The Alpha WOLF™ Electric Truck

[goatlord99]

I'd suggest putting an order in for a Lightning and see what happens. It's all about lead time.

Sadly, if you're ordering a Rivian now, it's going to be 2023 or later … I think of that as basically irrelevant.

sidenote on lemons and carmakers:

I hope your F-150 is either brought up to 100% or lemoned – I'd suggest getting a new replacement for the lemon (to cut costs) or just plain go get another one.​

I just covered 2000 miles non-stop (well, sleeping one night, 1000 miles per day) in my Hybrid. I just put a half a quart of oil in it after 6500 miles. Zero problems and the weak mpg (18mpg has been creeping up to show 20-22 during this latest trip. I was also maintaining "limit + 7" speeds, often sitting on 85+ mph when traffic was setting that pace, the generator was keeping a freezer at 0ºF and idling while I was sleeping, the bed was packed with heavy gear, the cabin was full – except for space for the dog – and I put 91 in it except for one stop where all they had was 87, but I was down to 20 miles' range.​

​

Put those performance metrics in front of any Pickup EV maker and they'll have to politely concede to the superior vehicle for the job.​

​

The F-150 Hybrid just keeps impressing me. I laugh every time I drive past a Tesla Supercharger and I shudder to think back to my impatience when I was tired of waiting for my truck to be built and was considering an "old" '20 or '19 model (Ford or RAM.)​

​

I don't doubt Ford makes bad ones and people with the bad ones should be able to get Ford to work with them as part of the statistical inevitability of high volume production manufacturing, not as dissatisfied consumers to be "handled" till they stop complaining and take the hit for a product that was not up to quality standards that other consumers enjoy.​

Good thoughts, thanks.

I put in a reservation for lightning, figured it was money well spent. If it gets lemoned, I will probably go replacement. It is a fantastic truck when working!

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[F-150 Prius]

You missed my point entirely. And Toyota is not unique. Nisan rebranded its American operation from Datsun, and then launched Infinity and Honda launched Acura. And Saturn was successful for a timee, at least until GM decided to re-badge the crappiest European cars not made in France.

Delorean's problem was that he produced a single crappy model that barely worked and cost a bundle. It is not at all clear to me that Tesla will be around 10-15 years from now. But yes, it's done better than Delorean.

I'm sorry that I've missed your point. I mean to say Toyota is unique in that it brought to the auto industry the marketing concept of raising a sub-brand as a premium above the core brand. Nissan and Datsun are the same company, not an attempt to raise a premium brand marque (which for Nissan is Infiniti.) Saturn was an immediately failed attempt to create a friendly way to side-step consumer objections to "the dealership experience" and attack Japanese car sales at prices below GM's range, complicated by ideas like plastic panels (good and bad) it just wasn't profitable. It was a smart idea so poorly executed it never got beyond the initial booster phase of wildly expensive brand development.

It's worth watching the DeLorean documentary – the car was ahead of its time but its atrocious build quality was not the cause of the company foundering, it was the founder who killed the company with dishonest deals (but that's not to ignore the fact he was also taken down by the FBI in a sham of a entrapment that distracted them from his actually corrupt dealings.)

 

[Diabolical!]

Rivian is the closest to deliveries and there's really no guarantee that they'll make it through fulfilling pre orders without going under. Sure they have the money and the backing to make it to production but there is still a long road ahead of them.
Any other ev startup, I'll get interested when they are actually producing vehicles.

Rivian is in no danger of going under. They have literally billions in investments and their two biggest backers are Amazon and... Ford.

 

[astricklin]

Rivian is in no danger of going under. They have literally billions in investments and their two biggest backers are Amazon and... Ford.

Nobody knows that.
We don't know how well their van program is going with Amazon.
Ford already delayed plans to use the Rivian platform for a vehicle, there's no assurance that they will ever go forward with that plan.
Rivian has yet to deliver any vehicles to retail customers so only time will tell if they are successful.
I do hope they are successful but they still have a long road ahead of them.

 

[Pedaldude]

I'm still waiting for my flying car:

On a serious note though, engine r&d and having the foundries and experience to make them used to be the biggest hurdle for auto makers. With electric motor, battery and driver technology off-shored; the genie is out of the bottle and one of these new electric car start-ups will become successful and one or a few of the legacy manufacturers will completely disappear.

