Tesla pickup

[theboom1]

Since tesla announced that they were indeed going to be building a pickup it got me thinking. What specs and capacities would it need to really be competitive? We should use the best selling truck (which also happens to be the best selling vehicle period in the US) the f150. I think tesla should go after the f150 and at least match the specs. They would need to offer it in 6 1/2ft and 8ft beds. They need a RWD and an AWD version although maybe only an AWD version? Towing capacity on a crewcab 4x4 with most powerful engine is 11,400lbs. They need to at least match that as well as payload figures.

Now onto the really interesting specs. Power and range. The current 3.5l ecoboost makes 470ft lbs. I know that they could use the new p100d drivetrain and get all the power that it makes (around 730hp now I think?) but there is a problem with that: range. A truck is different than a car. Sometimes a truck needs to be able to put out a lot of power for an extended period of time. It takes a lot more to accelerate, more to maintain speed, and a lot more going up hills. Pile on a 11,400lb trailer and it gets pretty crazy. So here is my thoughts and solution. Yes you could have the 730hp of the p100d going through the 9.73 (I think) ratio that it goes through now but you would have to be at high power very often and you would get horrible range. What I think tesla should do is make it have around the 470ft lbs that the f150 has now, maybe bump it up to 500, and gear it much lower so that the batteries and motor don't have to work as hard. It kinda needs to be geared much lower because trucks are geared much lower so that they can tow, and here is the second part of my solution. I know some of you are not going to like it but: a 2 speed transmission at least for the rear motor. Reliability and clutch life could be greatly preserved by staying in second unless you wanted to accelerate quickly or you were towing. This would also allow much lower gearing so the motors don't have to output so much power so that range isn't horrible and you can shift once you get at high speed. Maybe shift at around 50 or so? Im just saying while I agree on cars like the S/X/3 don't need a second gear, a truck does. If they were going to make a competitor to the super duty's, well, they make 925ft lbs now and I would cringe to know how long the batteries would last making that kind of power so you would need a really low first gear so you still have the power but don't drain the batteries so fast and a normal second gear for the speed. It also would need a bigger front grill for cooling. The current tesla cars over heat after a few short runs. Imagine how fast they would overheat pulling a 11,400lb trailer up a hill constantly at full power. How much range is needed?

And has a side note just because it make me laugh. How fast 0-60 could this truck be? My guess is that in first gear with the highest hp motors, you could get maybe 3.5-4s.
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[MSEV]

I'm in the Midwest and pickups are the thing. Sooo many people have them that don't need them. To be able to get them to switch to an "EP" (electric pickup) would be important.
One point: though I agree with much of what you have said, it might also be that most do not use most of the capacity of their current pickups, so a Tesla EP (Model P) might not have to have everything that f150s do to have people make the switch.
I'm sorry that more haven't responded to this post. It is a huge segment of the market.
Perhaps with self-driving cars and decreased ownership, pickup sales will decline. But not for a long time, IMHO.

 

[Saghost]

Since tesla announced that they were indeed going to be building a pickup it got me thinking. What specs and capacities would it need to really be competitive? We should use the best selling truck (which also happens to be the best selling vehicle period in the US) the f150. I think tesla should go after the f150 and at least match the specs. They would need to offer it in 6 1/2ft and 8ft beds. They need a RWD and an AWD version although maybe only an AWD version? Towing capacity on a crewcab 4x4 with most powerful engine is 11,400lbs. They need to at least match that as well as payload figures.

