Looks interesting, the front trunk and cut-down "UI" look especially great. This looks like an EV you could actually work on in your garage.
Vaporware until they get a production line though, and the absence of airbag is somewhat worrying when it advertises a top speed of 127mph and 0-60 in 4.5, at a GVWR 10klbs it's outside the light truck regs (8.5klbs GVWR) and thus doesn't require them but still...
And while it has the same dimensions as a Wrangler it avertises 2~3 times the curb weight and towing capacity and almost twice the cargo volume (rear seats stowed). And the maximum ground clearance is pretty ridiculous as well (advertised as adjustable from 10 to 20, most trucks seem to be between 8 and 12)
The most amazing thing is the photo of the lumber where a hole underneath the dash is revealed allowing the hauling of lumber the entire length of the vehicle. That is an impressive amount of utility right there. Whether quirky features like that would survive the process towards production remain to be seen, but this is certainly an interesting take on a truck that could be very useful in rural America.
I have an 8 foot utility trailer that I tow with my Honda Fit. I overloaded it once on accident with 2500lbs of roofing materials. The capacity is 2000lbs. I frequently load it up with long and heavy stuff, and I don't risk ruining my interior. It does 95% of what most people do with a truck, but I can still drive to work on Monday or take it on a long road trip and get 35mpg. Started with a $300 Harbor Freight trailer and added sides and floor to it. I guess my point is that you can pretty much haul whatever you need to with damn near any car on the market.
Just don't tell the service people if your car is still under warranty -- most North American non-truck vehicles are not rated for towing _at all_ even when their European counterparts are. This includes most so-called "crossovers" and small SUVs. Something as big as a Chevy Equinox (which is larger than the Isuzu Trooper we had in the 80s, which my family thought was massive for the time) is not rated for towing until you go up to the biggest engine and AWD.
Americans seem to love^H^H^H^Hdemand huge vehicles, but those huge vehicles rarely have the clearance and towing capacity to actually be "utility" despite being advertised that way :-(
Any idea as to why is this different from the EU? My 2006 Ford Focus C-max van pull up to 1200 kg (= 2650 pound, braked, 665 kg unbraked) legally here.
That works out to 1466 pounds. The guy was towing 2500 pounds with a Honda Fit that (unless it's a hybrid) weighs less than 2400 lbs for the car itself.
Do you think the Fit's brakes are designed to safely stop 2x the design weight? Plus the stability just wouldn't be there. Plus any appreciable "tongue weight" behind the back wheels will make the front end light. Bad for control. Wikipedia touches on the issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towing#Towing_safety
Here's another counterexample. The Porsche Cayenne can tow 7716 pounds (3500 kilos) braked, but only 1653 pounds (750 kilos) unbraked. And it's a vehicle that weighs twice as much as the subcompact Fit: http://www.porsche.com/usa/models/cayenne/cayenne-models/cay...
I always assumed it was just a combination of regulatory body idiocy and caution on the side of car manufaturers. So I didn't feel bad putting a hitch on my diesel Jetta and towing a trailer with it because it was rated for at least 2500 lbs in Europe.
But a friend who is more auto-literate looked into it and said in Europe the way trailers are positioned is different somehow such that the weight on the hitch is different.
Also more aggressive speed limits on trailers and other safety regulations enforced on the drivers.
So I don't know, it might actually be partially legitimate.
I once saw a Mazda Miata with 16' 2x8s. They were in the passenger seat, seat reclined. One end in the foot well and the other high in the air. They rested on the little roll bar and were strapped down nicely. Utility is what you make of it.
Yesterday I was at the local recycling centre and spotted an older gentleman dropping off garden waste (big black bags of branches, hedge trimmings etc.) with his mint condition ~1999 Peugeot 306 convertible. I bet he was the original owner too.
Basically any midsize-and-up with hatchback-style fold-down rear seats (even non-hatchbacks with fixed rear dashes) will accommodate such lumber. Some would require the removal of the passenger seat headrest.
According to its spec sheet, the B1 has 12ft between the front and rear liftgates when they're closed, the car is 12.5ft long. The Model S is almost 4ft (and 30%) longer.
It's cool but it's kind of a gimmick. You can easily haul lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack. Many cars with fold down rear seats can fit 8' lumber too.
> You can easily haul lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack.
-You can easily haul very limited quantities of lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack.
I've tried once to put the maximum legal (well, in Norway, at any rate) weight of 200kg/450lbs on my Land Cruiser's roof rack, just to see how it affected handling.
I've only felt more nervous in a car once, and that was in a Congolese taxi seemingly bent on having a go on the sound barrier. In the dark. With no lights.
The body roll was extreme, and any bump in the road led to damped oscillations like you wouldn't believe. After a bit of trial and error, I found that slightly less than half the max allowable weight was about as much as the vehicle could take and still be somewhat drivable.
Come to think of it, an estate wagon of some sort would probably be better for hauling stuff on the roof - sits much, much lower.
Re: what you said about wagons, I think the Subaru Outback is actually the most practical ICE vehicle out there. Pretty high clearance, very powerful engine, great towing capacity, good roof rack options, ample trunk space, and low centre of gravity.
I just wish they made one with an electric motor and a plug.
I think that you're confusing "Land Rover" and "Land Cruiser".
Land Rover vehicles are made by Jaguar Land Rover. The term "Land Rover" usually refers to either the Land Rover Defender (a bulky, tractor-looking SUV that isn't legal in the USA* due to a lack of safety features and emissions controls) or a variety of luxury SUVs that are remarkably good off-road but suffer from questionable reliability.
Land Cruisers are made by Toyota. The term "Land Cruiser" can refer to two totally separate Toyota vehicles. The J20, J40, and J70 models are known for being incredibly sturdy, reliable, and versatile vehicles, while the J50, J60, J80, J100, and J200 models are luxury SUVs; the J200 has a base MSRP of USD$86,000. Toyota doesn't sell the rugged, non-luxury models in the USA, although unlike in the case of the Land Rover Defender this may be more due to market analysis than legality.
There's no way to know from the original comment whether they were driving a rugged Land Cruiser or a luxury Land Cruiser. I've never driven either of them, but I'm sure that they behave very differently.
*Yes, I know that the person who commented specified that they were in Norway. I'm just adding the bit about Land Rovers not being legal in the USA (with a few exceptions) so that Americans like myself won't be scratching their heads trying to remember what Defenders look like :-)
I was in a J95 - in some markets called the Prado. (Basically less rugged than the 70 series, but still at the fairly utilitarian end of the range - a close relative of the J80 - beam axle at the rear, independent up front, lockers rear¢er.)
It is more a matter of physics than utilitarian/luxury, I suspect - 4x4s ride tall (my roof rack is 6'8" above ground), so to behave properly with a significant load on the roof, you'd need lots of mass to keep the centre of gravity low while also requiring suspension stiff enough to be unusable to keep the roll in check.
Defenders aren't legal in the USA? I have been a scofflaw for the last ten years?
