Anyone on the rivian pre order list?

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NMBruce

Rank V
Member

Advocate II

1,808
Pagosa Springs, CO, USA
First Name
Bruce
Last Name
Cooper
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27527

Ham/GMRS Callsign
KE0NBD
Service Branch
U.S. Air Force
I would love a hybrid, wish my new Tacoma was one, but not a fully electric vehicle right now, just not enough quick chargers where I live, they are putting more in.

I live in the mountains of Colorado, about 3 years ago, took a drive about 2 hours from home to have lunch and break from working around the house. Heading home, about an hour from the lunch stop and the road was closed due to a forest fire. That means a back track to the lunch stop and another 6 hour detour around the mountain, about 500 miles that day. At that time there where no quick charging stations along that route, now there are two by the lunch stop.

Another reason is that I do a lot of off grid camping, pull a trailer and trips to Alaska and out of the way places in Canada and Alaska and it’s easy to carry fuel.
 

smritte

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Launch Member

Member III

2,827
Ontario California
First Name
Scott
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SMR
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8846

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There maybe steering fluids but thats not somehitng that is changed on a regular basis.
Electric Rack and Pinion.

My experience with EV's is based on knowing people who work for Tesla, knowing people who own Tesla's, Prius, and the one chevy build (dont remember the name) and helping my friend build custom electric off road vehicles.
One point that everyone here hit was charging. This problem is actually 3 fold.
1. What happens when you run out of power? Your towed.
2. What happens when you pull up to a charging station and find a line? You wait and hope some dumbass hasn't (or in this case several) left his car there and walked away for a couple hours (ask me how I know this.).
3. Our current power grid needs to be updated if people start buying more electric cars.

I drive to Vegas every couple of months to visit relatives. Two of which own Tesla's. The drive for me is about 4 hours. If I was to buy anything on the market currently, I would want to top off or fill up in the middle of the drive. The reason is, that's where the charging stations are and I would be really pushing it distance wise. Due to the number of EV's out here, its starting to get crowded at the charging stations. Even though I don't own one, I look at them each time I go through for when I do own one.
If its cold out and you use the heater, you loose range, same with AC. You get the best distance in moderate traffic due to regenerative breaking but don't see that on the open highway.

ICE's are way better today then they were all the way through the 90's. If you take care of it, you will start to see wear around 250k-300k miles. I'm referring to internal engine, not bolt on's (water pump, alternator....). You can push it more if you don't mind the worn out seals and having oil leak's.

Replacing the engine at this time will be 5k-8k+ and you still have a high mileage transmission. That's about the cost of a new battery pack. The modern electric motors are seeing 700k- 1m miles. So no worn trans or diff to worry about. In all actuality, the EV ends up cheaper. Now, here's a little on the batteries. At around 200k, the batteries are not at 100% any more. The lowest numbers I saw was almost 10% less (amount depends on what generation). At 500k I was seeing numbers as high as 15% less.
The batteries aren't bad, just not as good.
Now we do the math. If you had a 200 mile range at 200k miles, you now can only go 180 miles, at 500k, 170 miles. This means you need to top off more.
The newest generation of batteries, look's like they will last longer and should be cheaper to make.
 

Enthusiast III

1,212
Grand Falls-Windsor, NL, Canada
First Name
Steve
Last Name
Adams
The lack of EV's in my area make the chargers accessable no issue. They have 4 ports at each charging station that the governement put in. They are placed where there is no more than 150 km between them. The setup here in atlantic canada is really good imo. As mentioned earlier, I want a full ev for our "small" rig, and the 4xe for our tow/travel rig. Just because there are not chargers in the back country. The 4xe gives me full electric to get around town to do everything we need to and back without having to run gas. But the range is awesome when we do go long distances. Jeep created a winner there for us. 600km plus out of a tank compared to 480ish now. And for day trips etc, the full EV would be awesome. For overlanding, I don't think EV will ever be a use case but hybrid ev is great!