Recent content by Newton

Um, not defending any authoritarian govenment here but that last post was pretty much 180 degrees from reality. The vast majority of Taiwan’s population are ethnic Chinese, and many of them are descendants of people who did, in fact, rule China until they “relocated” to Taiwan. The...

I guess I just have a different experience than others. I had a Subaru outback for awhile, and 30mpg on the freeway would be really optimistic. This sort of discussion is always interesting, you find the ICE people who constantly got 25mpg on their Ecoboost (which I also owned) while towing...

Meanwhile the Skagit River hit its all time record flood level last week, fortunately one city around here that believes in climate change built a flood wall. Some of the others had a bad time.

I disagree, and I take long trips (on and off the interstates) in a standard range. It was fine before we had Tesla access and now it is stupidly easy. There are a lot of owners with perfectly capable road-trip EVs who are afraid to try, which in my opinion is a psychological response to...

I agree that if you want any kind of decent performance the battery has to be available, but I'm not sure that is what happens. If we want to speculate about these systems we need to know the output of the generator in kW, and we don't know it for either of the two EREV truck systems that are...

In the end, I think that the EREV is a psychological (and political) solution rather than an engineering one. I have met people in California who are as surprised that I'm coming from Canada in an EV as if I told them that I had walked. They don't know that compared to my EV6 the Lightning...

Plenty of pure battery EVs get more than 350 miles of range, including the Silverado (492) and the Lucid (512). It won't be too long before that is the range that we all expect - I was super happy that my 2019 e-Golf got a rating of 120 miles which is now pathetic. Voltage is not the...

Life with an EREV might not be what we are imagining it to be. This is a review of Ford's new EREV Bronco in China ($32K with a 750 mile claimed range) - which although it looks like a Bronco is actually made by the Chinese company that will own Ford in the future: In my standalone comment...

Interestingly enough, Ford recently announced a new EV - the Ford Bronco New Energy. It is unfortunately only available in China and is in reality made by Jiangling Motors in China so it might never make it here in the US. Jiangling already makes EREVs in China and the Bronco New Energy is...

Also, don't tell me that this is just like a Diesel Electric locomotive. They don't have batteries, at least until recently. Diesel Electric locomotives and ferries use absolutely enormous diesel generators that are connected to an electric motor, but they supply all of the motive power...

These are good questions. In my opinion, It cannot possibly have a meaningful frunk if it still looks like an F-150 with a 5.5' bed and a Crew Cab. "Generator" does not mean one of those portable Honda things that you buy at Home Depot. The only EREV truck that is close to market uses...

Or perhaps that range isn't the issue when the MSRP is north of $80,000. I don't think that adding a motor to a truck that already has a battery the size of my (perfectly adequate) standard range Lightning is going to make it any cheaper. Let's face it, the "pandemic free money and six...

The Frunk is a pretty important part of the experience of the Lightning because it gives you more weather-tight space to store things. My single cab long bed T-100 is great for carrying dirt but even with a canopy, the back fills up with water (and is dirty) so you don't want to carry nice...

This is a problem with the EREV solution, there will always be more stuff in this solution than with a BEV or ICE. There is no free lunch. If you take the battery out of the equation then you need an F-150 sized engine to get the power of an F-150 - assuming that your electrical...

Aha, I think I see where the confusion (or at least my confusion) comes from. Automakers/journalists have invented a new way to rate generators. That parenthesis is doing a lot of work here. You cannot rate a generator by taking two thirds of the horsepower of the source engine. Even in...