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Tesla Planning an Electric Pickup Truck, Says Elon Musk
cartechboy writes "Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk says the company will make an electric pickup truck to compete with America's best-selling Ford F-Series pickups. Musk made the comment yesterday at the end of an interview at a tech conference in New York. Surrounded by questioners, Musk was asked if Tesla would ever make commercial fleet trucks (like for UPS or Fed Ex) and he responded that a consumer truck would be the company's best answer, because America's pickup truck sales numbers don't lie — that's what buyers want, and if Tesla wants to replace the most gasoline miles possible, that's what they should build. Musk said it will be about five years before the company builds its pickup however, giving it time to focus on another hurdle: breaking into the pickup market. Texas is where trucks rule, and Texas, as we know, is the Bermuda Triangle for Tesla." That also gives me five years to save up for one, and (just maybe) five years for Ford, et al to jump in, too.
and (just maybe) five years for Ford, et al to jump in, too.
Ford has already made an electric Ranger.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Yes! Gotta capture that redneck high-tech environmentally-friendly market.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Yep, because only Tesla cars ever catch on fire, not regular cars. Oh, wait, there are 17 google results for the extremely specific phrase "ups truck caught on fire", which seem to reference at least a handful of actual occurrences. (Yes, 17 is pretty low, but that is also a very specific phrase. I'm sure I could find more if I searched for variations.)
...is towing capacity. The tremendous torque would make it no problem for power, but range is a huge issue. Buzzing around town light, no problem. But the traditional use of a full size pickup to haul boats, toy haulers, travel trailers and 5th wheels long distance would probably garner almost nonexistant range due to the wind drag and weight. It's hard enough to make that equation work with diesel and gas - I take a significant hit when hooking up the toy hauler trailer.
So you would have a choice of a gas vehicle that will do all those things, or an electric vehicle that is probably only good for short hauls or not towing, and then needing still another vehicle to do towing. A hybrid is a better case for that use, as long as the power is there when you need it.
For all those people that drive them only for a status symbol but don't actually make use of them, then that might be a good market for them.
I use my 7.3L turbodiesel about once a month to pull heavy things like god intended it to, and the rest of the time I'm in my 30MPG car.
I think range will be one of the bigger issues in Texas. Many truck owners put on a lot of miles, especially out in rural areas. You don't generally have the option to recharge inplaces like Vernon, TX, Post, TX or Detroit, TX. And I don't see it as likely in the near future. And these will be particularly tough to sell to anyone who uses them for hunting and such activities, since the destinations are frequently remote.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Nissan and Honda have tried to break into the truck market for years but the market is not the same as the car market. Truck buyers are hard to sway away from what they know, love and trust. Ford lovers don't buy Dodge and vice versa.
With electric engines torque won't be a problem but will reliability and durability be issues?
If Tesla succeeds at making a durable truck that gets at least 300 - 400 miles with a decent load capacity, a price tag to compete and more power, I can see some changing their preferred brand.
Several manufacturers have gotten out of the U.S. small truck market recently. Ford and Dodge both dropped their small and mid-size offerings due to falling sales in the small truck arena. It's a hard market to break into and there's a lot of brand loyalty among the consumers.
Pickups might be the only place gasoline[or truly diesel] makes sense. We just have to stop buying a pickup truck to only actually use it 30% or less of the time.
Trucks would make so much more sense as rentals rather than owning them for most truck owners. If you have a boat you use a hand full of times a year, you don't need to own a truck. If you go hunting and bring ATV's for two months out of the year...you don't need to own a truck.
If you own a labor business or work on a farm, or whatever, yes it makes a lot of sense to own a truck.
The over whelming population of people who are paying notes[they don't own shit] on huge trucks don't need them. The only purpose they generally serve is false reassurance of masculinity and to further escalate the American 'Canyonero' phenomenon.
I guess we should have stopped taking flights in Boeing air planes after they had electrical fire issues right?
