Higher Range

[ejwl]

I saw the expected range is 350 miles and up 500 with the range extender. I would be nice to have a higher base range like 400 or 450. The rivian r1s range is 410 and the lucid gravity range is estimated at 450. In order to keep up with the competition the amount of range should be matched or exceeded. 400 base range and 500 with the extender is a good start.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

You make it hard to be whiny about being stuck in the boonies!

Just trying to help people understand the reality of BEV driving.

In the past week, due to a series of family emergencies, my vehicles have been driven on a 900 mile round-trip road trip (Mustang) and then seven (so far) 250 mile round trip trips down off and back up the mountain for non-fun reasons (seven counting both the Lightning and the Mustang combined). They’ve also been driven around Phoenix surface streets about 300 miles. It’s in the 100s in Phoenix, so we’re running the AC the entire time. They’ve been to a DCFC a total of four times between the two vehicles in those ~2500 miles. The rest of the time they’ve been on L1 or L2 charging, depending on if they’re at home or down in the Phoenix area.

Only twice has there been even a hint of inconvenience. The first time was due to extra stress making the charging time *feel* slower than it really was. And the second time was when I went to a DCFC charger to fill the Mustang before I headed back up the mountain in the Lightning. I had decided to take the charging time to get a shave and a haircut (two bits). The shave took way longer than it should have and I ended up paying an extra $11 in idle fees because the car got to 100% charge and sat idling on the plug for 22 minutes while I was in the barber’s chair and unable to unplug the car.

 

[ritterf]

I saw the expected range is 350 miles and up 500 with the range extender. I would be nice to have a higher base range like 400 or 450. The rivian r1s range is 410 and the lucid gravity range is estimated at 450. In order to keep up with the competition the amount of range should be matched or exceeded. 400 base range and 500 with the extender is a good start.

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Range by batteries alone is just weight. And weight is the enemy of everything this truck is supposed to do — tow, climb, wheel, last 30 years.

The Rivian R1S gets its 410 miles by hauling a 6,000+ lb curb weight. The Lucid Gravity is heavier still. You're not buying range — you're buying an expensive way to avoid a gas station while sacrificing the truck's soul in the process.

The smarter play is a smaller, lighter LTO buffer paired with a better generator. Not the naturally aspirated EA211 that's been rumored — the EA211-ERV. Same basic engine VW just put into production for the ID. Era 9X, but with VTG turbo and Miller cycle, designed explicitly for serial hybrid duty. Sustained 105kW output. It doesn't care about altitude, load, or headwind. The generator IS the range. The battery is just the buffer.

350 miles of base range is plenty when the generator never quits. The question isn't how big the battery is. It's whether the truck can sustain 85mph towing up a 7% grade without the driver watching the state of charge like a hawk.

This architecture does that. A bigger pack doesn't.

 

[Mousehunter]

It really depends on what the goals are. I think Scout is an EV company. The Harvester is a means to get around EV range anxiety - while allowing users to learn what driving an EV is about. You are proposing an ICE vehicle with an electric powertrain. While there could be some market for that - I think it would not be attractive to the EV community, and most of the ICE community would not want to embrace it either. It possibly would attract people who want the performance of an EV, but can not home charge. I am not sure, but I think there are also cities that have pollution issues and are attempting to ban ICE vehicles from downtown's - maybe 20 miles of range would make a difference in this situation.

 

[strider]

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Range by batteries alone is just weight. And weight is the enemy of everything this truck is supposed to do — tow, climb, wheel, last 30 years.

The Rivian R1S gets its 410 miles by hauling a 6,000+ lb curb weight. The Lucid Gravity is heavier still. You're not buying range — you're buying an expensive way to avoid a gas station while sacrificing the truck's soul in the process.

The smarter play is a smaller, lighter LTO buffer paired with a better generator. Not the naturally aspirated EA211 that's been rumored — the EA211-ERV. Same basic engine VW just put into production for the ID. Era 9X, but with VTG turbo and Miller cycle, designed explicitly for serial hybrid duty. Sustained 105kW output. It doesn't care about altitude, load, or headwind. The generator IS the range. The battery is just the buffer.

350 miles of base range is plenty when the generator never quits. The question isn't how big the battery is. It's whether the truck can sustain 85mph towing up a 7% grade without the driver watching the state of charge like a hawk.

This architecture does that. A bigger pack doesn't.

