Ford's Most Affordable EV Will Offer Built-In Bidirectional Home Charging (cnet.com) 177
Ford's upcoming $28,350 Fathom electric truck will include a built-in inverter capable of supplying up to 10 kW of AC power to a home, bringing bidirectional charging to a significantly cheaper EV. Owners will still need additional Ford home hardware for features like outage backup and peak-rate energy management, but the company expects the necessary equipment to cost substantially less than its previous-generation system. CNET reports: The upcoming Fathom will be based on what Ford calls its Universal EV Platform, designed with the aid of its 2023 acquisition, startup Auto Motive Power, with bidirectional power on the plate from the start. The hardware required to invert the battery's DC energy to an estimated 10 kW of AC home power will be built into the truck, so it won't require a separate wall-mounted inverter box. Ford says the Fathom's system will meet all applicable UL 1741 requirements and IEEE 1547 standards to ensure the vehicle is safely connected to the grid. As for the actual hardware you plug into your car, all signs point to the Fathom using the NACS plug type pioneered by Tesla and now widely adopted by new EVs in North America. In terms of the communication standard -- the one that governs how AC power is routed from the slim wall box to the car's onboard charger -- that'll be via SAE J3068, a software protocol developed for high-power, heavy-duty AC charging.
[...] However, while Fathom's Universal EV Platform eliminates the need for a wall inverter box, it doesn't completely bypass the need for additional hardware to make your home ready to accept bidirectional power. Say you wanted to take advantage of the Home Power Management feature to draw energy into the Fathom's battery when power is cheapest, and then use that energy to offset peak-hour usage when power is most expensive. You'll have to install at least the Ford Home Power Station in your home, at an additional cost. The automaker hasn't specified pricing, but says that it's working to reduce costs and expects this component alone to cost half as much as the first-generation Ford Home Energy system, which debuted at around $1,300. That could put the new system at roughly $650.
[...] However, while Fathom's Universal EV Platform eliminates the need for a wall inverter box, it doesn't completely bypass the need for additional hardware to make your home ready to accept bidirectional power. Say you wanted to take advantage of the Home Power Management feature to draw energy into the Fathom's battery when power is cheapest, and then use that energy to offset peak-hour usage when power is most expensive. You'll have to install at least the Ford Home Power Station in your home, at an additional cost. The automaker hasn't specified pricing, but says that it's working to reduce costs and expects this component alone to cost half as much as the first-generation Ford Home Energy system, which debuted at around $1,300. That could put the new system at roughly $650.
Will it (Score:2, Insightful)
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Of course it will. Just like every single other car on the market today.
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I, on the other hand, provide affordable professional service. Only $15/kick for the first month, then you can convert to our subscription plan that gets you unlimited kicks for only $50/month.
Great feature (Score:3)
Re:Great feature (Score:5, Informative)
It's standard on current gen VW ID models, it's standard on all BYD models, for some reason Renault only offers V2G and no suitable V2H feature, Audi's most popular EV supports it (Q4 e-tron), Kia has it on the EV9 with plans for the EV6 to do it too, Hyundai IONIQ 9 has V2H but the 5 and 6 only offer V2L which is better than nothing. Among these there's a mix of different hardware potentially required in the house, but most of that hardware is dumb with the car inverter doing the heavy lifting.
We're slowly getting to the point where V2H is more common than not. It's just really not heavily advertised.
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We're slowly getting to the point where V2H is more common than not. It's just really not heavily advertised.
i don't really see the appeal. v2l is nice for emergencies or your sporadic camping trip. v2h might get you seamlessly over a sporadic blackout if you have a bidirectional charger and wiring, which is nice, but otherwise it doesn't make much sense to spend a lot of cycles from a battery attached to 4 wheels and a complete car frame for regular use in a house. a normal domestic battery rack is much cheaper and easier to replace. i doubt that any savings on peak hours would offset the cost of changing the car
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Ya, time of day pricing where peak is often from roughly 4pm-7pm. Right when people are getting home and their EV needs a charge.