If everybody was as negative as you are towards progress we would still be trying to figure out how to contain fire.
You silly optimist. You'd just get "Delivery Status: Exception" and have to hammer customer support for details, unless you've shelled out for Heroic Platinum NSA Tracking, in which case they might have a more detailed error code.
UPS and FedEX both already have hybrid trucks in use in a handful of places.
Alberta is the Texas of Canada, and there's cheap hydro power from BC to power them.
In fact, anywhere that electricity comes from cheaper solar, wind, or hydroelectric sources, given how people actually use their trucks, an electric truck makes sense.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Locomotives are electric[diesel-electric] and I think they work plenty hard. Stop regurgitating American truck commercials. Going to Walmart and McDonalds is not hard.
Like GM, Ford also squandered its early technology in the EV area.
Ford Ranger EV, 1,500 produced, model years 1998–2002.
GM EV1, 1117 produced, model years 1996–1999. They also had the small truck S-10 EV variant.
Toyota RAV4 EV was produced from 1997–2003, and is now back in production with Tesla.
Is anyone surprised that a Japanese company had longer foresight than the American ones? Thank you Wall Street.
.. Presuming it has at least a 1500 lb weight rating, can tow 30,000 lbs, all while maintaining a range of 250+ miles. Oh, and I'll need to be able to go from 0% - 100% charge in less than 30 minutes (preferably less than 5).
In rural Missouri.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
We called that the "Whoopsie" on the Boeing 737 engineering team.
That was a fun problem to debug.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I guess I'm just tired of seeing thinly-velied advertisements for Tesla's stock on /. At least the pink-sheet stock emails I received in the 90's had some interesting stories behind them, and even when they didn't I could route them to my junk folder instead of having to see them on the front page of /.
They had a workaround before the next 737 flew after the problem was isolated. You couldn't have stopped flying in that period because it would have been impossible to do so. That, and what would you do if you booked a flight on an airbus that, when you went to the gate, noticed that it was a 737? walk out and lose thousands of dollars for a flight that had roughly the same chance of arriving safely at the other end as the airbus that was scheduled?
From the time it was isolate to when there was a mechanical fix, there were zero crashes. Training fixed the issue. How to fly when your plane is broken is most of the training pilots get. Flying when everything is working is boring.
Learn to love Alaska
We (the uk) still have these doing their rounds.
The main reason they have declined is due to supermarkets obtaining the customer sales. Nothing to do with how their powered.
Actually, I was thinking that instead of full-on electric, train-based diesel-electric hybrid technology would make a lot of sense. I'm sure having something like the pulling power and range of a train would be all kinds of awesome in a pickup.
If it doesn't have ion thrusters for towing, I will be thoroughly disappointed. Yes, they basically only work in a vacuum but still, they'd look really cool!
I stopped flying before they had identified the cause. But they knew well before arriving at root cause that the problem was a rudder hardover - they just couldn't figure out the conditions which led to it. And training didn't fix the issue perse - it only made it less likely to lead to a crash since it added some margin to the approach speed (more headroom above rudder cross over velocity).
I stopped flying once I proved that heavier-than-air flight is impossible.
I'm sorry but your accurate information comport with the premise of my joke so I have to dismiss it out of hand.
I stopped flying in 737's until Boeing implemented a workaround for the hardover rudder problem that caused 737's to yaw on their side and fly straight into the ground.
Yes, hopefully you switched to the Airbus competitor to the 737 which had no problems with the rudder, just an issue with the screw sheering off on the elevator.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The Tesla Model S weighs more an 1000 pounds more than similar gas powered vehicles. Pickups (well, the ones that are actually used for work) are often driven on dirt. Even if it just an unfinished driveway at a work site rather than a field, it can still be muddy. The heavier the vehicle on a given set of tires, the more you sink and are likely to get stuck. You get work around this with bigger tires or more tires but that increases costs and reduces efficiency. Reducing efficiency means you carry even more expensive and heavy batteries.