Sorry, you're totally wrong about that. Rest-of-world (ROW) Defenders are absolutely legal in the US, as are any vehicle > 25 years old with original spec motor. Also legal are North American Spec (NAS) Defenders, which were imported for three years in the 90s.
Source: I am the co-founder of NAS-ROW, the Defender forum. https://nas-row.com
That's why I said "with a few exceptions". There are legal Defenders in the USA, but they are uncommon enough that I didn't want people thinking of Discoveries or LR2/3/4's when I described a "tractor-like" vehicle. Next time I'll be more specific.
P.S. That's a neat site! I'm glad that there's an American Defender community. Defenders are beautiful vehicles, and on the rare occasions that I see one I always try to get a picture with it :-)
Not to mention that if you're in a rain/snow/sleet/hail/etc. storm and you need to keep your lumber (or some other very long moisture-sensitive thing, like one of those absurdly-long sub sandwiches) dry or otherwise protected while hauling it, you can now do so.
You could haul lumber in a jeep as well - fold down the front window (why people forget about this, I don't know), prop the lumber between the seats resting on the dash, tailgate, etc - tie it down.
In a farm/preserve/etc scenario with a big diesel tank for the implements, a large diesel genset to recharge the EVs might be workable and leverage that infrastructure. Fleets of these could probably be charged off a fixed genset (not datacenter scale, but up there), which might be useful in remote scenarios or where it is tough to deliver a lot of mains electricity. I don’t know how emissions would work out (is a genset better than multiple portable engines?) and it’d be obviously less efficient than just doing the combustion in the vehicles, but it is something that came to mind when you mentioned that which might be useful for this type of vehicle.
Even if it’s a little worse in terms of the math, electric utility vehicles are strongly appealing due to their torque characteristics and fewer parts which always seem to be the ones you forgot spares of and such. With passenger sedans you’re playing the efficiency game, but with off-road, utility, industrial, and so on, there is more to think about when considering EV. Might not be that weird. (I’m a Wrangler owner who reads about electric conversions constantly — look at South Korean work on Jeeps — and I completely get where Bollinger is coming from.)
Minority view: I dislike airbags. If it were legal - which it is not where I live - I would have them out of my car today.
The rest of you are welcome to the damned things and the undoubtedly enhanced security they provide. Me, I shall never be thoroughly comfortable with a giant armed boxing glove pointed at my head.
The main problem with American air bags are that they have to (by law passed in 1984) be designed to work with people not wearing seat belts (unlike Europe)[1]. This means they more dangerous than European ones because they are bigger and must deploy much more explosively. This law is unlikely to be changed for many reasons with the most important one likely being that some car companies like expensive, unique requirements that segment markets and produce barriers to competition.
The airbag significantly reduced the distance between your face and anything else. In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well.
I'd rather have a sore neck from driving into a wall at 35mph than have a concussion from bouncing my face off of a bag full of high pressure gas.
Side curtain airbags are a much more useful technology than frontal ones.
Edit: Fire needs three things, fuel, oxygen and ignition. The atmosphere has oxygen. A gasoline vehicle keeps the fuel and ignition relatively far from each other. A battery contains both fuel and a source of ignition in close proximity. A punctured gas tank will not cause a fire every time. A punctured battery pack will cause a fire basically every time. In many cases a rusted out or leaking fuel system is noticed well before it starts a fire. There isn't much opportunity to notice a high-amperage short before it's a problem. Putting out a fire is even harder on electric vehicles. You can't throw foam and water on an internal short. There are many advantages of electric vehicles. Fire safety is not one of them.
"In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well."
That's not really a good thing. Having something to catch your head helps prevent neck injuries. In a high-speed crash, the forces involved could actually be debilitating and/or life-threatening.
Unless it's a Takata airbag and the thing that catches your face is a piece of metal shrapnel.
You do understand that airbags are bombs. The inflation mechanism literally uses explosives. They can and have killed people especially children and the elderly. Early generation airbags are more violent and dangerous because the standard was to protect an unbelted driver.
Is a few lives saved in (rare) high speed accidents worth setting off explosions in people's faces and turning an otherwise minor accident into a trip to the hospital?
If all you care about are deaths per distance then you probably want the former. If you care about minimizing accidents that require any medical care reducing the number of small explosions near people's faces is the better bet. Someone else posted the a NYT link that's relevant.
This is for driver's frontal airbags only. Passenger airbags and side curtain airbags are less bad because people usually sit farther from the passenger airbag and there is less support in side impacts.
> In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well.
Great, then there's nothing to worry about... but if it is a serious crash, you'll wish you had an airbag to bounce off of rather than a hard steering column, dashboard and windshield.
Most people will never be in an airbag deploying crash in their lives. Of the minority that will very few will be in the kind of crash where a (frontal) airbag is what prevents them from serious harm.
If OEMs would just be less trigger happy with frontal airbag deployment then I'd be satisfied but the problem with that is that then you get the Concerned Mothers Association(TM) complaining about OEMs not doing everything they can to "save lives" and publicizing a few edge cases.
When I slammed into an oncoming left turning car at 50mph I was not wearing a seatbelt, my Subaru rolled completely over and the front airbag deployed. I left the accident with minor lacerations and no broken bones or major bruising. In 20 years of driving airbag equipped cars this has been my only experience of an airbag deployment. So far I'm a happy customer.
Turning an accident that would have left one only bruised from the seatbelt into one that also includes a broken nose and injuries to one's hands and arms is fairly common.
I have been in an accident with no air bag deployed and wearing my seat belt. I was rear-ended by a vehicle doing 45 mph faster than mine. I had torn ligaments in my neck that took years to fully recover from.
An air bag might have reduced my injury to a sore neck.
P.S. I was in a 1964 Chevrolet C10 Pickup that I had installed seat belts in.
My forehead and shoulders bounced off the steering wheel so hard that the left lens of my eyeglasses popped out. My mother, who was with me, didn't have her seat belt on. She was bounced so hard against the ceiling she was knocked unconscious.
My family had a car that was once very lightly rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light. No major marks or scuffing on the back bumper so my mom just drove away. Three months later, while driving on the highway, she drove into a pot hole that triggered the airbags. The airbags exploded (yes they explode) completely unexpectedly while driving at 70 mph. Thankfully she was not hurt but the experience definitely shook her. Apparently the airbags' trigger had been triggered halfway when the car had been rear-ended.
I just have to ask, how do you know that the two incidents are related? The airbags may have deployed when she hit that pothole regardless of the rear-ender. Especially considering that a rear-ender would not trigger an airbag deployment, because that force is in the opposite direction of what an airbag is designed to protect you from.
Is there any way this can be checked as a part of routine maintenance at a mechanic? It sounds like it should be a standard part of the various state inspections.
Really? Seat belts without airbags are dangerous. At best you risk smashing your face on something hard, at worst, you're looking at orthopedic decapitation in relatively minor accidents.
