Where Are All The Electric Pick Up Trucks?
Electric cars have quickly moved from the size of the Smart car to full size sedans capable of impressive speeds and even quickness. But with all of this development, relatively quiet has been any effort to build an electric pick up truck. The reasons should be obvious right?
First of all your average pick up truck driver isn’t really the type to gloat or care about their fuel economy. They also tend to love the roar of a big block and few of us haven’t been witness to that classic image of the diesel truck speeding away at a green light with a cloud of smoke pouring out from the exhaust. That being said, aside from personal preferences or style there is still feasibility, and companies like Tesla and BMW have proven that if you can make a car whose specs work for the owner there are many that will forgo the concern of any “Electric” stigmas.
The problem with trucks is likely as simple as understanding that they are bigger which means they are heavier. The reason they are bigger and heavier is because they are also used to haul and tow which forces the equation for output to shift from Horsepower to Torque, or from speed to power. The production of power, like what is needed to tow, will cause an added strain on any power source that far exceeds what is ever required to make it run faster. Anyone to use a battery operated drill knows that it will function at full speed for hours if you just hold it up in the air in the on position, but start drilling holes into concrete and you will be reaching for the charger in no time. Even with large trucks that have powerful gas/diesel motors, you will notice they carry two large deep cycle batteries under the hood with a stronger alternator. Now imagine how many batteries you would need without the big block V8 in there? I’m sure the amount of added batteries in and of itself would increase the weight enough that you would need even more batteries just to offset all the batteries!
So, before we find a way to add more batteries let’s just stop there and assume that the technology for a one ton electric truck just isn’t there yet. Furthermore, developing that technology may be an even more difficult proposition than your first 200mph electric car. Why? Well, technology development usually requires that wealthy individuals or businesses buy the expensive early models out of a desire to be trendy or have something no one else can get, even when those early versions don’t meet their desired standards. Remember when a 30 inch flat screen TV cost $10,000? That type of spending enables companies to have revenue so the technology can be advanced even further. Trucks however are not something many would consider trendy, and for the niche market that does, part of that trendiness still requires having a loud and powerful gas or diesel engine. Essentially, any company looking to develop a fully electric pickup truck knows that the market for something that lacks power and even size is incredibly small and that therefor the road to what people in the masses would buy could be a much longer road that it was with cars.
Still, we have to assume that somewhere someone is working on it, because somewhere someone is always working on something!
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