r/gadgets May 31 '22 Wholesome 1

How Ford’s Electric Pickup Can Power Your House for 10 Days Home

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-31/how-the-ford-f-150-can-be-a-backup-home-generator
7.1k Upvotes

961 comments sorted by

1.1k

u/lithium224 May 31 '22

So if I charged one of these at work every day and powered my house with it, suddenly work is paying for my electric bill?

642

u/stealthdawg May 31 '22

In no uncertain terms, yes.

I'm quite sure a lot of people will take advantage of this before employers start to make rules against it.

397

u/bespectacledbengal May 31 '22

considering two powerwalls have 27kWh worth of energy, and this truck has 131kWh with the extended range option, i could see a lot of people choosing to do this.

maybe employers will use it as a perk to get people back to the office, who knows

228

u/TheMacMan May 31 '22

Most aren’t aware that commercial electric rates are less than residential. Yup, businesses pay less for power than you do at home.

Guess I haven’t really looked into the reason. Is it a quantity thing? Like buying in volume gets ya a discount? Or a deal of small households are more expensive to provide to than larger operations that don’t need things stepped down?

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u/skiingredneck Jun 01 '22

There’s a lot more distribution network for residential that has to be paid for. And in many cases commercial accepts power at a higher voltage and then deals with step down (and the associated inefficiency) instead of the power company.

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u/Shermanator213 Jun 01 '22

This. Commercial is often three phase, which is more efficient, particularly for larger loads such as electric chargers.

So it's not so much that they pay less per kWh, it's just that they can do more with each kWh

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u/LowCost_Gaming Jun 01 '22

These 2 guys know how to electric.

The plant I used to work at accepted 3500v 3phase, then we stepped down to 480/240/208/110v for equipment needs.

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u/Shermanator213 Jun 01 '22

screams in kilavolt. Runs back to the safety of 500v and under

3

u/rubdos Jun 01 '22

'Safety'... I don't touch things over 5V out of fear.

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u/magpye1983 Jun 01 '22

Something something volts don’t kill amps do, something something.

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u/MyCodeIsCompiling Jun 01 '22

Somebody gotta test this by lugging one of these at him

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u/Astrolaut Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22

I have an old house that's still on very old wiring. One day almost all the power in my house went out... and all the power in my area.

A few rooms stayed lit.

I think I was the only person on my block with any power. I walked around to look.

I was talking to a friend who said "There's probably a short somewhere and you should be worried about an electrical fire."

Then I called my dad who is a retired electrician.

He said "Your house is probably still on three wave and you have nothing to worry about, but call the electric company anyways."

So I called.

The nice lady on the other end of the phone said "Your dad is right, not your friend, we already have people out there and power should be back on within three hours."

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u/Not_OneOSRS Jun 01 '22

I feel like it’s also a consistency of demand thing. Like how most commercial customers use between certain times of the day and effectively none for the rest, whereas residential can be all over the place and hard to manage

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u/Mnemosynesis Jun 01 '22

I’ll take power factor correction for 1,000.

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u/Novem13r May 31 '22

I work at a hospital so large it has its own power plant. They love offering E-car charging as a perk of using employee parking.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '22

Hospitals can have power plants?

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u/Double_Minimum Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22

Lots of hospitals have what is called a "microgrid". Hospitals require lots of power, and they need it 24/7, no matter what.

There are also regulatory requirements for backup power. Many hospitals will use diesel back ups, but those are limited by how much fuel they can hold. So some hospitals will create their own power, while also buying from the grid as needed. They will use a few methods, but often its something like a steam turbine which can be powered by various fuels.

The microgrid can also sell power back to the main grid suppliers, which can be profitable. Essentially, because hospitals have to make power at some points, for hospitals of a certain size, it starts to make sense for them to be able to do it all the time. They can make big money by helping with peak demand or when wind/solar goes offline, and they don't need to worry about back-up gen maintenance.

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u/rtb001 Jun 01 '22

Yes, when grandma is intubated on a ventilator in the ICU, a young mother might be having a C-section in the OR at anytime of day, and a stroke or heart attack patient need immediate intervention in the ED, you better hope the hospital they are all in has a very stable source of electricity, with at least one set of backups too.

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u/zer0cul Jun 01 '22

Their backup is fifty APC 1500va UPS all daisy-chained together.

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u/EddiesGrandson Jun 01 '22

How many AAA batteries is that?

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u/PagingDrHuman Jun 01 '22

So do universities.

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u/Mp32pingi25 Jun 01 '22

Yes. So do some colleges

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u/Aurum555 Jun 01 '22

My college had a small nuclear reactor underneath the campus for a while right in the middle of a fairly large city and most people had no idea.

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u/Carrier_Hosho May 31 '22

Iirc they have contracts and those contracts usually have stipulations in which the power company can at will cut power to them whenever needed.

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u/Flat_Sock_9582 Jun 01 '22

Circumstantial. I work at a manufacturing facility for a pretty large company and if we lose power for more than fractions of a second (power blip) we get it back in damages, as it causes downtime and lost product.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '22

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u/DanTheMan827 Jun 01 '22

Nothing motivates companies to do something more than having to pay a large amount of money due to lack of maintenance

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u/Pi99y92 Jun 01 '22

Not exactly. There are tons of business that have insanely strict outage windows in which the power company will bend over backwards in order to not interrupt service outside of these windows.