Now onto the really interesting specs. Power and range. The current 3.5l ecoboost makes 470ft lbs. I know that they could use the new p100d drivetrain and get all the power that it makes (around 730hp now I think?) but there is a problem with that: range. A truck is different than a car. Sometimes a truck needs to be able to put out a lot of power for an extended period of time. It takes a lot more to accelerate, more to maintain speed, and a lot more going up hills. Pile on a 11,400lb trailer and it gets pretty crazy. So here is my thoughts and solution. Yes you could have the 730hp of the p100d going through the 9.73 (I think) ratio that it goes through now but you would have to be at high power very often and you would get horrible range. What I think tesla should do is make it have around the 470ft lbs that the f150 has now, maybe bump it up to 500, and gear it much lower so that the batteries and motor don't have to work as hard. It kinda needs to be geared much lower because trucks are geared much lower so that they can tow, and here is the second part of my solution. I know some of you are not going to like it but: a 2 speed transmission at least for the rear motor. Reliability and clutch life could be greatly preserved by staying in second unless you wanted to accelerate quickly or you were towing. This would also allow much lower gearing so the motors don't have to output so much power so that range isn't horrible and you can shift once you get at high speed. Maybe shift at around 50 or so? Im just saying while I agree on cars like the S/X/3 don't need a second gear, a truck does. If they were going to make a competitor to the super duty's, well, they make 925ft lbs now and I would cringe to know how long the batteries would last making that kind of power so you would need a really low first gear so you still have the power but don't drain the batteries so fast and a normal second gear for the speed. It also would need a bigger front grill for cooling. The current tesla cars over heat after a few short runs. Imagine how fast they would overheat pulling a 11,400lb trailer up a hill constantly at full power. How much range is needed?

And has a side note just because it make me laugh. How fast 0-60 could this truck be? My guess is that in first gear with the highest hp motors, you could get maybe 3.5-4s.
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You seem to be working under the assumption that by having higher gearing the electric motor would need less power/energy. This isn't generally the case for a modern electric motor - they lose efficiency at really low speeds, really high speeds, and really low power levels.

I imagine that the current PxxD powertrain would be more than adequate for any pickup doing heavy towing. Did you see the fastest way to get an Alpha Romeo 4C through a quarter mile?

You clearly don't need more power or lower gearing. You might need better cooling, maybe - but even there I think you'd find that the current system is easily up to something like the Eisenhower tunnel towing challenge from the TFL folks, which is about as extreme a scenario as I think you'll find in the real world.

Mostly you need a pretty big pack to make a Tesla F150 - which means they need to drive the battery cost down as much as they conveniently can to make it profitable. To make towing over distances practical, you might well need a 200 kWh pack - at least there's plenty of weight and space on a pickup to make that happen.

SMP, Part Duex said "A new kind of Pickup" though - I'm curious to see what that means; with that language Tesla probably isn't planning to make an electric F150, though they could - it sounds like they think they've found ways to make a pickup better.

 

[charliepmayer]

I would like to put a deposit on a pickup. When may this be possible? Any guesses?

 

[Saghost]

I would like to put a deposit on a pickup. When may this be possible? Any guesses?

My guess is it's third out the chute right now. Obviously, all Tesla's efforts that can be are focused on getting the 3 out on time and then ramping it up. I'm pretty sure the next up is the Model Y (or whatever the smaller CUV on the 3 platform ends up being called.) We know Tesla did a bunch of co-developing of that with the 3, but I'm guessing we won't see it until late this year or early next year - Tesla won't want any distractions from the 3.

I suspect the pickup is the next car after that, so maybe a prototype and preorders in early-mid 2019 with deliveries in 2020 or 2021?

 

[igotzzoom]

Here's my hypothesis of what it could look like: More here

 

[diesel]

Since tesla announced that they were indeed going to be building a pickup it got me thinking. What specs and capacities would it need to really be competitive? We should use the best selling truck (which also happens to be the best selling vehicle period in the US) the f150. I think tesla should go after the f150 and at least match the specs. They would need to offer it in 6 1/2ft and 8ft beds. They need a RWD and an AWD version although maybe only an AWD version? Towing capacity on a crewcab 4x4 with most powerful engine is 11,400lbs. They need to at least match that as well as payload figures.

