Now that winter is upon us with the inevitable snow and snowplowing, I wonder how this thing (or any EV truck) would perform as a snowplow. Private contractors almost invariably use pickups for servicing driveways and smaller parking lots. I know EVs have tremendous torque, but when pushing around big piles of snow traction is more an issue than torque, and what I really find myself wondering is whether the poor towing performance of EVs also translates to poor plowing performance due to how fast the battery gets discharged under heavy load, not to mention the effects of cold temperature. Probably no one has a real, quantified answer yet.
Hybrids right now are the most unreliable vehicles, by far. It makes sense because you have duplicate systems, electric motors and gas engines both power the drive wheels, you still need transmissions, clutches, flywheels, differentials, yada yada.
A series hybrid is different. Yes, you still have an engine, coolant system, etc. But the drivetrain is completely electric, removing a lot of that complexity. And the engine runs at lower than max power at a constant RPM, so it and its accessories should last a lot longer than they do when used conventionally.
The RAM series is betting on range being the differentiating characteristic of their trucks. Even the fully BEV truck is going to have a 500 mile range with a huge 224 kWh battery. But the Ramcharger gets more like 700 miles of range, and it does it with a 94 kWh battery.
A 224 kWh battery is close to 3,000 lbs. Going to a 94 kWh battery saves maybe 1700 lbs or so. The 3.6L Pentastar V6 with accessories comes in around 350 lbs. So this truck could be 1300 lbs lighter than the BEV, yet has longer range. It would be more efficient in pure battery mode, being significantly lighter. You could gas up at standard gas stations in an emergency, and the engine will charge the battery while driving if necessary. And in all-electric mode it should still have a range close to that of the Lightning, and would only use the V6 for long trips or when towing.
Given how compromised pure electric trucks are in heavy duty use, this arrangement seems like a pretty good idea to me.
Does that apply to hybrids now or all hybrids? I was an early adopter (unusually for me), and I had a hybrid for over 14 years and 250K miles. The only real problem I had in all that time was when the transmission died, and I coasted into the dealer and bought a new car.
Plus if I buy a hybrid it’s likely to be a Toyota and I trust their ability to make reliable ones.
Mine was a Honda, but, yeah, I tend to keep cars until they’re totally worn out.
I should have said Plug-in hybrids. Standard hybrids are better than EVs, but PHEVs have been terrible.
These issues are undoubtedly due to inexperience with the tech, and will get better in time. I find it weird that hybrids are better than ICE cars, since they are also ICE cars. It mightncome down to the way they are driven or something. Not sure.
Exactly. Honda and Toyota make extremely reliable cars. I trust them more than I do Tesla in that regard.
Light duty (half-ton) trucks are not greatly suited to commercial plowing–the components are too light in general, and mfrs don’t offer specialized prep like they do for the heavy duty trucks. Plus, most plows attach to the frame rails. But, I’d be surprised if the average plow guy drives more than 75 miles in a day so it might be ok if you could gin up a mounting system.
Okie doke. Thanks for clarifying.
It’s not how far he drives, it’s the large amount of energy consumed on each snowplowing job. I’ll ask my snowplow guy – I’m sure he has a pretty good idea how much fuel a typical plow job costs him.
“Twenty gallons, same as in town”.
Not sure it will. When they can carry my 12’ cabover camper while towing my 7200# boat, and get me 300 miles going across the Cascades and back, like my Silverado 3500 can, then I’ll think about it.
I did a little research on electric snowplowing. There are dedicated electric snow plows that seem to work pretty well in light duty applications (clearning short lanes and driveways, etc)…
Snow plowing is going to suck battery like crazy, so it depends on how much you are doing. If you’re just lane clearing, I’d think an electric truck would be the best vehicle around for doing it. Heavier is good here, as is the low center of gravity.
But ifyou want to use it for heavy duty snow moving for hours, probably not.
The Cybertruck will be an impressive plowing machine. I saw one on Youtube beat an F-150 Raptor in a drag race - with the F-150 on pavement and the Cybertruck in the dirt beside the track. It just has massive tractiion.
This page has a video on the F-150 Lightning being used as a plow:
It’s exactly what you want, though. Standard Ethernet is not exactly deterministic. But you really, really don’t want your 11-channel audio stream to impede packets going to the steering system. So you slice off a tiny bit of the stream capacity, dedicated for just that one destination, and it gets perfectly deterministic packet transport. In the video, I think they said they get <1 ms latency and <1 microsecond jitter.
I also found the threaded inserts a neat idea. I noticed these in the casting they had on display in the showroom. Castings don’t give precision machined surfaces, but machining those surfaces (plus tapping the holes, etc.) takes a lot of time. So instead, they just twist in these inserts that have a precision surface and threaded hole already.
I noticed the inserts on display had numbers printed on them that didn’t quite look like part numbers, like “10.9”. I wonder if they have a few different sizes to account for variation. Laser-scan the cast part, and if the piece that the insert goes into is very slightly too tall, then select an insert that’s that much shorter to compensate. It’s just a guess, but I think they’d have to do something to account for the variation.
Been plowing my own driveway for 25 years. On my second truck, and second plow.
Depending on if I also plow the county road too, it takes 1-2 hours. And yes, it pulls a hell of a lot of energy from the battery. An EV would probably just shrug that off, though I don’t know.
Heavier is good. More traction. From my experience, low center of gravity does not matter. Ground clearance does.
Both my trucks have been half ton short beds. Short beds for a tighter turning radius. The CT might beat that with 4 wheel steering though. If I could get a 3/4 ton short bed (non of the xtra cab silliness) that would work well.
Next up, plow manufacturers will need to come up with a mount for them. Every truck is different.
For light-duty work, you can buy plows that mount to the trailer hitch. You do all the plowing in reverse, but that’s obviously fine on an EV–they have just as much torque in that direction as forward. People have successfully used these on Model Ys:
I’ve no doubt a Cybertruck could handle much larger loads. And be easier to control with the 4-wheel steering.
For your specific use case, electric might never catch up to gasoline. But I think that, even among the category of “people who actually need a truck”, yours is probably rather an extreme case.
I’m sorry but… 
I’m talking about a plow. That HTS plow in the link is light duty.
Collecting myself. eh, hmmm. Well. If you have a short, flat paved driveway and only a few inches of snow, that might work. An ATV would do the same.
Well, I guess someone bought one to put on a Tesla. But if folks saw that here, we would laugh, and laugh and laugh.
To clarify, EVs have excellent towing performance, they have terrible towing range.
Only if the software is working. This has been going around today, a Cybertruck stuck on a hill in a bit of snow. According to the original post (maybe on Instragram?), the “lockers” weren’t working due to software issues. A tri-motor version won’t need a rear locker, and supposedly a front locker is an option. Tri or dual motor is the equivalent of a center locker.
Even traction control based lockers should work very well. Brake the spinning wheel, and send power to the other one. I think the biggest issue is when the traction control itself is causing the problem. It detects spin, cuts power, and then you’re just sitting there with your foot to the floor and nothing happening.
I’m sure a dedicated plow mode could be developed, and might not be much different than any of the off-road modes. One thing Tesla has shown, is their software generally improves over time, and they’re not afraid of releasing new features.
Okay, but then you have to buy an ATV, which is way more expensive than the plow. And you have to buy a plow for the ATV.
If I saw anyone driving around with a plow of any kind, I’d laugh and laugh and laugh. Because it doesn’t snow at all here.