It's a feature that sounds great, until one actually thinks about the times they'd need to use their vehicle which no longer has a charge.
Even the emergency black outs scenarios. What happens when you later need to evacuate?
Even charging off Solar during the day for overnight usage doesn't make sense. Just get a stationary battery bank.
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So you trade premature battery wear on your vehicle for a few dollars on the electric bill?
Why wouldn't you just get a rack of LiFePO4 batteries and an inverter, and not have the guaranteed depreciation of value on the vehicle? It's cheaper, more maintainable, and suited to purpose.
I've never understood this V2H for load shifting - it makes no sense when you actually think about the additional cycles you are putting the vehicle battery through.
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I've never understood this V2H for load shifting - it makes no sense when you actually think about the additional cycles you are putting the vehicle battery through.
It doesn't work like you think it does. A rack of quality batteries is expensive. Doing a 10-20% cycle on your vehicle doesn't wear the battery like a full cycle does. A battery which can do 5,000 full cycles might be able to do 20,000 partial cycles or more.
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Fair enough. I've never looked that hard at it, despite having two EVs in the garage because my house has a split "main panel" and the EV chargers are not on the same panel as the kitchen / upper floor.
It's why I haven't looked into a battery system in general - doubling the expense to not choose between a functional kitchen or running the central HVAC didn't have the ROI, considering we have only had one power outage that went past "I'll put on a hoodie, get my wife a blanket, set up some flashlights as '
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A normal domestic battery is not cheaper, it's the entire cost of a normal domestic battery. The point is the car is there already sitting in your garage.
i doubt that any savings on peak hours would offset the cost of changing the car's battery or the whole car much sooner.
This comes up constantly and it simply is not a thing. Take for example very real numbers from my house, we have a consumption of 10kWh / day. The majority of that consumption is over daytime and in the evening when everything is running and being used. During the day the solar panels are ploughing ahead so realistically we only import a couple of kWh a da
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I agree with this. I've looked quite often at domestic battery setups, and they're really poor value at the moment, at least in the UK. And I've also looked at getting a bidirectional charger that can support V2H if my next car offered it... and again, they're really poor value at the moment, at least in the UK. I really would want to be able to swap out my now decade-old home charger with a new model that offers simple seamless bidirectionality and works with any car offering V2H. But at the moment, this i
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Domestic batteries make a lot of sense in very specific conditions. If you're able to micromanage a dynamic pricing contract then they can pay themselves quickly by loadshifting to cheaper times (cost avoidance). If you have a high feed in tariff for solar then they can pay for themselves too by ensuring you can use your own generated power at your rate rather than being charged a feed in rate (again cost avoidance). In some places in the world the energy market is insane to the point where you actually can
batteries for courses (Score:2)
got it, i guess it depends on the particular numbers, so your situation and location. mine are quite different. i have a 5kwh battery which gets me through the night just fine, has about 6000 cycles to 70% and should be good for well over a decade if not more. temperate climate here so i only import about 5kwh a month and the cost difference per kwh between peak and valley is about 0.076 euro (0.311-0.235) anyway.
so i don't even need v2h right now, but if i did at some point that battery cost me less than 2
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Oh yes absolutely. Any time anyone discusses power or cars on Slashdot the YMMV rule applies. There are places where it makes absolutely no sense. There are places where it makes a huge amount of sense.
As an example my current energy tariff differs by 1 eurocent between off peak and on. The neighbour (presumably on a similar tariff) has no solar so for them there's literally no cost benefit to any storage of any kind. On the flip side my parents are given 3 hours of free electricity per day. Load shifting i
Terrible feature (Score:3)
Cars are not meant to be temporary batteries to supplement the power from the electric company.
Re:Terrible feature (Score:5, Informative)
You might change your mind two hours into a 20 hour power outage. The ability to temporarily borrow power from an EV to keep your lights, fridge, and furnace running would be a major selling feature for many people.