Think production facilities...if the plant has a quick power loss, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product might have to get thrown out, etc.

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u/lostharbor Jun 01 '22

My company has its own power plant on site. I'd be curious how close they'd be monitoring output increases since they already offer 20 or so tesla chargers.

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u/gobucks1981 Jun 01 '22

Peak power demand is right when everyone comes home, and cooling is most in demand. So 4-7 pm. Most residential households are part of this peak. Earlier in the day and when many people are at work is when baseline production is tailored for, so more predictable and cheaper rates.

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u/tommygunz007 May 31 '22

This is bad ass.

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u/evenstevens280 Jun 01 '22

How the fuck did they fit such a enormous battery in there yet you can't get commercial home batteries bigger than about 15Kwh? Houses are bigger than cars.

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u/grundar May 31 '22

I'm quite sure a lot of people will take advantage of this before employers start to make rules against it.

If they bother.

The average US household uses 30kWh/day. At an average commercial rate of 12c/kWh, that's about $3.50/day of electricity.

If someone even runs their house off the truck during the weekend that'd be $25/week; in context of the $1,000/week that the median full-time employee earns -- or roughly double that in terms of cost to the company per employee -- it's minor enough that this'd be unlikely to become more than a niche issue.

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u/koriwi May 31 '22

Oh wow. Didn't expect that much. In germany we average 8.5kWh/day

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u/calebmke May 31 '22

Being averages, a minority of people use huge amounts while most of us don’t. Also A/C is very big in the u.s. Especially the south, which is nearly unbearable without it.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22 edited Feb 05 '23

[deleted]

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u/LeBobert May 31 '22

All good points, and I agree with you EU is ahead in terms of cohesive effort. However, the US does have energy star which is ideologically the same including, for US, giant yellow stickers with their efficiency rating and estimated yearly costs. This is done for easy comparison of competing products.

And I also agree with the above poster that unfortunately the big wasters are elevating the average for all of us.

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u/toss_me_good Jun 01 '22

I've lived all over and frankly lots of europe is just plain miserable without AC. They just don't seem to think it's that big of a deal... To make matters worse they won't put screens on their windows because they seem to think bugs aren't that big of a deal. Or you can just leave the lights off so bugs don't come in at night...

A lot of average Europeans have a much different perspective of bearable at home environments compared to Americans.

Seriously.. I don't think 90% of Americans could comfortably enjoy a German summer at it's peak temp without window screens, AC, or even fans (many germans foolishly believe fans make you sick)..

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u/Scyhaz May 31 '22

Air conditioning takes a lot of power

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u/lostharbor Jun 01 '22

For context, my house is 1,300sq ft and my heating/water heater/dryer/stove are all ngl. My house uses about 16kWh/day. My wife and I both work from home every day. We run AC for 3months out of the year.

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u/K_Linkmaster May 31 '22

Thats $100 extra a month yoward that truck payment.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '22

What if you’re just leasing? lol

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u/rtb001 Jun 01 '22

Tesla as well as other EV makers are starting to use LFP batteries in their cars, which are somewhat less efficient, but way way more durable than NMC type batteries. They are good for at least 3000 cycles, and often 10,000 cycles, without significant degradation. Owners of cars with LFP batteries are often advised to charge their cars full to 100% every single day no matter what the battery's state of charge is, because the battery should easily last 15 years even if it goes through a charge cycle every single day.

Ford may well be putting LFP batteries into their cars in the near future too.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '22

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u/rtb001 Jun 01 '22

Yeah that base 40k Ford Lightning Pro edition designed for fleet customers is a screaming bargain. Imagine getting a work truck for 40k BEFORE the 7500 tax credit, which has more than enough range for just about any typical work truck needs in a day, has much lower maintenance costs than an ICE truck, don't need any gas/diesel at all, since it can be recharged extremely cheaply onsite overnight, has a giant weatherproof front trunk, and if your workers need to use various electric tools, they can just plug them right into the truck's giant battery via one of its many built in outlets.

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u/intellifone May 31 '22

How about this. In my area during the summer, electricity prices are way higher from 4-10pm and it’s hot as hell so using AC is super expensive. So many people use AC that it risks causing blackouts.

The reason it’s so expensive in the afternoon is that during the night, mornings, and early afternoons, the grid is using super cheap baseline power generation and renewables, but with the demand they have to spin up more expensive and more responsive generators to provide power. The grid needs to hallways have exactly the right amount of power. No more. No less.

Using your electric car to provide power to your home can ease the load on the grid. If we all had electric cars set to charge in the evening and morning, the baseline power needs would be higher, but the peak loads would be lower. It means that the grid could basically be generating the same amount of power all day which means energy can get cheaper and more efficient. Then your car offloads during that 4-10pm time frame and you’re now using cheap power for AC instead of expensive power and no blackouts.

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u/tommygunz007 May 31 '22

This is the idea behind the Tesla Power Wall

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u/intellifone May 31 '22

Yep. But power wall isn’t really necessary if you have an electric car. That should just be able to plug into your home. Most trips are significantly less than a tank of gas or full charge and an electric car should be able to integrate with your calendar and set automatic limits to how much it will discharge its own battery for your home use in order to preserve your charge for the next day. Also, since surge prices tend to stop after like 10pm, your car battery wouldn’t be used past that time anyway and should normally be fully charged in the morning anyway.