>Really? Seat belts without airbags are dangerous. At best you risk smashing your face on something hard, at worst, you're looking at orthopedic decapitation in relatively minor accidents.
have no idea why are you saying that. Probably you just _think_ so, and you've probably never been in a "relatively minor" accident, let alone in the accident where the car flies off the road and violently turns in every possible direction while flying and skidding upon landing. I was. Thanks God and Federal regulation authority for the seat belts mandate. Fixed by the seat belts it was like the scariest, very high-G, twists and turns, amusement park ride. Without the seat belts even the survival in that situation would hardly be possible, let alone avoiding heavy traumas and disability. The airbags didn't deploy for whatever reason.
I drove cars without airbags for most of my life. I even still have a car without airbags. Whether it's a good idea or not is debatable, but your statement that it's dangerous doesn't resonate with me. Airbags are a false sense of security and may or may not help you and were originally devised as a way to help drivers who don't use their seat belts. Airbags certainly do run the cost and complexity of cars way up, however. In the past, airbags have injured drivers and can go off unexpectedly (and even killed people when doing so).
survivorship bias. Yes, airbags can have faults that can cause injury. But having them is still safer than not having them. Just because you survived in a car without airbags and some other individual (even many) got injured or killed by an airbag is not evidence that people in general are safer without airbags. You need to assess risk/benefit based on a statistically valid sample size.
That's not to say we shouldn't work on safer airbags, especially for children, or hold manufacturers accountable for faults/failures; of course we should. But saying cars are somehow safer without airbags flies in the face of the available evidence.
[edit] I realize you didn't explicitly say that airbags are not safe ('good idea or not is debatable', 'may or may not'), but you strongly imply that with 'Airbags are a false sense of security'.
"To get the rule, which was opposed by the auto industry because it would add cost to vehicles, Dole promised it would be rescinded if states that accounted for two-thirds of the population passed laws requiring seat belt use."
First time I had ever heard of the last part of that quote. A quick check shows 30 states have primary seatbelt laws. As these include all the big states (NY, CA, TX, FL,...) I would have to think we are at 2/3 of the population.
The claim as phrased is somewhat suspicious, since it's a regulatory rule and the industry had no firm ability to prevent the department from issuing the regulation (they could lobby against it, or try to get allies in Congress to exercise a legislative veto.) Such a promise may have been a political effort to soften the blow, but I don't see any argument that, even if she was morally obligated to follow through on the promise while she was Secretary, it would be even morally binding on a later Secretary, especially in a different administration. And, legally, if the condition isn't in the regulation or somewhere else legally binding, a politicians promise of repeal is meaningless.
> Airbags certainly do run the cost and complexity of cars way up
That's not the case (emphasis on the "way up" part). The average new car price is over $33,000 in the US. Airbags, including side curtains, are a trivial portion of that cost. Even if you averaged it all out by including all airbag deployments and the cost to replace them, you're talking about a net 1%-2% of the cost of a new vehicle's purchase price (much less if we were to count the total expenditures across the lifetime of the vehicle, including fuel and routine maintenance).
"NHTSA estimates that when side curtain airbags become standard to meet the new side impact regulations in 2013, the airbags will add about $33 to the overall cost of the vehicle. Side curtains are slightly more expensive from OEM suppliers than traditional chest airbags (which cost about $50 apiece, on average) [source: Automotive News]"
The need for the side columns to have a degree of strength is a bigger problem for visibility that the bulk added by side curtains.
Driving '60 and 70's cars was great for visibility due to the amount of glass and narrow pillars. The risk of dying in a relatively low speed accident was less ideal.
My girlfriend's 2006? Subaru Legacy had thinner columns than her 2013 model. Not sure by how much, but it was very noticeable at first and I still find I sometimes miss seeing things in the new car that I never had a problem with in the old one. Maybe they are wider now for strength and side air bags. In any case, maximizing cars for crash-test-dummy preservation may not minimize for human harm due to car accidents. With automatic cars this may be not be a very big problem, but they are still a ways off, I think.
Well, when back over accidents became more common because the safety arms race gave vehicles rear visibility only slightly better than a Panzer the government mandated backup cameras.
Self driving cars will probably take over before "front blind spot detection" becomes a thing.
People drove around in cars with no seat belts, solid dashboards, craptastic drum brakes, and other great features along those lines, and most of them survived. The cars were still outrageously dangerous.
Deaths per passenger-mile in the 1960s were about 5x greater than they are today. Traffic fatalities made up about 2.5% of all deaths at the time, even though people drove far less than they do now. I'm quite happy to call that "outrageous."
I assume you're trying to call attention to confounding factors like improved medical care. That's really tough to answer, because 60-year-old cars today aren't driven the way they were when they were new, and they're benefitting from modern tires and brake materials.
I'm sure there are analyses out there of the probability of serious injury or death in various crash scenarios in various types of cars.
Are those numbers adjusted for alcohol consumption and how difficult it is for young people to get their licenses? T
There's a reason your age is the biggest factor in your car insurance premium.
Making it statistically less likely for a car full of drunk teenagers to go off a cliff on their way to prom affects road fatality statistics the same way decreases in infant mortality increases life expectancy.
The primary reduction in traffic fatalities is due to keeping "undesirable people" off the roads, increases in vehicle performance (modern cars can stop on and turn a relative dime compared to cars from decades ago)that turn many accidents into close calls.
Chasing safety is a lot like fuel economy. It's a steady march of small improvements all of which are compromises. I and many other people don't want to be injured in a likely accident scenario for a small reduction in the likelihood of death in an unlikely accident scenario. I also don't want the spare tire of my SUV under the trunk floor where I can't access it without removing cargo just to get .01 extra mpg.
Seatbelt with no airbag is still better than no seatbelt.
Also, I think the shoulder belt brake tends to work better than you imply (I had a big scratch when I collided with someone that crossed the centerline, I didn't hit my face on anything, despite the lack of airbags).
You've got it backwards. "Without a belt, air bags are of slight benefit".[0] Airbags are chiefly a nanny measure to protect people too stupid to fasten a seatbelt.
What are you talking about? That article clearly says that air bags without seat belts are "of slight benefit", but are very effective when combined with seat belts.
I agree. They also are the reason most cars now involved in an collision where one goes off are totaled. We're a lot safer, with respect to potential fatality level crashes, but minor collisions that used to be a few hundred bucks at the body shop are now vehicle ending affairs.
> minor collisions that used to be a few hundred bucks at the body shop are now vehicle ending affairs.
It's worth noting that a lot of this is due to massively improved crumple zone technology - older cars have smaller and sturdier crumple zones, meaning the cars drive away from accidents more intact (although the human being inside might be pretty messed up). New cars take much more damage in relatively small accidents to disperse as much energy as possible. Bad for resale value, but good for human survival.
It's not really the amount of energy dispersed, it's the time it takes it to happen.
It's usually the kinetic energy of the body that needs to be dissipated, modestly increasing the time it takes that to happen dramatically decreases the forces involved.
"Totaled" is just a term of art in the insurance industry. It means that the cost to restore the vehicle is greater than its as-repaired street value. It doesn't mean that the vehicle has to be destroyed; it just means the insurer will only give you the fair market value of the vehicle as though you sold it used immediately before the accident, instead of paying for it to be repaired.