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Re:Terrible feature (Score:5, Insightful)
Why spend even more money on more equipment that you have to store and maintain, and buy increasingly expensive fuel for, when you can dual purpose what you already have?
That's assuming you can even get fuel of course. When Sandy hit (last big hurricane in this area) most of the gas stations around here were inoperable for the first day or two because - you'll never believe this - but fuel pumps ALSO need electricity and there weren't enough generators rentals to go around. The stations that were operating over the next few days quickly ran out because the depot infrastructure, located on the shoreline, was damaged.
So sure, all you need is a generator, and an entire evening to wait in line for your rationed fuel hoping they don't run out by the time you get to the pump. So easy and much more convenient than just running an extension cord to the EV in your garage, which also runs silently, indoors, all night if you want.
If you want to go full prepper mode buy some solar panels and lay them out in the driveway or lawn. Even a kw or two worth (about 4-7 panels) would be able to easily cover your daily emergency needs with an EV battery to store it in.
=Smidge=
Re: Terrible feature (Score:2)
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How does it work for an outage? With solar inverters they need to have a special island mode where they disconnect the grid, so there is no chance of backfeeding power into it and electrocuting the technician who is trying to fix it. Most inverters don't support that and have an automatic cut-off if they don't detect the grid is up (i.e. there is already 110V 60Hz there).
If you have Vehicle 2 Load you can just plug appliances directly into the car.
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It works the same way, you need to buy and install additional equipment to do the cutoff if you want to do V2H. These days there's hardware which can live between the meter and panel that does it, so it doesn't physically require a new panel — though it may statutorily if your locality hasn't caught up to reality. But if the system is designed correctly (which is a big assumption and probably unwarranted given that we're discussing Ford) you can also use the same functionality to run a jobsite without
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That's interesting. Ours hasn't quite caught up yet, and will do things like limit the size of the inverter you can install because they don't trust the export limiter.
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It would be much safer to have that built into the meter hardware that the power company controls. They would know that they could rely on it, rather than trusting you to have set it up correctly, BUT...
It is not built in to the existing equipment. Every home in the country would need a new meter. That is a big ask, at a big price. Everyone would have to pay for new meters, instead of just the people who need a transfer switch paying to install one.
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You might change your mind two hours into a 20 hour power outage. The ability to temporarily borrow power from an EV to keep your lights, fridge, and furnace running would be a major selling feature for many people.
I don't k now about a "Major Selling point"... I mean, a $500 Generator that powers the house during an outage to keep the fam happy while I take the EV to the store to buy groceries is a better and cheaper use-case. Besides, consuming the battery of the EV to power the house leaves me with no fuel should I need to go somewhere, and yes, sure, I can go supercharge somewhere and bring that juice back home to power the house, but I have to unplug and leave the fam freezing while I go supercharge. It's a s
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A cheap $500 generator isn't going to fully power most houses and requires storing gasoline and manual startup. You'll also need a generator interlock installed if you want it to actually power the house instead of running extension cords to a few appliances. They are super noisy- nobody wants you running that through the night. An automatic whole-house generator runs about $15-20k installed. Many (if not most) families who are in the EV market have more than one vehicle, so you simply take the other vehicl
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A cheap $500 generator isn't going to fully power most houses
I got a 7.6kW generator for $550. It's just open frame and loud AF. If you have gas heating appliances it's more than adequate, if not then it isn't.
You'll also need a generator interlock installed if you want it to actually power the house instead of running extension cords to a few appliances.
To do a legal permanent install, yeah. But you physically could turn off the main breaker, connect a generator to a branch circuit (perhaps on a sub-panel) and run the important things in the house that way. Lock out the main breaker (with an actual lock, preferably) and turn off any unneeded circuits for safety. Use a breaker at the inlet panel sized for the b
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Where are you getting 200 miles of range? While the official range hasn't been announced, the rumors are 300 miles. But even at 200 miles you are talking a 60kwh batter at least. That will power your house for a couple days.