Do you also look down your nose at people who buy two-door F150's because they can't seat 5 passengers or tow 18,000 lbs? It's about buying what fits your needs, and not everyone needs a truck for 300 miles a day, 6 days a week, anymore than everyone needs a F450 Super Duty Crew Cab.
/statingtheobvious
You don't need insurance to collect for damages, UPS or otherwise, and the lie is the implication that the chances of fire are greater with an EV than gas/diesel they use now. The statistics I've seen on it indicate that an EV gets more news coverage, giving false impressions to people that rely on the news to gauge the likelihood of something occurring, but that the actual risk of fire is smaller in an EV than "regular" auto.
Learn to love Alaska
That's why Mercedes and BMW went out of business in the 50's, and GM discontinued the Cadillac line during the Carter Administration. As for Ford, they stopped making the high end 450 dualies because no one buys pickups for more than $30k.
One of mine actually WAS destroyed that way. In a diesel delivery van.
All vehicles burn nicely, and the fire need not begin with either petrol or EV drive batteries. Google "Ford cruise control switch fires".
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Enough pie in the sky and train in the tube already.
Haul your tail in and make and deliver a decent 40K Tesla sedan.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Most of Tesla's problems in Texas are from eliminating the dealership. For example, I had no problems when I recently bought my all electric Nissan Leaf from Gunn Nissan in San Antonio, TX.
About 50% of the human race is middlemen and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated. This [state]...we play nice. Got enemies enough as it is.
The far more important battle, switching from gas to electric vehicles, has less to do with Texas.
Locomotives are turbine-electric and diesel-electric HYBRIDS.
A hybrid truck could be a terrific jobsite vehicle, and some companies have done conversions, but Tesla aren't proposing a hybrid.
[quote]
Stop regurgitating American truck commercials. Going to Walmart and McDonalds is not hard.
[/quote]
Millions of us in Flyover Country use our trucks as tools, not suburban dick jewelry. I like the relative simplicity of PHEVs, but none exist which are suitable replacements for even an F-150-sized truck. Good luck putting a 1300lb welder in the back of a Tesla EV pickup and going any serious distance without recharging.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Right, because there's nothing heavy in the gas/diesel truck, is there.
Oh, wait... a diesel engine weighs over1,000 pounds - not counting accessories?
I'm sure replacing that would leave a bit of room in the budget for batteries....
"Musk said it will be about five years before the company builds its pickup however, giving it time to focus on another hurdle: breaking into the pickup market. Texas is where trucks rule, and Texas, as we know, is the Bermuda Triangle for Tesla."
The latter portion of this statement seems to be an editorial comment by the submitter - not a statement by Musk. That being said, the submitter doesn't seem to have bothered to Google - Texas is the single largest consumer of pickup trucks, but sales there only account for sixteen percent of total US sales. Seems to me that you could build quite a sizable and profitable pickup truck business without ever selling one in Texas.
There's a brewery in Canada called Steam Whistle Pilsner that has built an awesome electric vintage hot rod pickup - "Retro Electro." It was a restoration / build from the ground up. Whenever I see it gliding around town I have vehicle envy...
http://www.steamwhistle.ca/retroelectro/index.php
A Ford F-150 truck with Ecoboost weighs 4,935 pounds. A Tesla S weighs 4,647. Right about the same weight.
The F-150 is a full-size truck with a heavy chassis, and a 11,300 pound towing capacity. A Tesla S is a little sedan. By the time the Tesla S is beefed up to truck capability, it is going to weigh a lot more than the Tesla sedan, and also a lot more than the F-150.
The F-150 pays fuel taxes which are used for road maintenance. The much heavier Tesla will pay zero. Plus, the F-150 owner will help pay for the Tesla's rebate.
These electric vehicles were destroyed to **guarantee revenue streams** which have been in place for centuries.
It was the global aristocracy that 'killed the electric car'
Thank you Dave Raggett
Oh you saw a TV show once about electric cars?
