The battery size really surprised me. I can see this working well with 1/3 the battery, but 1000lbs is crazy. The lighter motor and removal of the fuel tank will help a little, but replacing a heavy engine in the front with a heavier battery in the back can't possibly work.
People acclimatize pretty well if you let them. We keep our house at 65F all winter, and set the AC for 85F in the summer and everyone is pretty happy. The payback period on a good sweater is not very long.
Tailored Industries (the factory) says they have over 300 products that are available immediately as white-labeled items at your custom online boutique. I don't know if any of these designs were customized or not, but it is a surprisingly low startup cost to put together a shopify store and have Tailored Industries make your clothes on demand. You need some photos, and a cool looking brand, and they do all of the hard work. I wonder if I should open up my own shop...
If AI and robotics reach their logical goals then projects like this are about to become more and more important. I don't mind machines taking all of the jobs, as long as all of those displaced workers don't starve.
I really thought a sub post was better than one long one. I never understood the two account thing except for specific situations where you don't want to talk about X with an account that has a lot of NSFW content on Y.
I had a 2004 WRC that we replaced with the IONIQ 6. The Hyundai is a great upgrade, and let us keep AWD. We could get by with less range on that car, but for now we just take the truck if we are going more than 100 miles one way.
I don't think people who can meet there needs with public transit are the target market of many car manufacturers. Most truck miles are driving to work and the store. Your use case sounds like it would be perfect for renting a vehicle, especially since it would save you from storing and insuring it an extra 300 days per year.
Cost is a concern, and there will be a cost penalty at purchase time for a while. That will impact some people, but there is still a big market for expensive trucks.
I live in a two car household, and I need one vehicle that is comfortable on long trips, and one to handle truck jobs like hauling brush, firewood, oversized items and 3 bikes. My wife, daughter and myself vastly prefer our electric car (IONIQ 6) around town, but even as a big fan of the car I am still uncomfortable using it on long trips, so our truck (Honda Ridgeline) is still a gas vehicle.
I predict that EV trucks with a range extender will do very well in the US, and will be the catalyst behind the move to electric trucks. Once people get the experience of an electric truck they will love it, but the option to dump in gasoline and drive 400 miles without charging is an imaginary barrier that stops most customers from giving it a shot.
Personally, I would love to see an electric truck that can be charged while driving by an external generator, possible mounted to a trailer.
Electric pickup trucks are hard, mostly because they need to fill an imaginary, or aspirational use case. More than 99% of the pickup truck miles in the US could be filled by an electric truck with a 150 mile range that people charge at home. But no one will buy that truck because of the desire to take long trips, and potentially tow a long distance.
The driving and ownership experience of electric vehicles is MUCH better, but it is hard to convince buyers to try it out.
Credit unions, or small banks are likely to be helpful in some situations. When building our house 8 years ago we had a lot of trouble getting the construction loan mostly because of 1-2 bad comps in our area. One of the big banks turned us down with no recourse with an assessment that included a picture of the wrong lot (a farm field across the street). Another said no one should build a house under 3k square feet, so no to our plan.
Our little local bank was able to actually take a look and approve us.
My solar install is scheduled for December. Even if it ends up missing the cutoff for a tax break I still think it’s the right thing to do. The combination of investing in green energy and locking in my effective electric rate is the smart move right now.
… and I heard on Friday that OpenAI is planning a data center 15 miles south of me. That can only make things worse.