The problem, though, is that when an insurance company does that, it colors the title of the vehicle (e.g. "salvage title"), which makes it harder to sell and reduces its resale value.
They in turn sell it, where one of two things happens.
* It is parted out for spares for other cars.
* Someone actually repairs and resells it. This is one of the things you have to look out for when buying a used car. It may not be difficult to repair it cosmetically, but crumple zones are one use only.
Two deployed airbags in a moderate (but not life threatening) crash likely cost $1000 each to replace, in addition to whatever other damage has been done to the vehicle.
First, actually adding airbags does not add thousands of dollars to the cost of a car. Hundreds, maybe.
Second, I will gladly pay extra for such a highly effective safety feature.
Third, I'm quite certain the medical costs saved by airbags every year will more than offset the cost of installing them on every new car. And that's just cold calculation, without bringing the moral value into it.
Actually, I said security, not safety. They are not quite the same. But yes, I certainly do not always discount emotive decisions. None of us do.
I always drive with a certain slight feeling of unease because of that explosively triggerable thing in front of me. I'd rather not. In no way do I wish to stop anybody else from having these devices in their vehicles - I just wish I weren't forced into having them myself.
For the record, I don't like the forced use of seatbelts either, even though personally, I wouldn't dream of ever driving one meter without them.
What's the difference between security and safety here? I assumed that was a typo/thinko because "security" in the context of cars would mean, to me, things like alarms and other anti-theft devices.
I just can't understand preferring an actual increased risk of death to a known-irrational feeling of unease.
And do any of those studies contradict what I wrote? I reckon not, though I'd be happy to stand corrected and be reassured that the airbag sitting in front of me when I'm driving will always be perfectly safe to use/deploy.
An airbag is a supplementary restraint system. It does not replace or take precedence over the primary restraint system (a.k.a. the seat belt). That's what I meant when I reckoned it to be less critical; the airbag does you little good (and in fact is a heck of a lot more dangerous) if you're not wearing a seat belt.
Now, if this truck didn't even have seatbelts, then I'd be a lot more worried.
That's why airbag control systems are programmed to only activate in crash scenarios where they do more good than harm. It's not as if all 10 airbags will instantly inflate in every possible crash.
This is simply not true. What causes damage and hurts or kills is rapid deceleration, not speed. Sure, speed is a necessary component in order to achieve the most violent deceleration but speed alone does guarantee damage at all.
The racing world proves this conclusively. Watch Formula 1 or NASCAR and you'll see 200 mph crashes where everyone walks away. Watch motorcycle racing and see guys fall of their bikes at all kinds of speeds and just glide on their backs until they stop, get up and walk away. I went off track at Willow Springs raceway doing 120 mph, no big deal.
You're right but your supporting evidence is applied wrong.
People survive crashes in racing regardless of speed not because the crashes typically take place over a long period of time but because they have a seat that fits them well, straps keeping them in it and heat restraints.
Going off track at 120 MPH was not fun. Dirt, rocks, slashed two tires. Beyond that it was uneventful. The speed just makes it last longer and probably contributed to the huge holes on the tires.
You can have a crash on the highway at 100 MPH and have it be just an uneventful other than a crunched-up car. It's a function of the delta in speed AND the delta in acceleration, angle, forces, etc. In other words, if the car in front of you is decelerating gently vs. violently, etc. Too many permutations to list.
I'm saying that most of the benefit in a typical racing situation comes from seats and restraints. Look at some of the wrecks from the cup series race last weekend at Indianapolis. They're not walking away because the wreck took a long time. They're walking away because they weren't bouncing around inside.
"Stapp'd endured 25 Gs. It was the equivalent of a Mach 1.6 ejection at 40,000 feet, a jolt in excess of that experienced by a driver who crashes into a red brick wall at over 120 miles per hour. Only it had lasted perhaps nine times longer. And it had burst nearly every capillary in Stapp's eyeballs. "
"Stapp had already proven what he'd set out to prove: that a pilot, if adequately protected, could survive a high speed, high altitude ejection"
Of course, restraints let the structure around you disintegrate without you being part of the spectacle.
Yet it is true that airbags have probably saved millions of lives as well as untold people from painful, expensive and life changing injuries.
There is no way I would buy a car without airbags. This is one reason I am not into vintage or collectible cars, they are simply not safe and I do not care to drive them.
Its hard to argue against the logic that people travelling slower would reduce injury and harm. It's sure annoying to crawl along slowly, but it's also pretty hard to hurt yourself doing it.
Well, there's a limit, right? The point of a highway is to move people from point A to point B as quickly and safely as possible. In other words, we need to optimize for both. If we optimize only for safety we'd crawl at 5 mph.
to cushion hit you hard if your unrestrained head happens to get close to the steering wheel but not as hard as the steering wheel itself would hit you.
> to cushion hit you hard if your unrestrained head happens to get close to the steering wheel but not as hard as the steering wheel itself would hit you.
The belt does that unless you literally have a rubber neck.
The point of the airbag is to restrain your head so that it does not snap forward too fast and break your neck (heads are heavy, and necks were not built for sudden forward deceleration), that's why it needs to inflate so fast: it has to be fully inflated before you faceplant in it, so that it can slow down your head's forward movement, that's why it has vents and starts deflating as soon as it's fully inflated, and by the time you've stopped it is fully deflated.
If it were a cushion it would have no reason to deflate on its own and the deflation would not, in fact, make any sense at all.
> Google "HANS device". That's a restraint.
The HANS device is a better restraint, it is also a much more cumbersome one and requires wearing a helmet, nobody is going to wear a HANS in their while driving to the corner store.
Not true. If you weren't paying attention and crashed into a car slowing down somewhat gently in front of you then the crash could be rather prolonged and the airbag would be absolutely essential. If you crash into a brick wall going 70 mph that's a totally different situation.
I know it's a prototype, but I wonder how much thought was put into safety. The simplistic look makes you think there's probably no crumple zones. And there's clearly no driver's airbag, dashboard padding, etc.
I like the utilitarian aspect, but I'm fairly certain if you put my samsung frige in a wind tunnel next to that truck my fridge would exhibit less drag.
If you're going to use batteries your range is going to be limited if you're driving a brick -- more attention to aerodynamics would pay dividends in mpe and overall cost -- fewer batteries required to go the same distance...
And yet, that's how you get from point a to point b in many places! The lack of safety is a HUGE concern, and drag causes safety problems in high wind areas (think: the midwest).
Every 2-door, V8, 4wd, long-box work truck ever made is a pretty pointless car. Towing power, ground clearance, an open bed, weight capacity, and most of the other things that distinguish these vehicles are utterly wasted and often counterproductive on a San Francisco street.
But these utility vehicles are instrumental in getting real shit done at countless farms, industries, and construction sites across the globe.
Don't think "Tesla alternative" when you look at this thing. Think of something more like a pickup truck, at home alongside a farm tractor, a 4-wheeler/side-by-side, a skid steer, a flatbed, or a horse.