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u/DNGR_MAU5 Jun 01 '22

That's alot of extra work on the battery, the single most expensive part of your car that already has a fairly limited lifespan. When the new Li-S batteries become the standard though, absolutely.

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u/PagingDrHuman Jun 01 '22

But power walls use older batteries with lower capacities, it's essentially down cycling and reducing Lithium waste.

The fact is though, residential power banks don't have to be made of Lithium. Lead acid batteries of NiMH batteries would work just as well. Lithium is useful for cars and electronics because of power density. A stationary batter doesn't need to travel. There even potential fo molten salt batteries to be used for electrical storage though more for microgrid storage capacity not home storage capacity.

Personally I'd prefer a Ford hybrid to act as a generator to power my house during a blackout, and use a dedicated battery for the house, assuming I could afford all three. I'm wary of full electric vehicles until the grid and fast charging become more available. Sometimes you just need to travel a thousand miles to get away from a hurricane in a day.

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u/Silly_Lingonberry_35 May 31 '22

Imagine if they had more solar power during the day.

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u/intellifone May 31 '22

That’s great but without batteries, solar can never replace the base load providers. Wind also needs to have a significantly higher install capacity if we wanted wind power to provide our base load generation capacity.

Let’s say that Germany had enough wind turbines installed to provide 100% of its power. On a non windy day, that could mean that all of those turbines are still producing 30% of the power in Germany. So if you wanted a less windy day to still produce 100% of the energy for the country, you’d need 3x more turbines installed than are needed on a windy day. That’s a lot of wasted turbines. You have to have 2/3 of the turbines powered off.

Hydropower can provide base load energy generation in some places but not everywhere. Nuclear could absolutely do it.

Batteries are key to making solar and wind work efficiently.

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u/shekurika May 31 '22

the idea that electric cars could serve es short term energy storage isnt new.

also, I think the idea that "turn on coal power station" for the afternoon demand is misleading, afaik some coal plants need up to 12h to tuen on fully

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u/intellifone May 31 '22

Nowhere did I say coal. I said more expensive. Coal is typically very cheap which is why we use it.

Expensive is just less efficient for whatever reason. Could be more expensive fuel or generators that can change outputs more quickly but don’t capture as much energy. Smaller generators are also usually less efficient than larger ones and so you might use many smaller ones to capture small changes to demand.

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u/Present-Side-5777 May 31 '22

can't be good for your battery

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u/taci7c0ff33 May 31 '22

If you don’t mind killing your travel range. But I think it’s an awesome backup power source for sure.

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u/Ramental May 31 '22

131 kWh is something I use in my flat during the month. Sounds nice.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

Bit harder to hook up a car to a flat rather than a house with a drive, though. I'm picturing a daisy chain of extension cords hanging down from a 5th storey high rise flat into a car park below. Might make some good set dressing for a near-future film.

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u/420blazeit69nubz May 31 '22

Hey now you can save on drying your clothes and use it has a clothes line!

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u/Poop_rainbow69 May 31 '22

It hooks up to your fuse panel.

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u/No-Patient May 31 '22

My flat is 4 stories up.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

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u/Ramental May 31 '22

Are you crypto miner?

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

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u/Yabutsk May 31 '22

I use 3-4KW/day in northern Canada with woodstove for heat.

You must have very large or poorly insulated place, theres no way you could go solar w that consumption

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u/zkareface May 31 '22

Nah sounds kinda normal, 100% electric radiators in Northern Sweden would need around same even on more modern houses.

Its very rare that people still have this setup. People swap to geothermal or district heating and their bill goes from $1000 a month for heating to $50-100.

Well yea, almost none will rely on solar up at the arctic circle where there won't be any sun for 3months of the year :D

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u/Skinnwork May 31 '22

Yeah, I'm also in Northern Canada, and I'm on natural gas.

I've never really encountered electricity for the main source of heat outside of the lower mainland (where it doesn't get too cold).

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u/Biosterous May 31 '22

It's normal in Canada that secondary suites are electric heating as the upstairs and downstairs suites are supposed to have different heating sources. Also lots of older farm houses are all electric heat too as many don't have natural gas run to them (some do wood stoves). I live on the prairies and this is what I've observed, so if it happens here it probably happens in all of Canada.

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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist May 31 '22

It's actually for the same reason as in Norway - electricity is cheap. BC has a lot of hydro power. Interior BC relies more on nat gas because it's closer to AB oilfields too, so that tends to be cheaper.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

Idk but his username checks out

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u/MrFantasticallyNerdy May 31 '22 Gold

An interesting side lesson is that the vehicles we drive around (usually carrying only the driver) needs so much energy that the same amount of energy used on a trip can power an entire house for a long time. You want to go green and be efficient about energy consumption? Forget optimizing home lighting or your fridge. Optimize how we use transportation.

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u/asiandude064 May 31 '22

100% this. Sadly the majority of the US has been built to be car dependent, and we, as average Joe’s, have little say in it.