I didn't wade into your other thread but what is your point? It seems like you are making the case for a PHEV with a small battery. With the Harvester, I expect people to be 90/10 electric/gas. Your design is going to be 10/90. Where's the innovation here? There are lots of hybrid trucks out there that pair small engines with a battery for extra torque when needed.

A 150 mile range may be on the high end but remember this is an EREV (Series Hybrid) so the pack needs to be large enough to provide full power at a safe (per-cell) discharge rate. So that may be what's driving the pack size and not a specific desire for 150 miles of electric range. I haven't done much reading on LTO batteries but if I haven't heard of them, Scout should not use them in their first vehicle. A quick perusal of wikipedia shows that they are used by effectively nobody. High cost and poor energy density. Both of those things are bad. What am I missing?

 

[ritterf]

I didn't wade into your other thread but what is your point? It seems like you are making the case for a PHEV with a small battery. With the Harvester, I expect people to be 90/10 electric/gas. Your design is going to be 10/90. Where's the innovation here? There are lots of hybrid trucks out there that pair small engines with a battery for extra torque when needed.

A 150 mile range may be on the high end but remember this is an EREV (Series Hybrid) so the pack needs to be large enough to provide full power at a safe (per-cell) discharge rate. So that may be what's driving the pack size and not a specific desire for 150 miles of electric range. I haven't done much reading on LTO batteries but if I haven't heard of them, Scout should not use them in their first vehicle. A quick perusal of wikipedia shows that they are used by effectively nobody. High cost and poor energy density. Both of those things are bad. What am I missing?

Fair questions — let me take them in order.


The 10/90 assumption: My daily driving is 18-24 miles. The 23kWh NTO pack covers that entirely on electric every single day. Generator never starts. That's 90%+ electric for most Harvester owners whose commute is under 40 miles — which is 90% of American commuters. The 10/90 flip only happens if you're doing long highway days constantly, which is exactly what the generator is for. The architecture is 90% electric daily, generator for everything else. Same as the planned Harvester — just a lighter, faster, more durable buffer.


Series hybrid vs PHEV: You're right that this is a series hybrid not a PHEV — the engine never touches the wheels, it only charges the battery. The key difference from a conventional hybrid is the generator runs continuously at its efficiency peak, not in response to throttle demand. That's why a small high-output generator works. It doesn't need to match peak power demand — it just needs to sustain average load while the buffer handles peaks.


Your pack size point is sharp — you're right that discharge rate may be driving pack size as much as range. A 63kWh LFP pack at 1C discharge = 63kW, not enough for hard acceleration or towing. To get 300kW+ peak from LFP you need a big pack. NTO at 10C discharge from 23kWh = 230kW peak. Same peak power from a fraction of the cells. That's actually the core of the argument — NTO achieves the same peak power capability from 1/3 the pack size.


On LTO being used by "nobody" — that Wikipedia page is about LTO specifically. The chemistry has quietly been running London's double-decker bus fleet since 2014, Siemens trains since 2024, transit buses in China since 2011. What I'm actually proposing now is NTO — Niobium Titanate Oxide — Toshiba's next generation cell that matches LFP energy density while keeping the fast charge and cycle life. Sample shipments started June 2025. Primary source: global.toshiba/ww/news/corporate/2025/06/news-20250604-01.html


High cost per kWh is real — but at 1/3 the pack size the total cost is competitive. Poor energy density compared to NMC yes — but comparable to LFP, which is what Scout is already planning to use.


What you're missing is that energy density only matters for standalone range. When you have a generator for range, what matters is power density and cycle life. NTO wins both of those by a significant margin.

 

[J Alynn]

I saw the expected range is 350 miles and up 500 with the range extender. I would be nice to have a higher base range like 400 or 450. The rivian r1s range is 410 and the lucid gravity range is estimated at 450. In order to keep up with the competition the amount of range should be matched or exceeded. 400 base range and 500 with the extender is a good start.

Welcome. It would be awesome if everybody wanted more range could provide engineering expertise to assist SM plethora of EV engineers so that they could be taught how to find the additional 100 miles. Everyone wants but nobody ever says how.
Apologies for response but every week someone says more with no suggestion how. Vehicles like lucid are low, sleek profile and considerably more expensive. $60K gets you 350 miles range. If they can figure out how to harvest another 70-100 miles I’m sure they’ll offer a premium package and those that want to spend $7-$8K more can do so. As @SpaceEVDriver is likely stating-math and science play a role and that has limitations

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Those who understand the engineering know how to get another 100 miles of range.