Many "farms, industries, and construction sites" would not require a 50 mile daily range. Many such situations would have access to electricity, and a truck like this might reduce required fuel deliveries.
Even though they seem sometimes to be the majority of pickup truck owners, those who use pickup trucks for commuting or driving the kids on vacation are doing it wrong.
Speaking as someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere and currently lives in the middle of not very much, a 200 mile range plus a charging time is a deal breaker.
200 miles is great for commuting in cities. $60,000 is rather expensive for a farm truck.
Indeed, much like how high MPG ratings also go out the window in those situations.
The internal-explosion-engine approach to solving this problem is usually to stick a much larger fuel tank in the vehicle to provide the added range. The most direct equivalent in the battery-powered approach would be to add more batteries, whether to the vehicle itself (lots of room in the front and back for a bunch of battery packs) or to the trailer.
The Defender was a lighter vehicle, closer to a Jeep Wrangler. Both came with roll cages. The Bollinger lacks that, and has a flimsy cab. It needs a roll cage.
No, the Defender didn't come with a roll cage, at least not most of them. The American-spec versions that were imported for three years in the 90's had factory-supplied Safety Devices cages but most rest-of-world (ROW) Defenders did not.
Source: I am the co-founder of NAS-ROW, the Defender forum. https://nas-row.com
"One interesting regulatory note is that the weight rating allows the B1 to qualify as a Class 3 commercial truck which considerably reduces regulatory requirements compared to vehicles intended purely for passenger use."
It'll be interesting to see how they can sell this as anything other than a kit car. Kit cars do not get held to the same standards as a manufactured vehicle, but you have to put it together or pay a shop to do it. Plus, you know, they are pretty deadly in accidents.
Love that they stripped all the controls out. Part the nice aesthetics from the old Broncos is the really clean interior. It's so much less junky than numerous obscure controls on most modern cars.
Tesla solves the same problem, in a completely different way, by pushing everything to an iPad like display in the middle. Both end up with nice clean interiors. The mass market cars look like flea markets in comparison.
There is some crazy legacy regulation in the US. This classification of vehicles doesn't exist elsewhere so I don't understand why you'd tailor a vehicle for such loopholes. The only answer would be that it's aimed at the US market only (which would be a weird commercial decision) or it would need a completely separate export model.
Wonder if they need a torque converter still to give it a little more oomph off road.
Also: "It also bucks the high-tech trend of new cars in general. There will be a radio with an AM/FM receiver, Bluetooth connectivity, and an AUX input, but there’s no touchscreen." I hope this becomes a trend. Touchscreens in cars are horrible ux.
Indeed they are. When I'm driving, I need to be able to feel what I'm manipulating; I shouldn't have to take my eyes off the road (or if I do, it should be at an absolute minimum).
A screen on the dashboard controlled by physical buttons/knobs makes a lot more sense if a screen is really necessary. That way, even if I have to look at the screen, at least I can still peripherally see the road.
It's terrible having to input destination names etc without a (screen) keyboard. Screen + knob has been around for ages (e.g my 09 Audi) and it's great for simple things like scrolling radio stations but that's it. So for newer cars - yes it's terrible but there is no option. The safe solution is to stop to use the touch screen, just like you should stop to use the cell phone - but noone does that either. The design should be that there are knobs for a minimum set of features (climate, volume, ...).
Take this to it's extreme and you could make the touch screen read-only when the car is moving unless the passenger seat is occupied.
The new Audi A8 has a haptic feedback touchscreen.
Anyway I'm with you on this. There's a touchscreen in my car and only with some clever finger placing can I tell which part I'm touching. Fortunately I still have physical steering wheel buttons.
Can you recharge these on a normal gas generator? Something like a Miller engine driven generator[1] could probably do it but those are $$$ for the average joe. I only ask because a lot of people trailer their rock crawlers/mudders to more remote areas to go play and have fun, but when the electricity runs dry you'll need a way to power it back up. This thing looks like it'd be a lot of fun not only for daily use but also for backwoods offroading.
I'm guessing that these Bollinger guys won't stand for any of that sissy "pure sine wave" or "ground rod" crap, and would let it charge with just about anything that puts out a voltage.
Not that a pure sine wave generator isn't superior to noisy, cheap square wave 'inverters' or that grounding a charging EV is a bad idea, but that's the attitude I have picked up from seeing ground pins cut off of various farms and tools. I'm sure their EEs would make sure that the thing was double-insulated and otherwise capable of dealing with this need.
Regarding current draw, it should be possible to regulate it with the external equipment if you really need it. All US EVs support J1772, and the J1772 plug tells the car how much it's allowed to draw. Some cars let you tell it to draw even less, but it will always respect the equipment's limiter.
For a simple example of this, Tesla's mobile connector will signal different maximum currents depending on which outlet adapter you have on it. If you have a NEMA 14-50 adapter it'll tell the car to draw up to 40A, but if you swap in the NEMA 5-15 adapter it'll tell the car to only draw 12A.
> - Need a sine wave generator vs the cheaper square wave ones.
That seems really weird; I'd expect that the big charging station you install in your garage would convert from home AC into some high-current DC. Batteries don't actually charge on AC, do they?
Well in the case I presented the generator would stay with your rv/ or whatever you're towing this thing around with, as I explained, a lot of people use these types of vehicles in more remote areas. You don't really need the engine for going out during the day, only for recharging at the end of the day. This means a much simpler design and less weight to drag around. A generator is much easier to service and maintain that an engine attached to the vehicle.
Of course I'm talking about a small niche of customers in an already small niche of people that buy 4x4s.
I'd bring it while towing something heavy as a safety net. Towing will affect the range in ways which aren't easy to calculate with hilly terrain even if you know the weight of the trailer + cargo.
Not necessarily - you might only charge using the generator every 20th cycle; the other 19 you might leave it at home (or in your other vehicle, or whatever).
That's the idea of a hybrid, no? For a lot of the places I'd want to go camping in a truck like this, I'd be likely to want a generator anyway, so I might as well trickle-charge the vehicle back up whenever the power is on.
I think the future really will be a hybrid - at least have a small generator to get out of emergency or stuck situations. I'd much rather drive at 10mph somewhere than need a flatbed pickup.
I've been looking at buying an electric car recently and was surprised that the list of electic SUVs is really small. There's basically the Model X and not all that much more. The Rav4 got discontinued.
It seems to me that this is a huge market opportunity. The technology is right on the cusp of being very practical in terms of range. Soccer moms who commute to the grocery store and occasionally go on a trip to the mountains want a car with room and 4WD. If such a car existed, they would be shouting "take my money!" Not quite sure why the car manufacturers aren't building these things.
> Not quite sure why the car manufacturers aren't building these things.
Because consumers aren't buying these things.
The only people who seem to be buying full electric vehicles are electric vehicle enthusiasts, meaning it is a niche. Most enthusiasts will just buy a Tesla if there is a Tesla at the price bracket they're looking at, since Tesla is the most exciting brand in electric by far.