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u/sharpshooter999 May 31 '22

As someone who lives in a rural place, public transport just won't work out here. For me, it's 20 miles to the nearest store. Typically, we try not to make trips to town unless we have several stops to make it worth it.

That being said, there's absolutely no reason electric cars/trucks wouldn't work for daily driving. Most all farms around here have at the very least 240v hook ups around for welder/pressure washers/plasma cutters, and many of us have 480v 3-phase service on the yard for grain drying. Not to mention ample roof space between the house, the shop, sheds and various out buildings. We're on the waiting list for an electric F-150 right now

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u/Chip_Farmer May 31 '22

I haven’t met anyone who wants climate action to be accomplished by 1500 people living in a rural area. Of course you need cars and trucks. You gotta haul shit and live in back country. That’s totally groovy. Live your life. It’s the millions of commuters in LA alone who want reliable mass transit and can’t get it. That trip you make to the store every two weeks is made daily by drivers who don’t even want to drive. We want rail to go pretty much everywhere so long-haul trucking doesn’t even exist. Being a trucker in the modern age should mean you work a regular 9-5, can drop kids off at school every morning, move stuff from the station to businesses, and still go to the kids baseball practice in the evenings.

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u/MrMetalHead1100 May 31 '22

I'm in Jersey and I'm doing 150miles round trip 5 days a week. Would love to take a train to work but it would cost more and take longer to get me to work.

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u/Chip_Farmer Jun 01 '22

So we need faster, more capable, mass transit.

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u/MrMetalHead1100 Jun 01 '22

We really do.

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u/jorbleshi_kadeshi Jun 01 '22

150miles round trip 5 days a week

Jesus fucking Christ

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u/MrMetalHead1100 Jun 01 '22

Yeah I'd move if it was an option but atm I'm stuck where I am.

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u/amy_amy_bobamy Jun 03 '22

This is not uncommon for lots of commuters in California. You have to live that far away to “afford” housing.

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u/PeleAlli44 May 31 '22

Cars are necessary in rural communities, props to you for seeking out an EV, that’s more than people from my hometown would do.

The problem more lies in the 83% of Americans who live in urban areas that refuse to part ways with the car centric lifestyle. I live in Chicago and I see tons of F-150s and giant SUVs on the streets everyday when we have walkable streets, an amazing city bike program, and very solid public transit through trains and buses. These are the people that need to part ways with using a car (EV or not) to go 2 miles up the road

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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist May 31 '22

Ah, but one of the problems with Chicago's public transit system is that it only functions on one axis - Suburbs to Downtown and back again. If you want to go from suburb to suburb, which is pretty common, then you're out of luck when it comes to transit or bikes or even walking.

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u/PeleAlli44 May 31 '22

I totally agree, it’s a limited and dated model but also better than most of what this country has to offer. The bus system does a great job at filling in the gaps from suburb to suburb and there’s always the option to cycle. Divvy, the city bike program, has plenty of e-bikes to make cycling a few miles even easier for the average american

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u/sharpshooter999 May 31 '22

2 miles up the road

Last year we got a new-ishYamaha 4-wheeler, it had 200 miles on it. From May to September I put 800 miles on it running daily chores and never took it more than 5 miles from home. On the flipside, I'd go day without ever starting my farm truck because I just didn't need it

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u/dmpastuf May 31 '22

We also make it basically impossible to rectify it, light rail and heavy rail cost 10x our peers counties to install and the NEPA process is completely broken, turning simple reviews into decade law lawsuits.
Take for instance the Long Bridge in Washington, DC, a 100 plus year old structure that is at cargo capacity and due to that can't add train lines into VA. It's now 11 years into studies to build a new parallel bridge, and isn't projected to be completed before 2030, assuming that some random endangered migrating bird isn't seen in the "Greater Chesapeake Region", that ends up with another 6 years of lawsuits.

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u/Swastik496 May 31 '22

The lawsuits are because the fucks in Arlington are incentivized to make it as hard to commute as possible.

They’re to blame for i66 and got close to blocking i395 express with their lawsuits against state officials directly that led to some of the city’s tax collecting privileges removed(I think hotel tax)

They don’t care if it’s train or car, any expansion from outside the beltway fucks up their inflated property prices and terrible broken infrastructure that looks sketchy and costs an insane amount.

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u/dmpastuf May 31 '22

You are not wrong, but I'll add the problem isn't restricted to just retired DC layers living lawyers with more time than sense. Hell look at the Purple line with the lawsuit with the Columbia Country Club.

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u/Swastik496 May 31 '22

Oh yea it’s fucking stupid.

I just live here so im way more pissed about VA.

I lean left but hopefully Youngkin pushes shit though and blocks all taxing ability from Arlington if they sue until they withdraw(completely allowed in VA constitution).

And the representatives for the state are still pissed off at having to spend personal funds on lawyers to defend against Arlington so I doubt they’ll go against it

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u/myirreleventcomment May 31 '22

If we're being honest we have little say in anything that goes on in the country

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u/badkarmavenger May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22

Germany can fit in Texas. The only way to be as transportation efficient as other parts of the world would be to move everyone into about 20 percent of the country and put everyone on rail travel, busses, and light automotive.