The latest update was that they have dropped the idea of a standard range and extended range models and are just going to produce a single 250mi range model to keep production costs down.
It is more than enough for around town use. Most people use less than 50 miles a day. Just plugging it in overnight every few days would keep it charged.
It is designed to be a small truck for a homeowner. Something to haul goods from the home DIY store or a load to the dump, as well as for daily commuting. The addition
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I don't have any data on it other than my own experience, but I'd bet most outages are brief enough so that you wouldn't run the battery too far down anyway.
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So it's a poor mans version of a house battery?
I'm all for "just in case", but my worry is that it's ultimately the play-thing of the electricity company. If I plug my car in because I'm going on a big trip tomorrow, I damn well want it fully charged when I drive off. That's already a stretch because my electricity company is restricting my charging 'quota' for a 24 hour period to 6 hours, so I can just about fill up half of the battery at a time (given not all charging is at full speed). They're trying to
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I'm not worried about a 20 hour power outage, and if you're already bouncing off the walls after 2 hours you have a "you" problem. If you're being honest, you're probably sleeping for a good chunk of that 20 hours and if you have insulation that isn't woefully pathetic and it isn't -40 outside, a few blankets and a camp stove used outdoors gets you by. And if you regularly get -40 weather in the winter, you probably already have a generator or some other means of heating that doesn't require many kW of el
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You say you plug "your" car in to the wall to charge it, but you speak like someone who clearly doesn't own an EV. If you did you'd recognise that your car being plugged into the wall charges your car for only a fraction of the time it's plugged in typically (unless you're one of those people who would drive 500 miles and 500 more every day just to be the man who drove 1000 miles so make a Slashdot post).
The reality is using your car to optimise energy storage from the grid for discounted electricity will r
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MF’ers need to stop using my car, my battery, and my electricity like their own personal infrastructure they can control as they prefer.
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Let me spell it out very plainly because you donâ(TM)t get it.
Instead, you plainly proved that you don't get it.
At no point do I want the electric company to commandeer the power in my car to reduce my range.
This functionality is good for both V2H and V2G. If you don't want to do V2G, don't! You can still do V2H. If these acronyms confuse you, then you aren't sufficiently educated to participate in this conversation. If they don't, then your comment is inexplicable.
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Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this!
DONT DO THAT.
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Efficiency of an electrical inverter: 90%
Efficiency of a gasoline generator: 20%
A gasoline generator might work as an emergency backup, but would not be economical for daily load leveling.
TFS says the inverter's extra hardware costs $650.
A 10kw gasoline generator would cost at least as much.
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What's the installed price? (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting a second useful job out of the most expensive part of an EV makes sense. If I'm already buying the truck, a reasonably priced way to keep the fridge and lights running is a pretty appealing extra, but the roughly $650 figure needs some context. Ford says outage backup also requires its Home Backup Power Panel [ford.com]. Then there's installation. Moving the inverter into the truck is a useful saving, but I'd want the complete installed quote before comparing this with other backup options. There's another detail in Ford's announcement: peak-rate energy management requires an active plan or trial. What's that going to cost? A recurring fee belongs in the calculation alongside conversion losses and additional battery cycling. Making the hardware affordable is a good start; the electricity savings still have to survive the subscription bill.
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I had my cousin (master electrician) and uncle (plumber) come over after I installed our Automatic Transfer Switch and whole house generator and they checked / signed off. The co-op buried the 500G LPG tank for the generator "for free" because they'd be supplying the LPG.
Another thing to consider is
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It's a scheme to convince people like the OP that it provides value when it doesn't, a scheme to sell to people like ShanghaiBill who are easily exploited due to their greed and entitlement. Down the road, it might be worthwhile if it doesn't degrade your future battery technologies.
For most it's a feature worth paying nothing for. Build it into EVSEs for free.
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For many that's a rare problem
Well for me it is a rare problem, say 0-3 blackouts a year, and 0-1 lasting more then a few hours. So less important then say “how does it deal with a long trip I make once a year”.
