The Electric Hummer

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Nothing ruins a quite ride in the woods like a diesel belching noise, smoke and stink.....electric vehicles for anything out in nature are going the be the bomb!
Wish the safari outfits in Africa would take the clue.
 
It's spooky how electric vehicles can sneak up on you. I imagine someone will create a sound system emulating a high performance V8.
 
To boot there is still the problem with those boy toy rice burners being as loud as they can be along with the newer versions of Detroit's muscle cars. I've almost been run over by an electric. We've been hard wired to listen to traffic from a distance. I imagine when the day where electrics rule and we'll be fine tuned to 'listen' to them.
 
Steven said:
To boot there is still the problem with those boy toy rice burners being as loud as they can be along with the newer versions of Detroit's muscle cars. I've almost been run over by an electric. We've been hard wired to listen to traffic from a distance. I imagine when the day where electrics rule and we'll be fine tuned to 'listen' to them.
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Or, people will adapt in different ways as I have since I lost my hearing. Although I have electronic devices to aid my hearing, any quiet vehicle is likely to surprise me so I have to be extra careful about staying to one side of the road when walking, etc. Some local governments have already mandated that electric cars have some sort of noise generators when they operate in town. That said, when more vehicles are quiet - maybe - drivers will become more aware of pedestrians too... but I don't hold out a lot of hope for that.
 
Way back when the Hummer was first introduced, it had about twice as many complaints as a typical new model line. The top two complaints were ... poor gas mileage and hard to park. Making one wonder whether the customers had looked at the vehicle before buying. So I guess this would resolve one of those complaints. 😀

When we got our Leaf, I was consistently speeding by about 10 mph because I was so used to estimating speed by engine noise. It took a while to get myself dialed back. I also had a couple of close calls in parking lots where pedestrians didn't see me. The Leaf does have a backup beeper (not as loud as a commercial truck, but noticeable), which helps. It also has some kind of noisemaker at low speed, but I don't think that's loud enough to be useful.
 
1000 HP is useless if it can’t be put to the ground. In theory, if the drivetrain was done right, electric drive should be good off road at low speed.
On TV they quoted $112,000! That’s 3x what I paid for my 2016 one ton 4x4.
 
I just want a smaller electric crossover that can pull a popup camper with AWD, autopilot, and a 500 mile range before needing a rapid recharge that takes 30 minutes for <30k. If the engineers can figure all that out, I'm in.
 
I have learned, Never buy the first generation of anything.

I talked to a guy who works at Tesla, I asked about a car for the common man. His take on it was the batteries are so expensive the total vehicle price is high. At that price luxury is expected, price goes up. At that price performance is expected, price goes up.
Another issue is limited supplies of lithium, there is not enough to replace the IC cars, so if you can only make so many you charge a lot for them.
If a method of extracting lithium from seawater is developed it will be the game changer.

M
 
I absolutely want an electric truck for my next vehicle. I've been drooling over the Rivan for a while, but I'm not sure I can justify spending $70k, much less $112k for the Hummer. I'm just hoping that the Ford version of the Rivian or the Chevy/GMC version of the Hummer have more realistic pricing.
 
They fixed the parking problem, it can crabwalk! Rear wheel steering!
Can't imagine what 1000 hp. would be like, my 2018 Duramax puts out 445 hp. and when the turbo comes on, it will break loose all four tires in the dirt.
Not hard to imagine the price though, a well equipped 1 ton 4x4 GMC is already over $60k.
 
To be useful to me, a truck has to be able to pull a 7000 Lb trailer 700 miles in 14 hours, including refuel/recharge time.

A gas or diesel-powered truck, large SUV or RV can do this easily, but battery-powered electric is not a practical solution yet (at any price) because of the outrageous full-recharge time requirement. Even the (not so) "hi-rate" charging stations often have waiting lines and long charge times for a full charge, so it effectively takes well over 20 hours to go that distance, requiring a sleep stop to make such a trip: effective trip time becomes at least double what the gas/diesel truck/SUV/RV can do it in, not even counting the time to recharge the battery at the destination. Note, I don't consider swap-able batteries to be a practical solution; they're a logistical nightmare.

Current electric vehicles are mere toys, and anyone who believes personal vehicular transportation can become entirely emission-free by 2035 is delusional. New technology is required; "Mr. Fusion" could do it but that's science fiction. Water/steam/air rockets could be an emission-free replacement for vehicular travel, but routine takeoffs and landings would be impractical. A realistic non-polluting fuel could be hydrogen, with a modified conventional internal-combustion engine, a external-combustion engine, or a fuel cell powered electric.
 
Pete.D said:
To be useful to me, a truck has to be able to pull a 7000 Lb trailer 700 miles in 14 hours, including refuel/recharge time.

...