For everyone else, full electric vehicles don't make cost effective sense. Oil is too cheap and electricity too expensive. Many vehicle subsidies have also vanished. So people who are cost sensitive are looking at hybrids, or even plug in hybrids, since it is completely future proof to oil or electric price fluctuations.
People aren't buying electric for completely normal rational reasons you can quantify using an Excel spreadsheet. For that to change, either oil has to go up, electricity has to come down, subsidies have to return, or electric vehicles need to offer some other quantifiable value not found on a hybrid.
I would have assumed the same even a couple months ago. The idea of buying an electric car never even crossed my mind. Now, at least in my case, after running the numbers its a no-brainer.
A car like the Fiat 500e, Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf etc. can be leased for $100-$200/mo. These cars all effectively get 100+ mpg. So, any difference in the lease cost is made up for in 1 or 2 tanks of gas.
There are still tons of incentives as well. In a couple years, there will be little functional difference between electric and gas cars for 99.9% of use cases. I think in 10 years, new sales of electric cars will exceed gas cars.
If you commute in the Bay Area an electric car can save you a lot of time and possible a lot of money on tolls, $3.5/day * 5 days/wk * 4 wks/month = $70/month saved, big chunk you can put towards the lease payment.
If you really dig around during that era, you'll also find a few books and magazine articles about converting certain small cars (things like the Gremlin and Pinto) to all-electric drive trains - and even custom hybrid drive-trains. The main downsides of the time were lack of battery technology and effective motor controllers (most affordable - for the time - controllers were for brushed motors).
It's encouraging to see this. It's about time for electric pickup trucks. The price point ($60K) is going to be a problem for work trucks.
They talk about high speed, not low-speed high-torque. They don't say much about how the drivetrain behaves at low speed. Do they have locking differentials, or something that prevents wheel spin? It's a two-motor system. Does the motor control system know how to keep the front and back wheels in sync when traction is bad? You don't have a front-to-back differential; that's a software operation here.
How good is very low speed, high-torque operation? There's no shifting, so you have to do low-speed control in software. With good software and differentials, this could be a good rock-crawler. Can you pull a stump with this thing? They should be able to do this, assuming they're using 3-phase motors like everybody else today.
Providing 120VAC power out is a nice feature. They don't say much about charging. It should carry a charger that can charge from 120/240VAC, so you could charge slowly from any power outlet if you have to. Or another Bollinger. You'd have a big charger at home base, but opportunistic charging is a necessity when you're far from charging stations.
Really needs air bags, and fewer sharp edges in the passenger compartment. Off-road that thing and you'll cut yourself on the door handles. Once they find a real manufacturer, they can clean up the interior.
Does it have a heater? That's a big problem with electrics, especially ones like this with no insulation.
Ford used to sell (in the 90s) an electric Ranger. It used lead acid batteries.
It wasn't a big seller, and it didn't get great range - but it did exist for a bit. Not sure why they made it, though.
/The Ford Ranger (ICE) was actually a very popular small pickup for commercial usage; tons of companies used them, especially utility companies or other companies of that nature. They tended to be very rugged little workhorses, and their size - though small - was still very capable of handling some decent sized loads.
Regarding your comments on charging - I hope that they add a charging port for solar. If you ever got stuck, and you had a panel with you (for camping or whatnot), you'd at least have some method to get topped up.
A 100 watt solar panel, a typical size for camping, would take 600 hours of bright sunlight to charge a 60KWh battery. About 10 weeks. In 10 hours you could get 1KWh, and might be able to move a bit.
An electric drivetrain is incongruent with traditional truck marketing, apparently. A great deal of this is in the visceral sensation of proximity to a powerful engine - the loud noises, the excessive exhaust, the overbearing atmospheric vibrations, etc.
Frustrating in that the most realistic option is retrofitting an existing electric car drivetrain to a small truck frame.
None of that is what any truck marketing is about. Have you seen truck commercials or ridden in a brand new, unmodified truck? There is no loud noise, no vibrations (overbearing or not), virtually no noticeable exhaust. Modern consumer trucks are luxury vehicles, properly isolated from the outside world. Smooth, quiet rides and cushy feeling interiors. Car-like handling. That's what truck marketing is, and that's how modern trucks are built. In the commercials you see them driving over rough terrain, then they cut to a quiet and serene interior shot where the driver might as well be parked with the engine off.
Even for work trucks, they advertise that it has enough power to get your work done, but always emphasize that it's refined and comfortable. People who drive work trucks don't specifically want to drive work trucks, that's just the only vehicle that will get the job done.
What you're thinking of is children who think that the louder exhuast, the more soot, and the bigger engine makes them more of a man. No truck manufacturer wants to be associated with that and no trucks roll out of the factory with a configuration like that. All of that makes a truck less useful.
The highest selling vehicle in America is a full-size pickup truck made of aluminum and has a 6-cylinder engine. It's a very small market of truck buyers who want loud noses, excessive exhaust, or overbearing vibrations, that is not traditional truck marketing.
Currently driving an old, rebranded S-10, with a 2.6L engine. Daily driver, weekly 120mi trips, occasional adventure/event/offroad/bad city streets/"need to rescue this person" vehicle, and occasional cargo vehicle aka "Guy with a truck".
An S-10 weighs about as much as a Camry or Prius, and uses a similar drivetrain. The engine of this rebranded S-10 is parts-compatible with a Dodge 600 of the same era.
Are you talking about people buying a truck to get to their desk job, or people buying a truck to haul a load? Those are two different groups with different requirements.
The first group like the tough image, but so long as it goes 100 miles round trip and you can put something in it they have their needs met and the rest is about image. This group just needs an electric car drive train.
The second group actually needs a truck. They have a ton (literally a ton) of tools that they need to get from job site to job site (think the handyman type who does several 2-3 hour jobs). Or they are back and forth from the warehouse delivering materials to different work sites. Or they are bringing 400 liters of fuel to the tractor, and then off to the feed store. I can probably come up with a few dozen other groups of people who use a truck as a truck.
That depends on which user you are asking about and how fast you can recharge.
First note that most of these users are loaded - they are now driving a truck rated to get ~20mpg unloaded, but they average ~14mpg because of their extra load. Realistically your 200 mile range to 140 miles.
When you are going from job to job - 25 miles to the first job, then 50 to the next, then 30, you are too far from home to make it back. Generic handyman jobs stay closer to home, but if you are the only mechanic in your city that knows how to fix a paver that might be your life (road equipment is generally repaired/maintained on sight as that is cheaper than bringing them in)
If you are dong warehouse delivery you are probably looking at a bunch of 60 mile round trips before you head back to refill the truck, if you can recharge while the truck is loading you are fine. Fast recharge in current batteries currently reduces their life, but we can budget for that. (there is potential for something like drive 50 miles and put 20 miles worth of charge back, and repeat: this is enough to get to the end of the day and then you do a full recharge overnight)
The farmer going to the tractor and the feed store probably cannot stop to recharge - he might leave the truck sitting most of the day, but never near a power line. However a 200 mile day would be unusual. If we make sure that every shed/barn has a charging station he can probably get by.
