Well certainly the earth is warming and certainly man is a small contributor to that.
The more relevant questions are things like
Should we place primary blame on clean economies?
Should we place primary blame on all the targets economic lefties targeted anyway?
Should we take actions that mitigate man’s contribution to global warming or blindly adopt a preconceived agenda and and pretend that will help?
Should we proceed at a breakneck pace as if climate change is a soon-to-occur disaster, or should we follow the science?
If solution “A” is the best solution (eg nuclear, nat gas, coal, or higher-housing density etc.) should we pursue that solution, or should we have central-planners pick winners and losers and force windmills and solar panels and EVs down our throats?
A small contribution to a completely natural cycle of warming and cooling hardly constitutes an emergency, in any sense of the word. If we ourselves can manage to warm the globe through our technology, we should absolutely be doing that in order to prevent the already very much overdue glacial advance. Mankind thrives in the warmer climates, and that’s a fact in every sense of the word.
In the Sapien saga over the last ~400,000 or so, we have survived everything from catastrophic warming to catastrophic cooling to the single largest extinction event on Earth in the last 3-5 million years.
Enough emphasis.
I ask only that pollution be minimized and/or prevented altogether in order to preserve the local environments in which things are produced.*
For example, dumping chemicals/waste into rivers/lakes/oceans, or billowing towers of noxious gases, etc..
Okay, but as per the article it still went 224 miles. I bet that’s still plenty of range for a lot of truck users. Where I’m at, most people don’t haul ever day, or even every week: the truck gets the most use when helping people move and going to the dump.
Yes they do. Still a challenge, especially since like 25% of them don’t work to begin with, then add in there are 1/3 as many chargers as gas stations. When time is money, that is costing them big time.
And that article just confirms a point I’ve been trying to make for years. All of these truck manufacturers don’t have a clue how to properly market these EV trucks.
You don’t market them based on towing. You market them as lifestyle trucks. Much how Honda markets the Ridgeline or how Subaru used to market the Baja. It can do some basic truck stuff; nothing crazy but enough for most suburban families. Utility of the truck bed. Good off road performance. Uses independent rear suspension so improved handing and ride comfort over solid rear axle set ups.
Want a vehicle that will take you to the campsite with an ATV on the weekend and take you to work in style that following Monday economically? Or maybe you have a light bass boat and want to economically travel to your favorite fishing spot a few counties over? F-150 Lightening is an option for you. Do you actually need a truck to tow or haul heavy loads? Consider our hybrid 3.5L Ecoboost F-150 or step up to a 3/4 Diesel.
These trucks have a niche. The “lifestyle” truck market is criminally underserved and EV lifestyle trucks make a ton of sense. But these companies are literally ran by Gorillas so they’ll just market them based on “our tow ratings” knowing good and well they can only tow that max rating for like 50 miles on a full charge at best.
They are marketing it as an alternative for their traditional ICE F-150. Which is a mistake. Because those half ton owners who take full advantage of what their truck has to offer won’t be satisfied with the range drop and limitations of the Lightening.
Truth be told they electrified the wrong truck. The Maverick (their new compact lifestyle truck) makes so much more sense as an EV than the F-150 does. But even though they chose to electrify the F-150 they could market it correctly. If all you do is tow an ATV to a campsite or take a small fishing boat and fishing supplies to a local lake then the EV truck will serve you well for that task. I mean it’s still way too big for that simple task (there’s a reason Tacomas, Frontiers, Rangers, and even Ridgelines are so popular with campers and guys who like to take their ATVs places; it’s the right size for the task and can do some harder work when needed but nothing overkill).
But they are exaggerating the truck’s capabilities. Which is a mistake. They show it towing heavy loads (one commercial has it pulling a medium size tractor) and while it can do that they don’t mention that you lose a metric crap ton of range doing it compared to an ICE truck.
True but there are plenty of people who do use that potential. There’s a lot of half ton customers who actually need to move up to a 3/4 ton truck.
And ford is attempting to market this truck to those types of owners. And that’s a waste of money.
They need to actually market it as a lifestyle truck. Remember the Subaru Baja ads and commercials? They always showed it going on off road trails (something it was very good at for its time), hauling a dirt bike, towing some camping gear. Light duty jobs. They never lied to the customers about its capabilities. It didn’t sell well because Subaru priced them all kinds of wrong.
They costed more than most Tacoma trims. Lifestyle trucks need to be affordable. That’s a reason why the Ridgeline doesn’t sell as well it could. It’s a great vehicle trapped behind a high paywall.
Sure. The marketing is a separate issue though. Which is weird. You’d think a company like Ford would be able to see the difference, and market accordingly.