Current electric vehicles are mere toys, and anyone who believes personal vehicular transportation can become entirely emission-free by 2035 is delusional. New technology is required; "Mr. Fusion" could do it but that's science fiction. Water/steam/air rockets could be an emission-free replacement for vehicular travel, but routine takeoffs and landings would be impractical. A realistic non-polluting fuel could be hydrogen, with a modified conventional internal-combustion engine, a external-combustion engine, or a fuel cell powered electric.
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Current electric vehicles may not do what you need them to do, but that doesn't mean that they're mere toys. Your use case (long distance trips with a trailer) is pretty rare for most internal combustion cars. There are millions of people who have two cars and rarely drive more than 100 miles in a day. They are all candidates for replacing at least one cars with an electric. A lot more people may drive more, but don't want to go more than (say) 300 miles in a day. The current generation of electrics works for them as well. If we can get those people into electrics first, it will drive innovation that will help meet edge cases like yours.

It's true that we won't be able to be 100% carbon free on current technology in 35 years, but the last 10-15 years has brought electric cars from the toy category into the useful vehicle category. With major markets demanding more innovation, you'll see people developing new technologies. I agree that fuel cell based hydrogen makes a lot of sense. One good thing about that is that you get away from teh problem of stranded wind--places where there's lots of wind potential but no major grid to move the power to market. If the windmill is cracking water, it just needs a truck to show up every week or so to take the hydrogen away.
 
This thing seems badass, but the price has to come down. Although, my impression of the old Hummers was that they were pretty expensive too.

I would be interested in an electric van or SUV at an affordable price. My wife and I have been interested in an electric car for a long time, but when our 4Runner died, there wasn’t a great electric replacement option. We ended up getting a Camry hybrid, which is really more of a replacement for the road-trip role of our Mazda that is getting pretty decrepit too and will need to be replaced soon. For road trips, we felt we needed the range of a hybrid.

So now I don’t have a large vehicle for rocket launches. For now, I just cram everything into the Mazda for one-day launches, but I end up renting a van for multi-day launches when I need camping gear, EZ-up, the whole fleet, etc.

So if a good electric rocket-hauler comes along at an affordable price, I’d probably be interested. If not, when the Mazda dies, we might just stick with one car, or get a small electric grocery-getter, and just continue renting big vehicles for big launches and camping. Honestly, I’m becoming more alienated from car ownership over time. Cars are all ridiculously expensive, in my opinion.
 
ThirstyBarbarian said:
This thing seems badass, but the price has to come down. Although, my impression of the old Hummers was that they were pretty expensive too.

I would be interested in an electric van or SUV at an affordable price. My wife and I have been interested in an electric car for a long time, but when our 4Runner died, there wasn’t a great electric replacement option. We ended up getting a Camry hybrid, which is really more of a replacement for the road-trip role of our Mazda that is getting pretty decrepit too and will need to be replaced soon. For road trips, we felt we needed the range of a hybrid.

So now I don’t have a large vehicle for rocket launches. For now, I just cram everything into the Mazda for one-day launches, but I end up renting a van for multi-day launches when I need camping gear, EZ-up, the whole fleet, etc.

So if a good electric rocket-hauler comes along at an affordable price, I’d probably be interested. If not, when the Mazda dies, we might just stick with one car, or get a small electric grocery-getter, and just continue renting big vehicles for big launches and camping. Honestly, I’m becoming more alienated from car ownership over time. Cars are all ridiculously expensive, in my opinion.
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I'm surprised there aren't more SUV/minivan options in the electric/plug-in hybrid market. I think the only one there is the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in, which gets 30-50 miles on a charge and then there's a gas-powered generator that kicks in (a la Chevy Volt). I would like one, but my wife really likes the minivan we have now.

If you can swing one car plus rentals, that seems like a good option too.
 
boatgeek said:
I'm surprised there aren't more SUV/minivan options in the electric/plug-in hybrid market. I think the only one there is the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in, which gets 30-50 miles on a charge and then there's a gas-powered generator that kicks in (a la Chevy Volt). I would like one, but my wife really likes the minivan we have now.

If you can swing one car plus rentals, that seems like a good option too.
Click to expand...

We both work from home, so having 2 cars at this point is really just a convenience that most likely does not justify the the cost of a new car. During the pandemic, we barely drive at all. I filled up the Camry and the Mazda in mid March before the local lock-down, and the only gas I bought since then has been to put $35 worth of fuel in the Camry a couple of weeks ago. I’ve actually done a few unnecessary trips in the Mazda just to keep the battery alive and to intentionally burn up some gas before it goes bad in the tank. Even during normal times, we didn't drive many miles. Just local errands, and then big road trips a few times a year. Realistically, renting the big vehicles as needed is probably the best option.
 

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