Depends on location. If you live in west Texas or Utah or other states where long daily travel is common then yes you need a vehicle with a lot of range. Often you will see guys will external fuel tanks on their vehicles to support the distances they travel.
Or that if you need a truck for utility purposes it has to have towing and/or storage capacity. There is a huge fleet market for small trucks rangers/tacomas and half ton trucks that just need a bed or light towing capacity. The people making buying decisions for fleet pools aren't interested in buying trucks based on your gross exaggerations, they're buying based on what's going to save them money over time first and for most.
> An electric drivetrain is incongruent with traditional truck marketing, apparently.
That doesn't make any sense. Trucking is a business market, not consumer. They care about bottom line.
If electric trucks would increase profits there would be a demand for them. Right now they're just not practical for most uses. The upfront cost is too high and the significant weight from batteries reduces load capacity.
I really want one. Theres no reasonable modern adventure/utility truck on the market. Icons are nice but $$$. Same for all the other modern after market conversions. Like many others Ive settled on a 30 year old truck (4runner/hilux surf) for this niche.
but... the complex suspension worries me. Fungibility or flexibility yes, but massive adjustability sounds fragile and complex. Dual drive sure, but it must have some sort of LSD. Which isnt mentuoned. 200 miles is a really short range. I can do 300+ on my stock tank and its not enough. Last 4 day weekend in the cascades/palouse/okanogan was about 700 miles. Practical recharging in the rural/wilds is .... unlikely.
As mentioned until theres real capital and manufacturing this is vaporware. Im also skeptical of $60,000, I'll bet real money against that. Icon, a small batch truck manufacturer with real product, is more like $100-150,00 and up.
Edit: entry and exit angles look nice. Real curious how that "plate" style chassis handles flex.
still think the best place is school buses. you know where they will be parked and their exact routes. plus you get kids and parents used to electric vehicles on an every day use.
yes they are expensive but all it takes is a spike in gas prices to seriously hurt some districts who got hit hard the last time it went high.
there are many markets for vehicles which have set operation ranges and known routes. EV tech ain't near replacing combustion in many cases but in tightly controlled instances it does work. (range, charging, weather, and cost are the four areas all being worked on and all needing work)
His frustration with his trucks I bet it because they were powered by gas. Trucks should only be diesel you don't need horsepower (fast time to cover a distance) you need leverage aka torque.
A documentary on Sherman tanks amazed me because they were gas powered and when hit gasoline exploded. German tanks were powered by diesel. The US has hated diesel from day one it's amazing.
But electric has tons of torque by design it should be suitable. But I wonder if the horsepower can be dialed down for more range?
When skiing with a diesel car, I've had to dump wastepaper bins full of hot water from the motel's shower to get it warm enough to start. The Germans had to light bonfires under their tanks while invading Russia. Most modern tanks use kerosene/jet fuel to power turbine engines. This designer is making a vehicle for upstate New York where winters can be pretty chilly.
His frustration with small utility vehicles and a pickup truck are more likely due to types of suspension and weight distribution. Low enough gearing will give you the equivalent of high torque to get over small boulders, but getting through snow is not even that difficult. The challenge is getting your tires to dig in, not a shortage of power.
I'm in the Canadian Maritimes about 1,000km (400 miles) north east of NY city. Winters here Dec/Jan/Feb/Mar can easily be a static -20C (-4F) my old Dodge diesel truck has no problems starting, I used to use a grill blocker and a block heater but really it isn't needed just use thinner motor oil for the winter. And the ability to travel 1,000km (621m) per 100 liter (26.4US gal.) tank was nice for a large truck the efficiency of diesel is far beyond gasoline engines.
I'd love a small diesel or electric or diesel/electric 4x4 like a Jeep or a four door 4x4 truck.
I'd take that electric truck though my love of diesel was due to its efficiency and torque now electric vehicles getting common that's a good replacement. Although I worry about going through deep water with a giant battery! In the springtime I've been through water 30cm deep (12") even in the middle of my small town.
This was about 20-30 years ago, and I'm sure I had the wrong engine oil for the Lake Tahoe area compared to the warmer weather on the coast. At the same time that the guy from AAA recommended hot water for warming a diesel engine, he said that the water would have been more likely to cause problems with a gasoline engine.
However, starting it did generally involve 5-10 seconds of running the glowplug, even when it was 50°F (10°C) outside. Do more modern diesel engines have high enough compression that they don't need to warm the compression chamber as much before it will combust?
I did like driving a diesel car. It's seemed very utilitarian and was extremely reliable and durable.
I wonder why there aren't more EV trailers on the road, a trucking company would be more willing to absorb the higher initial costs of an electric truck in order to save on fuel down the line. Is it because EV can't effectively compete in terms of fuel costs against to long range you get with diesel. Or is it just short sightedness among manufacturers
Fascinating approach and re-thinking of a utility vehicle. I'm thinking the 10,000 - 20,000 units is pretty ambitious. Hence why The Verge politely just mentions that Bollinger hasn't figured out a "final price" yet but fails to mention what a "current estimate of final price" might be.
When I think of utility vehicles, I think of Defender 90 and Toyota Hilux type vehicles - spartan, proven, reparable in many parts of the world. When I think of a new car model, even from large manufacturers, I get the jitters of being a first-adopter. So much gets learned and shaken out by real-world, human use. Nice idea, but I'm a dreamer at heart and through receiving lots of pragmatic feedback, I kind of see this through the same lens.
I think they'd be better off selling them at 120K. The design on that thing is brutal (in a good way). I think collectors would buy them and they wouldn't have to worry about scaling their manufacturing.
I feel there's a huge lack of electric/hybrid vehicles in the truck/pickup space, although for understandable reason.
However I've heard of a company that's working on a fleet version of an eletric pickup truck and I think they're now looking for client interest.[0]
The caveat is that it's not fully electric. 80 mile all-electric and then the generator kicks in, giving it 310 miles per tank. However pretty good gas mileage and safety was definitely a concern.
But both of these are well outside of my price range. But it has to start somewhere.
The thing I've feared/worried about when it has come to the push for electric, and self-driving vehicles, and the recent rumblings by France and the UK to ban ICE vehicles in the near future - is that those who enjoy off-roading are being left out.
Thanks for sharing that link. You can see from the product that neither the CEO (Adlink), President (Gannett), Dir or Eng (P&G) have any experience with vehicles.
I love that they are doing a hybrid stepside truck chassis with BMW engines but I hope they have something else. A public NASDAQ company that has $90M in paid-in capital but only $10M cash now, had better sell to stay alive. I hope they do. The basic idea is good; they need to execute.
Nobody who wants a truck for truck stuff is gonna put up with the downsides of electric and the NVH of a 60s panel van and 200mi range unless it costs much less than vehicles with equivalent performance.
The people who buy electric to make a statement about their preference in power sources are not the people who will buy a bare-bones truck.
>The people who buy electric to make a statement about their preference in power sources are not the people who will buy a bare-bones truck.