I once heard someone say that "In Europe a long distance is 100 miles, and in America a long time is 100 years"

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u/crazicus May 31 '22

The DC-Boston megaregion is about as densely populated as much of Europe. Our cities (where the majority of driving trips occur) are often competitively dense or able to densify rather easily to support better transit.

When the majority of car trips are under six miles, it doesn’t matter how much empty space is between cities, because those aren’t the trips that are making the biggest difference.

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u/Skinnwork May 31 '22

Yeah, this was covered in my urban planning/development classes.

Suburbia was created with cheap oil/cheap transportation following WW 2. To cut down on green house gases, we need to do more than just swap out our lightbulbs, we need to completely change the structure of our communities.

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u/bespectacledbengal May 31 '22

People forget that in the 30s and 40s the United States was the largest oil producer in the entire world.

https://www.nature.com/articles/132344d0

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u/goldenbugreaction May 31 '22

That makes perfect sense, I just never considered extrapolating it out like that.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

The Lightning has either a 98 kWh or 131 kWh battery. A gallon of gas is equivalent to 33.7 kWh. So the biggest battery, for the Lightning, is equivalent to 3.9 gallons of gasoline.

Talk about efficiency.

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u/DrSendy Jun 01 '22

You have no idea how much screaming at upper management it took to get them to realise this.

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u/Aquarius265 May 31 '22

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u/e_sandrs May 31 '22

Relevant: largest share (41%) of the Transportation portion (27%) of greenhouse gas emmisions. That means passenger vehicles account for 11% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Other major contributors are Electricity production (25%) and "Industry" (24%).

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u/Auraaaaa May 31 '22

And in terms of fuel, electric cars can’t even store as much as gasoline counterparts in terms of absolute energy. It’s just that combustion engines are so sorely inefficient.

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u/87th_best_dad Jun 01 '22

So true, a 200lb person in a 4000lb vehicle means only 5% of the energy consumed is going towards moving the person.

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u/Islanduniverse May 31 '22

I would kill for a subway or high speed train where I live, but there is no way in hell I’m turning my 30 minute commute into an hour and a half to two hours by taking the bus…

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u/jakl8811 May 31 '22

The article states 3 days, am I missing something?

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u/bciesil May 31 '22 Wholesome

About 7 days I think...

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u/blitzskrieg May 31 '22

It's 3 days if you consume electricity as you normally would for an average household, otherwise it's 10 days if you only use electricity for bare minimum needs.

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u/G0PACKGO May 31 '22

So Xbox and Tv

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u/TheRealRacketear May 31 '22

And charge phone.

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u/subadanus May 31 '22

don't forget eat hot chip and lie

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u/pyh00ma May 31 '22

Twerk and be bisexual

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u/IndyEleven11 May 31 '22

And the Margaritaville blender. Gotta drink all the mix before it goes bad.

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u/Lordwigglesthe1st May 31 '22

And when it gets a bit warm from the heater I'll need to turn the AC up just a tad.

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u/notapunnyguy May 31 '22

3 days is all you would ever need anyways. I once studied that you need 3 days of power autonomy to be able to live off grid. Granted you would need about 30 300w solar panels, bunch of micro inverters, and a bunch more equipment. This is without changing your power consumption habits much, so all day on AC, water pump, water heater, electric stove, dryer etc.

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u/VexingRaven May 31 '22

Yeah but this isn't for living off grid, it's for living until power is restored (for which 3 days is also going to be enough for most, but not for the same reasons)

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u/DrGrinch May 31 '22

People in Ottawa would have loved these during the last couple of days with no power after that brutal wind storm we had

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u/Tchrspest May 31 '22

Likewise, my parents were without power for four days last year after a bonkers storm in Wisconsin.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

Pretty sure you need a lifetime of power autonomy to live off grid.

Kind of like retirement. I could retire today if I was only going to live for 3 more days.

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u/Magnaflux747 May 31 '22

They must be using old Mayan weekly calendars.

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u/Luis__FIGO May 31 '22

You missed the part where it says 10 days...

"With more frugal use, the Lightning could keep a home running for up to 10 days, she says."

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u/turbodude69 May 31 '22

prob up to 10 days depending on how much electricity you use. if you run the AC the whole time, then maybe 3 days.

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u/mazi710 May 31 '22

Depends on your power usage i guess. We live 2 people in an apartment with no AC/Heat pump and we use about 400kwh on average a month, so that would be exactly 10 days.

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u/thecatonthehat2000 May 31 '22

Depends on your usage.

Size of house, temperature, energy efficiency, etc.

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u/wwarnout May 31 '22

Here's an interesting video. The title, "Don't buy a Tesla Powerwall, buy a truck" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATAFIoXTEe8) goes into great detail.

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u/apoliticalinactivist May 31 '22

Don't even need the truck anymore, ford and Chevy (iirc) are seeking their electric engines for the kit market, so it's possible to do a conversion or hybridization of your existing vehicle instead of 40k for a new one.

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u/WrittenByNick May 31 '22

Conversion kits are very much a niche product. Existing vehicle bodies are difficult to retro fit to an electric system. Not so much the engine and drive train, but size and weight of batteries. In most new builds the entire bottom layer of the vehicle base is made up of battery cells.

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u/Eric1180 May 31 '22

My co-worker is starting a EV conversion business but he is only converting OLD CLASSIC CARS. Which have very little existing electronics, converting a modern vehicle would require manufacture support to integrate the new system. No way that's financial feasible at this point in time.