On the other hand a 3 day power outage in the winter (not normal, but not unusual) is no joke. It is enough of a “no joke” the most houses around here have an external input for a generator or other 240V power source. Mine in particular will power the house’s heating (well the water circulation
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Blackout protection is not the main reason to do this. The main reason to do this is arbitrage. And it would take you only seconds to do the maths and realise that arbitrage requires bugger-all extra strain on the battery, a few cycles a year at most. 70 or 80kWh battery vs maybe 4 or 5kWh of draw per day in the summer and as high at 8 or 9 in the winter.
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Tesla's experiments (Score:4, Interesting)
Tesla experimented with this and discovered many people would charge up at work, then use the power at home in the evening leaving just enough charge to get back to work in the morning to recharge. A great life-hack to cut your utility bill, but the downside was the battery cycling dramatically reduced the life of the cells. If used properly, such as only during power outages or emergencies it is a very handy solution. When used daily, it will cost more for early replacement of the battery than the owner will save in utility bills.
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Do you have a source for this?
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Trading the future for the present. Can't say I really blame them, and plus EV batteries just may get cheaper in the future, so it's a bet too.
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A great life-hack to cut your utility bill, but the downside was the battery cycling dramatically reduced the life of the cells.
Show me. Link to us all where Tesla said that the battery cycling reduced the life of the cells. The typical use case for this is at most a couple of kW which for a typical tesla would barely move the battery gauge by 10%. Or the equivalent of driving maybe 30km
With Teslas happily plodding along with 500,000 miles on their original battery I challenge you to show a Tesla report where they say this completely minuscule (and OVERESTIMATED (my evening usage would be more like 15-20km on a Model Y) has any kind
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Nissan did it back with the original Leaf around 2012. It was advertised as for emergency use and required an expensive wall box. Later there were V2G options for it, also rather expensive.
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charge up at work, then use the power at home in the evening leaving just enough charge to get back to work in the morning to recharge. A great life-hack to cut your utility bill, but the downside was the battery cycling dramatically reduced the life of the cells
That does not sound right. Just how much capacity does it take to "power at home in the evening"? The average American home uses 30 kWh/day (I'm not sure how - my family averages 1/3 of that). Let's say that half of that is being supplied by the Tesla - 15 kWh. For a 75-kWh pack, that's using just 20% of the capacity. Repeatedly cycling 20% of a Li-Ion battery does not seriously degrade its lifespan, especially if that is the 60-80%, rather than the 0-20% or 80-100%, and especially since all evidence o
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And short-lived. More and more workplaces are charging the actual cost of the charge. We should expect this to continue as more people get EVs and the cost of subsidizing the fueling of commuter vehicles gets more public visibility and the value is required to be imputed/taxed as employee income.
Wear and tear (Score:2)
Bidirectional charging sounds good in principle but it actually costs you a lot more in faster battery capacity degradation due to excess charging cycles.
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That really depends on a few things. A general statement like yours is not accurate.
Ford EV? (Score:2)
Weren't they scrambling like mad to get out of the EV business?
It'd be interesting to see any EV make it at 28K in the US.
Re:Ford EV? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading the tea leaves, it sounded like the market for a full-size electric pickup is comprised of individuals who seemingly suffer from terminal range anxiety. So Ford is rumored to be relaunching the F-150, except on the new universal platform and also as an EREV - it's supposedly gonna have a generator on board.
I'm actually curious to see the Fathom when it comes out. I don't really need a full-size pickup, but owning a pickup would come in handy a few times a year (if you have to rent one and drive it more than 20-30 miles, you end up paying through the nose). I was originally thinking about the Lighning, but got a bit spooked by all the crap Trump's started pulling to attempt killing the EV market outright. Of course he shot himself in the foot with Iran not too long after, which seems to have changed some of these companies' minds again.
