If you need a truck for work, you're probably going to be towing in it. Now, some of those guys who are hauling are gonna need a 250 or a 350, but a lot of them will do just fine with the 150.
Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly.
In addition, it's 2 hours to the nearest big city. So as a practical matter, you're adding an hour to your trip every time you go into town. I like Teslas a lot, but gave you ever been on a road trip in one? It's pretty brutal.
Plus, I feel like, aesthetically, there is a weird block. I would have no problem dumping a load of sheetrock trash in the bed of a new gas truck. For a brand new electric truck? It kind of feels wrong, don't you think? Maybe that is just me being a Luddite, but I really don't have a sense of an electric car as a tool, the way a good truck is.
I think EVs are great as a recreational car, or a useful commuter in the city. I've never seen a Rivian doing blue collar anything.
Interestingly, I live in rural Vermont, and there are a surprising number of Rivians around me - including those set up for contractors, complete with scaffolding in the bed with tools and ladders on them.
That said, we have an F250. I'd love to have an electric truck, but I use mine for towing almost exclusively. If I'm hauling a trailer hours away, I really don't need to deal with the hassle of stopping along the way to charge. I've yet to see a charging station set up for conveniently charging an electric vehicle with a trailer.
When we lived the Bay Area a decade ago, we had a Nissan Leaf, one of the early ones. It only got 95 miles to a charge if you were lucky, but for commuting in the South Bay we absolutely loved it.
Here in Vermont? F250 and a Subaru. I'd love to make the second an electric, but no one actually makes a good AWD electric Crosstrek equivalent that's actually designed for dirt roads and not the city.
Interesting! I lived in Illinois, where they are manufactured, and they were everywhere, but they were a luxury vehicle, I never once saw one as a work truck. I'm a little surprised but it isn't that strange.
My general impression is the product class of a Rivian / 150L is probably closer to a Ford Raptor than it is to a work truck. But interesting to hear that may be changing!
If you're buying a Raptor, that's a luxury purchase for sure. But I do know people who use Raptors to haul, so that kind of makes sense.
With the exception of the most ridiculous of chromosomemobiles, I think most people make a very rational calculation about what they will do with their vehicle, even if it's just being able to help somebody move a couch that one time. Usually it's more than that. And towing is a huge part of that equation.
> I like Teslas a lot, but gave you ever been on a road trip in one?
Not a Tesla but a different EV. I've taken it on about a dozen road trips over the years. It's been fine. I pull off the highway, plug in, go grab a quick snack, get back in the car and go on my way. On a several hour drive it adds an extra 20 minutes assuming I'm not stopping at all in the ICE, not that big of a deal. And honestly I should be doing that stretch break, and I'm often stopping for a meal anyways.
It takes however long I need to charge it to reach my next destination, whether that be the final destination or the next charging stop. Maybe I'm charging for 10 minutes, maybe I'm charging for 20. When I'm on a road trip, there's rarely a reason to charge for more than 20 minutes at any given stop.
The rate of charging is a curve, where at a low state of charge you can dump a lot of energy into very rapidly. When its nearly full, you can't charge it as fast without risking damaging the battery.
This is a massive simplification and not quite what's really going on, but think of the battery having a lot of holes to stick electrons in. If the electrons you're pumping in don't smoothly find a hole, it might damage the battery. When the battery is low, there's lots of holes, electrons can just fly in and they'll probably hit an empty spot. When its nearly full, you have to carefully put the electrons into the holes or else you'll damage it. This is kind of what's going on with charging speeds.
So you probably see these charging times of over an hour or whatever to go 0-100%, but the more important stat to look at is the 0-80% charge time which is often like 20 minutes. That 0-80% time will often be like 20min but the 80-100% can often be another hour or more on top of that.
When I stop to charge the car on a road trip the time I take is usually like 10-20 minutes. There's no reason to spend more time than that, because the charging speed drops dramatically that its not usually worth it unless I really need that last 20% of range. Which I usually don't, because there's usually other spots to charge. And then I get where I'm going and the car will be sitting for a few hours and can charge at whatever speed it wants, I'm not needing it.
FWIW though, I spend way more time in my life pumping gas in my ICE than I do waiting on my EV to charge, even including the time I've spent on road trips on the EV. This is even with my EV having significantly more miles on it over the past few years. Its a question of if I spend an extra 15 minutes a few times a year or more than five minutes every other week.
> Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly.
Hey now, my 8 year-old Pixelbook still has 2 more years before it's out of support.
They take about the same time as with an ICE. I stop and charge for 20m whenever I need a restroom break or some food (every couple hours or so). My car generally goes longer without stopping than I do.
If you're stopping often or long, something is wrong with your setup.
> Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook
But that's like rich people. Nouveau rich sport designer fashion to show off how much money they have, but true wealth doesn't need to show off like that. If the tech lead came in with a battle hardens Chromebook running a distro they created on crostini, I would respect them more, not less.
If you need a truck for work, you're probably going to be towing in it. Now, some of those guys who are hauling are gonna need a 250 or a 350, but a lot of them will do just fine with the 150.
Even if your job isn't hauling, per se, if you work on job sites you wanna be able to haul stuff. Imagine if you showed up to your new Tech Lead job with an 8 year old Chromebook. You'd look a little bit silly.
In addition, it's 2 hours to the nearest big city. So as a practical matter, you're adding an hour to your trip every time you go into town. I like Teslas a lot, but gave you ever been on a road trip in one? It's pretty brutal.
Plus, I feel like, aesthetically, there is a weird block. I would have no problem dumping a load of sheetrock trash in the bed of a new gas truck. For a brand new electric truck? It kind of feels wrong, don't you think? Maybe that is just me being a Luddite, but I really don't have a sense of an electric car as a tool, the way a good truck is.
I think EVs are great as a recreational car, or a useful commuter in the city. I've never seen a Rivian doing blue collar anything.
I drive a Camry btw