**farts**
Seriously don't expect to arrive to any conclusions looking at this situation in that manner...
Electric car technology was purposefully pushed aside and kept on the shelf.
Question: Why do critics of big biz always just take for granted what the Corp. says the product in question costs? Be it gasoline or electric cars or w/e...
I don't trust the valuation that a typical US publicly held Corp puts on their products. It's **not** based on simple supply/demand, but all their unnecessary "market research" abstractions. Plus don't get me started on the 'marketing' budget for products.
Every time you see a commercial or social media bit, remember that the company advertising made the choice to make their product **more expensive** so that you could see that ad.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I guess I'm just tired of seeing thinly-velied advertisements for Tesla's stock on /.
You may be tired of it, I'm not. I enjoy seeing innovative companies doing well, I like hearing about new stuff, and I don't care about the stock exchange.
I doubt I'll ever buy an electric car, because I always buy cheap and sell (or scrap) cheap. My current car (a DC2 Integra type R) cost 5% of a new Tesla.
I heard the number was 17 vehicles burn every hour in the U.S.. But Tesla won't be able to capture the moment till they to have their own VIAGRA commerical.
You fail statistics, AC. Don't you have a lottery ticket to buy?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Slightly off-topic, but what is stopping Tesla from establishing a franchise store in Texas? What stops Elon Musk from personally establishing an dealership like any other?
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
finally some decend looking cars... Most normal cars are soooooo ugly these days.. I hope Jeep will make an all electric cherokee/wrangler.. Electric cars are the future...
Tesla the fire engine?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Why a truck? 99% of the pickup trucks on the road are just for show, almost no one who owns one actually carries anything in them. I think we should actually ban trucks in larger cities like Toronto with out a special permit. We have societies obsessed with bigger and more power trucks when in the end all they really need is a smart car. Lets stop building pickup trucks and focus more on size and power efficient cars. I know this isn't in line with this post but I think someone has to mention this issue.
some people are just trollish prats and some are failed comedians. there's no point responding to them
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
i agree, the more innovation the better. once all trucks, buses etc are electric, the air might smell better in the cities and we'd all spend less time picking the dirty particulates out of our noses
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
That's a brilliant idea, and I'd be very interested in something like that --- hopefully Tesla's concept will be equally ingenious and flexible.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I'm 68, and I've never owned a car, but an all electric truck would be very tempting.
Locomotives are turbine-electric and diesel-electric HYBRIDS.
They are not. They are diesel-electric (not hybrids). And outside of some historical experiments, they never incorporate turbines*. In this application, electric power is used since mechanical transmissions are not practical or cost effective. Electric power gives more control and torque at low speeds. There is no battery storage of power, so they are not "hybrids". Similar technology is used in some marine applications for reasons of controllability, eliminating a mechanical transmission, and flexibility.
*a turbocharger is arguably a kind of turbine, but it is a power augmentation device, not a power producing one.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
This kind of power transmission is used on railways by diesel electric locomotives and diesel electric multiple units, as electric motors are able to supply full torque at 0 RPM. Diesel-electric systems are also used in submarines and surface ships and some land vehicles.
In some high-efficiency applications, electrical energy may be stored in rechargeable batteries, in which case these vehicles can be considered as a class of hybrid electric vehicle.
the pF-150 :)
yes. it is obvious.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I think the solution will be power-assist trailers that use hub motors. Your trailer should be stacked with solar panels and charge itself and the truck continuously and potentially includes a generator already.
You are talking about yourself again.
Learn to love Alaska
You mean you didn't already?
That said, I take very little note of what particular aircraft I'm flying in. The only ones I've noticed in the last few months have been Embraers (Brazilian? Yes.) and various AirBuses. But to be honest, I only notice the model if I have to pick up the flight safety card to check if there's an exit behind me. Normally I notice that when I'm getting on board, because I try to avoid the crush by boarding as late as possible.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"