I think you could have made the same statement about luxury vehicles before the Model S. Electric provides such a game changing increase in performance that people wont care about the downsides as much, so long as you can make it sexy.
I've been dreaming of a car like this for a long while now. Even down to its boxy look and the fact that it looks like it won't get stuck in an inch-high snow drift.
They won't even start accepting deposits until 2018, apparently. Gives me more time to save up for this beauty.
If they're lagging in the EV department due to lack of funds, purchasing a startup like this won't change that. Bollinger probably designed almost none of the core "EV" stuff - motor drivers, motors, charging circuitry etc. They couldn't afford to. They've almost certainly bought it off the shelf from one of the many automotive OEMs. Chrysler could do the same.
It doesn't help that FCA insists on doing the bare legal-minimum wrt to EVs. Their executive team does not see any value in EVs, they are literally just a cost of doing business for FCA.
Cool. But it's DOA if it doesn't meet safety standards. People might accept 4/5 NCAP stars but not for a premium car. Lack of airbag is concerning but might be fixed before the production model is finished I suppose.
It isn't so much that your employer is hiring (that's great!) - but what happens should the employee be let go or want to change employers? Are there other employers in the area needing software engineers? Are there enough of them to support the needed software engineers as a whole?
That's the issue, as I am sure you are aware. In SV, a software engineer (according to trite legend, I suppose) can walk out the door and be hired again across the street the same day. They can probably repeat that every day for a year, and still not run out of options.
I know that's an oversimplification, and hyperbole to boot - but you know what I mean.
An area needs more than one employer in the space to make it attractive to those employees they need. Especially if they want to stay in the area long term...
Of course, this is just my opinion, and a ton of older vehicles that are considered cars would fall into this category. Heck, a standard Jeep Wrangler would fall into this category.
Furthermore, there isn't any reason you couldn't make a truck (that is, a pickup) using a unibody approach, but I don't know of any examples (which just may be my ignorance).
Regardless - I always consider anything modern with a ladder frame to be a "truck". It may not be a pickup, but to me it's still a truck.
That hilariously restrictive definition would have classified my old beast of an ex-military cargo vehicle as a "minivan", but I doubt you'd convince any onlooker to label a vehicle like this as anything other than a "truck":
Yeah - technically. But this whole discussion is about the consumer space, not about those purchasing commercial equipment for hauling tonnage or whatnot.
Even so, though - there are plenty of consumer pickup models which are used commercially, and more than a few can handle some pretty big loads (especially towing)...
GVM > 4.5 ton is what makes a truck. Anything less is not a truck. 4.5 to 8 ton is light, 8 - 12 is medium, 12 ton an up is heavy for rigid trucks. That thing is a SUV.
If they were willing to move to Reno (and if Tesla was down with it) they could piggyback on the existing Gigafactory here. I'm not sure how much it'd take to adapt the B1 to Tesla/Panasonic batteries, though.
As an additional bonus, there are lots of mountains over here, too, and snowy ones at that. Truckee or Tahoe during the winter would make an excellent proving ground for these things, and would additionally be close to a strong potential market for them.
Why would they? Tesla has no gigafactory either (the actual battery factory and battery IP belongs to panasonic, and they can sell to whomever they wish to)
That steering column will look mighty impressive when the driver impales herself on it in a crash. I wonder what NHTSA thinks of non-crumpling columns and steering wheels with no air bag.
I think he's complaining about people buying ridiculously large cars for commuter use. And saying that it's still bad for the environment if it's a stupidly large and heavy EV that's being misused in this way.
I am making the claim that while these vehicles may be useful for hauling stuff around farms they should not be abused (see Hummer, Jeep, SUV, pickup trucks, massive mommy waggons). While electric motors allow us to reduce the CO2 emissions somewhat the energy does not magically come from nowhere: there are externalities associated with all methods of power generation.
It is a truism that when people think they're getting a bargain they then over-consume and end up consuming more than they would have if the price were higher initially. I would like to see that not happening with electric vehicles.
Reduction in energy consumption is easily achieved by not chosing a ridiculously heavy, non-aerodynamic vehicle.
Not the OP, but one justification is that they aren't consuming gasoline and taxes on gasoline are primarily how roads are paid for. I wouldn't go as far as the OP, but instead I would hope the government finds some way to tax electric vehicles equitably or change how road funding works.
In a few European countries (e.g. Germany, Austria, Switzerland) you pay a yearly tax for each car that you own that is meant to fund road maintenance/development. This is about 350 USD in Germany.
At some other countries (e.g. Portugal, Italy, France), they have tolls for the highways so only the cars crossing that road pay for the cost.
And a new option is automatic tolls, where you don't even stop. They just take a picture of the car with license plate and send you the accumulated bill to your home (e.g. Portugal). Personally my preferred option is the German approach where you know that this is a fixed price. Paying by usage ends up being abused, in Portugal they leased the highways to privates that now hiked up the prices like crazy since it is basically a monopoly (no other road to reach your destination).
>At some other countries (e.g. Portugal, Italy, France), they have tolls for the highways so only the cars crossing that road pay for the cost.
JFYI in Italy you pay BOTH a "fixed tax" (which is function of the horsepower of the car engine) AND most highways have tolls.
You pay with the fixed tax the "general maintenance and development" of ALL roads (excluded toll highways) and you pay the toll on a per use basis, as highways are largely "private" (technically they are public but object of concession/grant to privates).
Thanks for the detail about the road taxes in Italy. I had to stop so often on the road headed towards Milan to pay tolls every couple of kilometres and you still have to pay an yearly cost as resident, great.
Normally on highways in Italy you take a ticket when enterng the highway and pay when you exit, the toll boxes every few kilometres is something that was removed everywhere in the 70's (though I cannot exclude that a specific road somewhere in Italy still has them).
In the US, everyone of these options is used in various ways. You have to take into account though that some of this is done by the individual states, some is Federal, and some is local or even public/private partnerships. There is no single countrywide solution that can solve something like highway maintenance on a country the size of the US.
In Florida we have a huge toll system with the majority of it under an RFID like 'pass' you stick under your window. Tolls are ran by the state, largely on busy state roads in larger metro areas. I'm a pretty big fan, largely because it contributes to our lack of a state income tax.
My mind immediately went to the privacy implications of that. But then, you are in public on a public road so maybe tracking cars isn't such a big deal.
Vaporware until they get a production line though, and the absence of airbag is somewhat worrying when it advertises a top speed of 127mph and 0-60 in 4.5, at a GVWR 10klbs it's outside the light truck regs (8.5klbs GVWR) and thus doesn't require them but still...
Of note, the Verge article is light on useful pictures, there are other sites with interesting pics especially of the interior: http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1111790_bollinger-b1-the-...
And while it has the same dimensions as a Wrangler it avertises 2~3 times the curb weight and towing capacity and almost twice the cargo volume (rear seats stowed). And the maximum ground clearance is pretty ridiculous as well (advertised as adjustable from 10 to 20, most trucks seem to be between 8 and 12)