When cars were super new and built in conditions little better than a blacksmith shop, there were hundreds of car companies and each big city had a few. We might be heading back in that direction.

 

[F-150 Prius]

Nobody knows that.
We don't know how well their van program is going with Amazon.
Ford already delayed plans to use the Rivian platform for a vehicle, there's no assurance that they will ever go forward with that plan.
Rivian has yet to deliver any vehicles to retail customers so only time will tell if they are successful.
I do hope they are successful but they still have a long road ahead of them.

Rivian isn't Nikola. They have $10B and the IPO will give us some look into what's real.
I think just Bezo's dislike for Musk (in part due to the current legal battles between SpaceX and Blue Origin for NASA contracts) is enough for him to make sure Rivian embarrasses Tesla.

 

[F-150 Prius]

With electric motor, battery and driver technology off-shored; the genie is out of the bottle and one of these new electric car start-ups will become successful and one or a few of the legacy manufacturers will completely disappear.

I think that's the inevitable upheaval of the auto industry – they've been complacent with their oil deals for too long, now they're stuck in the tar pits and their fate is inevitable.
Toyota and VW have been lured in by Tesla and they're in catch-up to build EVs while Tesla is almost "done" with cars and is in the real game: gigafactories to build batteries, motors and electronics (processors, battery charging, electric power trains) for all kinds of AI to be invented in the next 10-20 years.

 

[Diabolical!]

Nobody knows that.
We don't know how well their van program is going with Amazon.
Ford already delayed plans to use the Rivian platform for a vehicle, there's no assurance that they will ever go forward with that plan.
Rivian has yet to deliver any vehicles to retail customers so only time will tell if they are successful.
I do hope they are successful but they still have a long road ahead of them.

What do you mean no one knows that? These aren't hypothetical orders, this is money Ford and Amazon have actually already invested into the company.

 

[corradoborg]

I'm still waiting for my flying car:

I know you were joking, but these guys are finally gonna do it!

https://www.aviationtoday.com/2021/09/02/nasa-begins-first-evtol-test-aam-campaign-joby/

 

[Sgt Beavis]

Nobody knows that.
We don't know how well their van program is going with Amazon.
Ford already delayed plans to use the Rivian platform for a vehicle, there's no assurance that they will ever go forward with that plan.
Rivian has yet to deliver any vehicles to retail customers so only time will tell if they are successful.
I do hope they are successful but they still have a long road ahead of them.

I know that Rivian has delivered vans to Amazon already. They’ve been testing them here in Northern Colorado. I got a package delivery from one a few weeks ago.

 

[F-150 Prius]

I know you were joking, but these guys are finally gonna do it!

https://www.aviationtoday.com/2021/09/02/nasa-begins-first-evtol-test-aam-campaign-joby/

That could work, but anything without a glide wing isn't going to have the energy efficiency needed to travel more than a puddle jump.
I think Lilium has a viable design and a workable business model (starts out as a point-point helicopter service.)
https://lilium.com/

Joby needs a battery and motor technology to come up to the energy density and thrust performance needed.

I think evtol is the only way forward for personal flight. The design needs to be two- or four-passenger with modest cargo capacity and things like fully autonomous take-off and landing with safety like a parachute and collision avoidance.

But noise and downwash are problems.
Joby is pretty quiet but still like an open exhaust on a Cobra compared to a typical vehicle.
Dust and flying debris are dealbreakers, so landing pads will need to be designed to capture the downwash and to move debris away, and to shield the surrounding area. That's all expensive compared to the vague idea of landing in a home driveway or on an office rooftop.

I imagine the affluent early adopters will have some hard ground to break before this technology becomes affordable to high income earners or through robotaxi services.

 

[Squatch]

Someone really liked Marty McFly's Toyota... lol

Rivian isn't Nikola. They have $10B and the IPO will give us some look into what's real.
I think just Bezo's dislike for Musk (in part due to the current legal battles between SpaceX and Blue Origin for NASA contracts) is enough for him to make sure Rivian embarrasses Tesla.

Musk has been embarrassing Bezos and the legal battles are the billionaire's equivalent of grasping at straws and name-calling when you start losing. I want Rivian to fail simply because of Bezos, but I also become filled with schadenfreude whenever Tesla, Inc. gets egg on their face, but that's due to the rabid Tesla, Inc. disciples who don't play space cowboy on the backs of the economically indentured.

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