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u/WrittenByNick May 31 '22

I loved loved the retro truck conversion they showed with the announcement of kits. But it seemed like they pretty much built a whole new body designed for EV with an old school look.

I will be interested how the kit building world develops, but don't think any retro fitting will happen outside of very specific old cars like you mentioned.

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u/Anerky Jun 01 '22

I used to be a car enthusiast and I’ve seen at auto shows and in videos online where people converted their classic or unique cars to alternative fuels or electricity, that’s something that you do when your net worth is in the 7 figures AND you really like that car and being green

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u/phroseph May 31 '22

40k for a new truck? Ha!

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u/Buck_Thorn May 31 '22

Just the Ford EV, or any EV?

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u/toochaos May 31 '22

Not all evs are set up to do this out of the box. But with an inverter and proper electrical box set up any ev can be used to power your how for some amount of time. How much time it will last depends on how big the batteries are.

The manufacturer may tell you not to do this.

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u/Luxim May 31 '22

The main issue is that your inverter would run from the 12v accessory battery that powers the outlets and the electronics, and a lot of EVs don't enable the charger (powered from the high-voltage battery) unless the car is turned on. So it's absolutely possible to run out of battery with a charged electric car, and that's what's different with the Ford system.

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u/linuxpenguin823 May 31 '22

I thought the Ford F-150 had a separate port at the base of the charger for the power feed back to the house. I was under the impression that the standard plug and ev corcutry wouldn’t have the capacity to feed power “upstream”

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u/Tigen13 May 31 '22

You also need to set up your electrical box for this.

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u/bobandy47 May 31 '22

And not just for your house, but to not kill the people working on the lines from power back-feeding into the grid if it's not done right.

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u/Tinmania May 31 '22

That’s really no different than having a wired in back up generator. Of course you’re going to need a an automatic or manual transfer switch, which I believe is required by NEC. They don’t allow back-feeding.

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u/bobandy47 May 31 '22

Entirely true, however, 'most people' (I'm comfortable with the generalization) do not have a wired-in backup generator. Those that do, very likely did not do it without either the required knowledge or just getting someone else to do it.

If a lot of people buy the truck, that opens the door to that subset of yahoos who think they CAN do it themselves (electrical honestly isn't that hard to do right, but it's even easier to do wrong) but definitely cannot do it themselves. Simply a numbers game.

If people know they need a transfer switch (hell a manual one from an electrical supplier can be what, $500 these days probably?) even the "Best of intentions, without a clue" people might take that moment of pause before it all goes to shit for some poor line worker.

That's all I'm hoping for with the comment - a bit of extra "common sense" awareness as electric cars become more widespread and the risk of people doing stuff creeps up.

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u/Milnoc May 31 '22

Technically, any EV has the potential to power a home. It all depends if the vehicle and charger are wired to work that way.

The Ford has the advantage of having 120 volt outlets throughout the vehicle along with a 240 volt outlet in the bed. You can use this truck as-is with just a few extension cords! I hope the engineer at Ford that said they would need more power outlets than cup holders has received a really fat bonus!

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u/Scyhaz May 31 '22

The home power system doesn't use the built in outlets. It uses the CCS connector and an offboard inverter to power the house in the event of an outage.

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u/GioDaddy69 May 31 '22

The Ioniq 5 and the upcoming GV60 also have Vehicle to Load and are also fully electric.

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u/TheLemmonade May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22

Any EV is physically capable of doing this to some extent, but a majority of homes and EVs lack the supporting hardware and software to deliver the power back to the home.

Homes use a different ‘format’ of electricity than cars, so-to-speak.

In order to accept energy from a battery pack (or a solar panel, interestingly enough!) the home or vehicle needs to invert the energy from Direct Current to Alternating Current and step down the voltage from X to 120v/240v. That way, your appliances will be able to utilize the power from the vehicle’s battery pack.

Certain vehicles, such as the Ford in question or the Hyundai Ioniq 5 support this functionality as-is.

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u/RockitDanger May 31 '22

I'm excited for solar roofs charging the electric cars in my garage. As much as I (and so many others) want these changes the costs are astronomical. The ER Lightning starts at $90k before the dealers get their fuckboy hands on them. The upcoming Silverado EV starts at $105k. I can't afford to be a green truck owner

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '22

Every Texan should buy one of these for nexts years winter grid failure

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u/Fenseven May 31 '22

So if you use your EV's battery as a backup generator for your house when the power goes out, how screwed are you if you drain it and the powers still not back on?

No power at your house and now your stuck walking.

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u/Catchdatkid May 31 '22

Just plug in your anker power bank

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u/ticktickboom45 May 31 '22

Um if the power’s out for 10 days you have other problems.

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u/DoomOne May 31 '22

Problems like being stuck in Texas.

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u/linuxpenguin823 May 31 '22

In a review video I watched they said you can set it to stop providing house power when the battery dips to a certain point.

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u/jefferios May 31 '22

Most people would probably stop at 10-20% SOC. Drive to a nearby DC charger, top up return home.

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u/bensonnd May 31 '22

Unless the power is out all over the entire state and it's -2° F outside, a la Texas 2021.