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Reading the tea leaves, it sounded like the market for a full-size electric pickup is comprised of individuals who seemingly suffer from terminal range anxiety
Or to be less dismissive, people that tow a lot? My EV is fantastic to drive, and gets pretty decent range, until I tow a many thousand pound and worse yet physically large travel trailer, and then my efficiency drops to about 1.7 miles per kWh, which gets me about 166 miles on a full charge (and 0% to 100% charging is slow).
Which mostly means I don’t plan on any trips to locations much over 100 miles away with a big travel trailer. Which is ok, it is a big EV, I can sleep in it if I want. Not qui
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Re: Ford EV? (Score:2)
Honestly most pickups never tow. According to companies that make them and have a vested interest in knowing what they need to build. Less then half of pickup owners ever tow anything.
The under half that do tow are still people though and still have needs and dollars. I tow, I early tow more then about 200 miles, I mean why would I fill a dump trailer with dirt from two states away and haul it home? We have dirt here! Most of my towing is under 50 miles. Occasionally it is 400 miles (not for dirt th
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Re: Ford EV? (Score:2)
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Reading the tea leaves, it sounded like the market for a full-size electric pickup is comprised of individuals who seemingly suffer from terminal range anxiety. So Ford is rumored to be relaunching the F-150, except on the new universal platform and also as an EREV - it's supposedly gonna have a generator on board.
Ford didn't even make the version of the F-150 Lightning which should have existed. The tradesman version didn't offer the big battery as an option! You could only get the fully loaded model with it. This is presumably because they couldn't get enough batteries to sell all the models which should exist, so they reserved the big packs for the most expensive models, since nobody would buy those models without the big battery.
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Any automaker not in EVs will not survive. I guess they finally accepted reality.
Re: Ford EV? (Score:2)
There are EVs in that range. I bought an Equinox EV for $27k out the door laat year.
Bolt can be had around that price, too.
Nissan has a Leaf in that price range as well.
Good luck with that (Score:2)
...the Trump administration banned "bi"
Don't worry (Score:2)
V2H should be incentivized (Score:2)
kiloWatts Are Great, But... (Score:2)
I appreciate them reporting the kiloWatts(kW). It's a specification that I like to know. It describes how much load can be placed on the battery. In this case 10kW would translate to a load of 45Amps at 220VAC. That's a significant backup "generator". Most portable gasoline/Propane generators are in the 5.5kW range.
But kW doesn't tell use capacity. It doesn't tell us how long the battery will last. Will we get 10kW for hours? Or will we get 10kW for 3 seconds and be done. To answer that we need to know how
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The run time will obviously depend on the size of the battery, which will likely be available in at least two sizes. I'm willing to bet you can also set reserve limits so the truck doesn't completely discharge itself, and that further limits the run time.
Battery capacity has yet to be announced though.
All that said, I'd say at least 30kwh which will keep most homes running 2-3 days without any change in usage habits. With some very conscientious usage you can probably get a week out of it.
=Smidge=
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I'd say at least 30kwh which will keep most homes running 2-3 days without any change in usage habits.
I think you're grossly underestimating the size. Tesla model 3s are 50 - 80 kWh batteries. The Chevy Bolt has a 65kWh battery. A pickup which will be expected to haul and tow better have a bigger battery than a compact passenger car.
And where do most homes use only 10kWh per day? That consumption level sounds more like small apartments. Or northern homes whose heating is oil/gas, not electric.
The average U.S. residential consumption rate in 2022 was 30kWh per day. My home would need more than double that.
2027 Chevy Bolt does this as well. (Score:2)
Costs several grand for the hookup. Bolt starts around 27k and won Car and Driver's EV of the Year award.
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Note that their point is they state they had the car's onboard system also provide AC to the load side, making the cost lower to incrementally make it a backup unit.
Most solutions provide DC and a separate inverter is required to power the house.
Presumably this came from the desire to consolidate things and wanted to do the 'plug power tools into the truck' feature and the delta to get to 'car side house scale inverter' was appealing.