Now onto the really interesting specs. Power and range. The current 3.5l ecoboost makes 470ft lbs. I know that they could use the new p100d drivetrain and get all the power that it makes (around 730hp now I think?) but there is a problem with that: range. A truck is different than a car. Sometimes a truck needs to be able to put out a lot of power for an extended period of time. It takes a lot more to accelerate, more to maintain speed, and a lot more going up hills. Pile on a 11,400lb trailer and it gets pretty crazy. So here is my thoughts and solution. Yes you could have the 730hp of the p100d going through the 9.73 (I think) ratio that it goes through now but you would have to be at high power very often and you would get horrible range. What I think tesla should do is make it have around the 470ft lbs that the f150 has now, maybe bump it up to 500, and gear it much lower so that the batteries and motor don't have to work as hard. It kinda needs to be geared much lower because trucks are geared much lower so that they can tow, and here is the second part of my solution. I know some of you are not going to like it but: a 2 speed transmission at least for the rear motor. Reliability and clutch life could be greatly preserved by staying in second unless you wanted to accelerate quickly or you were towing. This would also allow much lower gearing so the motors don't have to output so much power so that range isn't horrible and you can shift once you get at high speed. Maybe shift at around 50 or so? Im just saying while I agree on cars like the S/X/3 don't need a second gear, a truck does. If they were going to make a competitor to the super duty's, well, they make 925ft lbs now and I would cringe to know how long the batteries would last making that kind of power so you would need a really low first gear so you still have the power but don't drain the batteries so fast and a normal second gear for the speed. It also would need a bigger front grill for cooling. The current tesla cars over heat after a few short runs. Imagine how fast they would overheat pulling a 11,400lb trailer up a hill constantly at full power. How much range is needed?

And has a side note just because it make me laugh. How fast 0-60 could this truck be? My guess is that in first gear with the highest hp motors, you could get maybe 3.5-4s.
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The Rimac Concept One actually uses a two gear system as well.

The utility vehicle is a very important market segment and one which will have a huge impact on the petroleum and diesel usage in the US and other countries where this type of vehicle are popular (I.e. Australia)

 

[Saghost]

The Rimac Concept One actually uses a two gear system as well.

The utility vehicle is a very important market segment and one which will have a huge impact on the petroleum and diesel usage in the US and other countries where this type of vehicle are popular (I.e. Australia)

As was posted upthread, the conclusion that a gearbox is needed is based on the false assumption that a motor spinning at high rpm consumes a lot more power than one at low rpm for the same power output.

GM included a high speed mode into the first generation Volt in electric driving - the smaller motor would drive the ring gear forward at over fifty miles per hour, more or less halving the main motor rpm.

The result? A 2% reduction in consumption according to the SAE papers they presented on it.

GM would never had done that if they hadn't already had all the parts in the right layout for it due to the mechanical path for the ICE they created (where avoiding going to electric and back for the majority of the energy have them a 10-15% gain in efficiency.)

The pattern is quite consistent - many PHEVs have gearing for their motors to go with the gearing for the ICE, virtually no pure EV does, because the cost and weight don't yield worthwhile gains in nearly all cases.

Rimac does have two speed gearboxes on the rear motors only, true - but it is the only modern pure EV to do so, and it only does that because they need both more than a gee of sustained acceleration and over two hundred miles per hour. The front motors are permanently at the higher gearing instead.

Until batteries become a lot cheaper and more available, the pickup market is one of the few places where I think an EREV approach makes more sense.

Most pickups get driven small numbers of miles at a time - maybe even fewer than the forty miles that cover 80% of American car trips.

However, a significant fraction get driven on long trips while towing, something that would eat a huge amount of battery power, while also making DCFC difficult due to the trailer layouts.

To make all electric fifth wheel road trips practical, Tesla would have to include several hundred kWh of battery pack - which right now is unrealistic for cost and weight.

Tesla has neither the desire nor the equipment/expertise to build a hybrid. So I think Tesla won't go after that part of the market anytime soon - their pickup will be shooting for what used to be the F150 market and is now filled with bulbous "mid sized" pickups like the Colorado - folks that don't tow huge trailers long distances, but want/need the utility/flexibility.

I'd like to see GM leverage their parts bin the hit the serious pickup market head on. If they put the Bolt battery pack between the frame rails and the motor from it driving the rear wheels, and a Voltec package from the current Volt or Malibu hybrid up front attached to the 2.0T DI engine (optionally the Cruze diesel instead?) they could build a truck with at least forty miles of electric range while towing (maybe a hundred empty?)

It'd also be significantly more efficient at any speed on gas, and of course have instant torque and full regen. I'm not really sure how the profit margin would stack up against as traditional truck, but I suspect it could be sold for a premium based on the high acceleration/power levels and better efficiency - and those trucks already cost a pretty penny.