator on the truck to power the AC or whatever you needed - the only limitation then would be how much fuel you have (and the "generator engine" under the hood would likely be much quieter than even a 'quiet generator' meaning that, if needed, you could likely run it all night as it would be no louder than an idling vehicle engine.)

I can't think of any reason why this WOULDN'T work.

Actually, there's a Supercharger on S Canyon Street in West Yellowstone now and lots of 50A service dotting the area as well. We're going to be taking a trip up in a car that "only" gets 250 miles of rated range so I can imagine this would be much easier in a pickup rated at twice that that offers even faster charging rates than our "aging" 5-year-old Model S.

Even if that pick-up's rated range is dropped by half (just guessing since we have no real-world numbers to go off of at this time) it would still be totally doable. Granted you'd have to plan slightly differently but there would also be a lot of pros that come with that list of cons. There's also going to be an option of solar panels when you're out in the sticks since they continue improving.

I realize you were randomly painting a scenario where this wouldn't be feasible but I'm just trying to bring light to the fact that these random scenarios are becoming increasingly viable and at a pretty rapid rate too.

[Gman]

The Baja looks like the love child of a Honda Ridgeline and a Pontiac Aztek.

Never really liked any unibody "truck", including the Ford Explorer Sport Trac.

[Irving]

I'm surprised no one has said that a Ford Lightning or Ford Raptor aren't really trucks. I doubt anyone was using a Lightning as a work truck. At least the Raptor is awesome and goes off-road.

[Gman]

I'm surprised no one has said that a Ford Lightning or Ford Raptor aren't really trucks. I doubt anyone was using a Lightning as a work truck. At least the Raptor is awesome and goes off-road.

Tricked out trucks are still trucks. You could put the GMC Syclone in that mix. ETA: Dodge SRT-10

The Chevy SSR was....just wrong IMO.

[Gman]

I remember the Brats with toe holds on the side to make it easier to climb in from the side.

ETA: Like this:

[Irving]

Because batteries can only take so much charge, so fast. This is alleviated a bit with using super capacitors. Also, batteries take up a lot of space, so transmission or not, there may not be room for both batteries and a generator. There may very be a balance for all systems to work well together, but I don't know enough to tell. With super caps that charge almost instantly (compared to a battery anyway), all the sudden regenerative breaking and solar panels are far more effective to have in place.

[Irving]

Study about mixing gasoline and Diesel.

https://news.wisc.edu/gasoline-diese...cient-engines/

[TFOGGER]

Study about mixing gasoline and Diesel.

https://news.wisc.edu/gasoline-diese...cient-engines/

Interesting. I wonder how this technology might work in a plug in hybrid type truck...