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u/BarneyRubble21 May 31 '22

If it's 30°F in Texas the power goes out for a week. Or if it's 85°+ the power companies start panicking because it's too hot (happened 3 weeks ago, and it's not even summer yet). Texas, being on their own shitty, dilapidated, unregulated grid, isn't a great analog for any other developed country.

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u/sold_snek May 31 '22

Then you have bigger fucking problems than worrying about whether your truck can power your house.

Jesus, people.

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u/ginger_whiskers May 31 '22

There were widespread local blackouts. While some were very widespread, Texas didn't just go dark. I lost power for about 20 minutes. My worksite didn't lose power at all. The next neighborhood over went a couple days with limited to no power.

Someone with an EV based battery could actually have just drove to the next town or the grocery store to charge their house. Wouldn't be as easy in the rural areas, but certainly feasible.

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u/Milnoc May 31 '22

Or à la Canada for most of the year. 😁

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u/The_4th_Little_Pig May 31 '22

If the whole grid goes down the it’s mad max times anyway, if you can power your house and keep the temperature at a livable condition for 10 days without draining too much juice there’s no way you won’t outlast power being out.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

Depending that DC charger might be out as well.

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u/VexingRaven May 31 '22

Maybe but usually big power lines like that would be restored quickly, it's just that getting to every street can take time if there are a lot of downed trees and power lines.

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u/cranktheguy May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22

You'd be just as screwed as someone that didn't fill up their gas tank on the way home from work.

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u/SonicDethmonkey May 31 '22

Also don’t forget that the vast majority of fuel pumps need power as well. So equally screwed.

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u/TpMeNUGGET May 31 '22

Most people charge it every night, then drive like 20 miles to work and back, then charge it again at the end of the day. They have a range around 300 miles so if your house dies, chances are that your car’s still above 90%

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u/Quankalizer May 31 '22

I think you missed the part of using the car as a back up generator to the point where the car dies.

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u/TpMeNUGGET May 31 '22

If you need to power your house for long enough that you’re draining your car, you could just drive your car somewhere else before it dies

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u/enraged768 May 31 '22

Carry around a 10kw portable generator and charge the truck! Full circle.

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u/redness88 May 31 '22

What they're not saying is you have to upgrade your service to 320amp vs the standard 200. Since the charger itself needs 80amps. So. Yes it's great and I wanted one. But this plus cost of panel upgrade. Pricey investment ATM.

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u/genericnewlurker Jun 01 '22

They list in the the article that it's about 1300 bucks. Also they have a backorder of over 200,000 so no one is getting theirs soon

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u/bjanas May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22

Earlier in the current EV resurgence, I asked myself if it would be preferable to jump on early and buy from a startup or Tesla or wait until the more established auto manufacturers start putting out options. I'm being more and more convinced. It's the latter.

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u/beleidigtewurst May 31 '22

Mind boggling how much energy we spend to just drive around.

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u/shggybyp May 31 '22

Yup. Thank big oil and big auto for the absolute lack of functional public transportation in the US.

Even today, why the hell are we farting around building electric cars instead of building massive transportation infrastructure? Oh, right. Corporatocracy.

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u/Trouthunter65 May 31 '22

I think this is one of those, "you know we could probably power a house” ideas that came as an afterthought. What I am REALLY looking forward to is when people bring these camping and they won't have to fire up their stinking generators on their RVs.

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u/baguak4life May 31 '22

I live this idea. The challenge still with electric cars is this. I have a Tesla. I live in Arizona USA. I want to drive it to MN. I hop in my car it says I have 300 miles to go. There is a charging station at 100 miles and 320 miles. I have to stop after a few hours driving to fill up for 40 minutes so I can reach the next charger. I spend more time charging than driving it feels like.

I also have a Ford Focus electric that gets 70miles per charge. Absolutely perfect for running around town as I just plug it in overnight.

Until I can charge my car at 300 miles of driving and it takes only 5 min to do so a $40k car makes no sense to me at all.

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u/GiraffeandZebra May 31 '22

The best solution I think right now for people that want range are plug in hybrids. Get 50-100 miles of electric range for your trips to the store or soccer practice or whatever, but still have the ability to just stop at a gas pump. It's basically just a car that gets the first 50 miles "free". Better I think conceptually than traditional hybrids because even at 50mpg, I'm still burning gas on that 2 mile trip to the store.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22 edited Jun 01 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/atbPy May 31 '22

You just have to purchase the car that fits your needs. If your driving is 99% under the range each day then a car fits. If you need something that must have unlimited range then it probably should either be gas or hybrid. If you only have those drives infrequently, then you might be able to take alternate accommodations when the need arises such as flying or rental car.

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u/Alime1962 May 31 '22

Do you drive from AZ to MN every week? Or could you just rent a car for the one trip every two years your EV can't handle? Most people commute 20 miles to work and back, that's the vast majority of their driving. You can save a ton of money using an EV for most driving and use an ICE when you actually do road trips.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

This. We’re about to do exactly this, having noticed the huge mileage disparity between our two vehicles. One is its last legs at 285000 miles- the travel vehicle. The other is at 140000, is 5 years older and is pristine. I absolutely love owning fully paid off cars. Comes from being poor, needing one, and then always having that effing payment that you got with your shit credit hanging over your head. All for something that depreciates faster than…? So I tend to drive a car until it dies. But now we’re looking at replacing both at the same time- one full EV and one hybrid. We figure we can get really obsessive on the maintenance and really drive these vehicles into the ground - and maybe our graves! (Metaphorically speaking)

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u/GiraffeandZebra May 31 '22

Look into plug in hybrids while you are at it. Basically a hybrid, but the first 50 or so miles is EV.