The price sounds *way* better than the Lightning (Score:3)
It's almost cheap enough that I might consider buying one.
But I'm sure the listed price is the bargain-basement model. I wonder what the price will be for a model people would actually want.
Still, it's good that EV prices are coming down. Once they get cheap enough, and the range good enough, Americans will see the $ signs and start to buy them.
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Sorry it doesn't roll coal like your bro-dozer. =(
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Ha! I agree that body on frame makes for a sturdier truck, but unibody drives better and is cheaper to manufacture.
My grandfather owned a Ford truck longer than I have been alive. He always said "Never buy a Ford." :)
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Maverick is not a truck, is fathom a truck? That's to say while Ford is still hiding it.
What's your beef with the Maverick? If it's got a bed, it's a truck. ( esp. so if it's at least 4' wide so as to fit ye olde sheets of plywood )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Engineering Explained on the Maverick and its truck features.
Re: Is it another car or actually a truck? (Score:2)
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If it's got a bed, it's a truck.
It's a 4.5 foot bed. That's not a bed--it's an end-table.
If it has more space inside than outside, it's not a truck--it's an SUV with a back porch.
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This was always my criticism of the Ford Explorer "Sport Trac" - that bed is fucking useless. May as well have just gotten a regular Explorer and let the back door hang open and strap down whatever you're hauling (if you ever haul anything - let's be honest, people buying that thing were buying it for looks, not functionality).
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Sometimes you want to haul a bag of potting soil/sand, a Christmas tree, or something else messy that you don't want in the cabin and a short bed will suffice. Its not a work truck but that's fine for 95% of the time for 99% of its users.
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And for those use cases, a simple cargo carrier that plugs into the trailer hitch gives you the load rating and space you need, without compromising the vehicle's utility the other 99.99% of the time for less than $200.
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Those old contrary fucks would never buy it. Here's exactly what they're looking for. https://www.slate.auto/en [slate.auto]
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Is it though?
Their site is confusing as hell, and doesn't even have pricing for some of the stuff they are offering. It looks like they are selling kits rather than vehicles - every option has a difficulty rating with it.
For a hobbyist that's fine - if I was retired and had time and a hoist to install my own suspension, sure. But I'm not and I don't have a hoist. And if I did, I probably wouldn't be looking at this thing - I'd be looking to get a proven platform like the Toyota Hilux.
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First, the Maverick IS a truck. It's a SMALL pickup truck. You probably want a MEDIUM pickup trick, like the lightning. Or maybe one that doesn't have a back seat.
Ford says:
1. It will have a similar footprint to the Maverick
2. It will have the same passenger space of a RAV4
Ford hasn't said:
1. Towing capability
2. Bed size
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Re: Is it another car or actually a truck? (Score:2)
Re: Is it another car or actually a truck? (Score:2)
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I have a four wheel drive pickup. I never go off road, that only destroys the environment. The reason I got it was for those occasions when I have to get through snow, works like a charm.
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And potholes! The roads are getting worse and worse - large truckish like vehicle has no concerns.
The issue being that the larger the vehicle the more damage it does to the road, i.e. potholes.
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I go off road, but I try to minimize my impact. Roads themselves also destroy the environment, there's no perfect solution so we can just do the best we can.
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So would ye olde Subaru Symmetric AWD, though.
Too bad they're practically all CVTs now, you have to buy a pissed off one to get a transmission that won't implode.
Off roading isn't really environmentally destructive if you stick to the trails. It's the clown asses who take all the little shortcuts who do the harm. Those guys really are assholes.
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Club body-on-frame trucks are the only trucks.
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We will see, but *so far* Ford has not been as aggressive about that sort of thing as BMW or Chevy. The BlueCruise requires actively curated lidar maps, so at least they have a rationale for that being an ongoing subscription. The other subscriptions are similar, updating GPS maps (who needs those with phone) and data connectivity (but if you have a phone, you don't need it). So far they haven't charged for remote vehicle services which arguably could be charged for the SIM service and/or server infrastr