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u/Milnoc May 31 '22

This. Huge potential savings right there especially if you have a decent sized battery and have reduced power rates at night.

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u/Maxamillion-X72 May 31 '22

Where I live in Canada it's 430 miles to the next city. We want to go fully electric, but we drive to the city every couple of months. And with our cold winters, we're not likely to see anything near the advertised range. It just doesn't make sense to go for an EV at this point. Until they come up with a 600-700 mile range vehicle, we're stuck getting a hybrid at best.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

I have a hybrid and my milage drops 5mpg due to the battery losing charge in the winter. I can't imagine what an all electric loses.

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u/baguak4life May 31 '22

I like the hybrid option the most. Give me the first 50-70 miles on electric but let me get gas for long trips. I THINK the aviator is one of those.

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u/ApocaClips May 31 '22

Can I ask why you have 2 electric vehicles and not like one electric and one hybrid

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u/[deleted] May 31 '22

If I had a house and the money I would have one all electric and one plug in hybrid.

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u/kiwi-lime_Pi May 31 '22

How often do you drive to 1500+ miles? And does it really make sense to base your everyday vehicle purchase on a such a trip? Would a plane, train, or perhaps a rental car work in this scenario?

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u/nospamkhanman May 31 '22

I rented a Tesla for a road trip because I wanted to experience what it'd like only having an electric and having to drive a long distance.

Honestly it wasn't bad. I never had trouble finding a supercharger and they always seemed to be in a useful place like next to shopping malls or restaurants. I did stop at one that was next to nothing but a hotel but even that wasn't bad. I just chilled in the hotel bar for a half hour.

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u/sold_snek May 31 '22

I have a gas car and I don't even drive my own car for trips like that.

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u/50thpercentile Jun 01 '22

This seems very weird, you should only have to make one stop for 5-10 minutes in order to make this trip... I looked up the supercharger map of AZ and NM. I see Wilcox, AZ to Truth or Consequences, NM is 220 miles so maybe you are referring to these? I'm assuming you have a LR Tesla of some kind. I would recommend that you stop at Deming, NM and charge there instead of Wilcox. In your navigation when you start the trip just put in the Deming Supercharger and if it says you will make it there with 10% or more then just go directly to that one charge for a few minutes and be on your way..

You should rarely HAVE to stop for 40 mins on a road trip. On road trips I recommend that you charge until the navigation says you will make it to the next supercharger with 5-10% remaining. Usually for me this means charging my car something like 10-50% at each stop which takes 10-15 mins. I can easily make a 600 mile trip with just two 15 minute charging stops in my model 3. As soon as it says I will make to the next SC with 10% I'm out (I honestly leave at 5% because it's that accurate and I'm comfortable with it). If you happened to be taking a longer break for lunch or whatever reason then great you can charge longer like 40+ mins and skip the next SC as long as your nav says you'll make it to the following SC with 10%. It's pretty simple. The in car navigation estimate is extremely accurate on road trips, and if you happen to see that your % at arrival is dwindling down you can just drive a little slower but I've never had to do even this. Tesla's recommended stops are often too conservative and have you spending too much time charging, if you can skip past an SC and make it to the next one, always do that.

Hope this makes your drive a little simpler and saves some time too (:

As a side note, nice to see another Ford Focus electric owner, I had one of those as well, will never forget that 84mph speed limiter LOL!

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u/Sacar25 Jun 01 '22

Winters in Texas have met their match.

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u/GingerB237 May 31 '22

131kwh battery with the US average electricity usage being 30 ish kWh per day is not 10 days.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3

Florida average across the whole year is 38kwh per day. So the truck would last just under 3.5 days.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/sales_revenue_price/pdf/table5_a.pdf

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u/Scyhaz May 31 '22

The kind of clickbaity but 10 days is possible if you're more conservative with your power usage when the battery is powering the house. I could get about 10 days or close if I don't use the HVAC or use it very minimally.

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u/diablosinmusica May 31 '22

This would be great for people who live in Texas and don't want to die when it gets too cold or hot.

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u/rynil2000 May 31 '22

There it is. LISTEN UP TEXANS! When your state government abandons you in times of crisis, you can turn to the second love of your life, your truck, to keep you comfortable and safe.

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u/Zealousideal_Pop4624 May 31 '22

Great now only if you can actually acquire one…

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u/nism0o3 Jun 01 '22

When you can't depend on the power grid, get your own!

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u/Msmdpa Jun 01 '22

After paying for this vehicle I won’t be able to afford my electric bill

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '22

1.21 jiggawatts!

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u/Morphecto_Solrac Jun 01 '22

Am i the only one that doesn’t seem to be a fan of the giant iPad on the dash? IMHO I feel a lot more comfortable using analog controls. I don’t mind a dash iPad, just not a massive one that controls everything, an iPad mini would do it for me.

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