There are two basic options: Reduce energy use while traveling or increase energy carried by the vehicle.

There are multiple ways to reduce energy use:

• Reduce wind resistance
  • Make the scouts with a smaller front profile to reduce drag. That's not going to happen much more with the Scouts. They're already engineered down to quite impressive drag coefficients, but that's simply a fractional multiplier on the front area. Any further improvements would come at the cost of appearance and "soul" of the vehicles. We don't want every vehicle to look the same.
  • Put skinnier tires on. This is a small impact and greatly reduces the vehicle’s stability, especially in turns. This is only reasonable for very specific applications
• Make the systems more efficient. This includes the HVAC, the motors, the battery, the wiring, etc.
  • Motors, battery, wiring, etc.
    • In general, 85% of the battery’s potential chemical energy is converted to mechanical energy. So even if you doubled the electrical efficiency, you only gain about 7.5% range, or about 26 miles on a 350 mile range vehicle.
  • Reduce rolling resistance. Higher pressure tires, lighter tires and wheels. Lower friction hubs. These are all important and added together might get a few to maybe even 10% (30 miles) improvement in range.
  • There are a few other ways to improve efficiency, but they’re on the level 1-2%.
• Overall, unless you change the “soul” of the Scouts, you might get 50-75 miles range improvement. But the cost would be fairly high.

Increase the energy carried by the vehicle:

• Add more battery capacity. That’s going to add more cost and at some point there just isn’t enough room to add more battery capacity with existing, tested, production batteries. The highest specific energy (Wh/kg) and highest density (Wh/litre battery chemistry in large-scale production is NMC. The second-highest is LFP. These are also the most affordable chemistries available for BEVs. Scout will likely use NMC for the BEV. My guess is they’ll use LFP for the Harvester, but I can see them going with either chemistry.
  • There’s no other chemistry that is in mass production that can compare with NMC and LFP on the multiple axes of Wh/kg, Wh/Liter, $/Wh, ready availability, high-volume production.
  • There’s a direct improvement, but it’s not quite 1-for-1. Increase the battery capacity by 10% and you increase the range by just under 10%. This is because mass does matter a little bit when running the EPA test. Mass also matters for higher-speed, constant-speed travel, but is less important than low-speed start-stop driving.
  • So if you want 100 miles more range for a 350 mile range vehicle, you want to add 29% more range, so you need to add about 29-30% more battery. That’s not a nothing amount.
  • That’s expensive.
  • GM/Chevrolet chose this.
  • I suspect Scout could do this for at least the Terra. If people wanted to pay another $10k to $20k for an extended range battery, at least the Terra could get 450 miles range, and I would expect the Traveler could get at least another 50 miles range (for maybe $7500 added cost).
  • Another cost to adding more battery is handling. A heavier vehicle handles less well. 30% more battery doesn’t mean 30% heavier vehicle, but it is going to add more mass.
• Add some other energy source and a way to convert it to the necessary mechanical energy.
  • Scout chose this.
    • They’re adding the Harvester genset. This will add high-density energy storage (gasoline) coupled with a low-efficiency Internal Combustion Engine.
    • I’m not going to go into the pros/cons to this. This is what Scout chose. I would prefer 350 miles range on a BEV to 500 miles range on a EREV. There are dozens of threads on the pros/cons on this forum.

There are, of course, a bunch of minor things that can be done to improve range, but from the engineering pov, the big ones are those mentioned in the incomplete and easily added-to and modified lists above. I’m sure I missed someones' favorite item(s).

 

[strider]

Fair questions — let me take them in order.


The 10/90 assumption: My daily driving is 18-24 miles. The 23kWh NTO pack covers that entirely on electric every single day. Generator never starts. That's 90%+ electric for most Harvester owners whose commute is under 40 miles — which is 90% of American commuters. The 10/90 flip only happens if you're doing long highway days constantly, which is exactly what the generator is for. The architecture is 90% electric daily, generator for everything else. Same as the planned Harvester — just a lighter, faster, more durable buffer.

For whatever reason, Scout has chosen to follow a different path by using a much larger pack in its hybrid than others. IIRC Ford and Chevy are set to bring back Hybrid and PHEV trucks in the next year or so. These will likely follow your prescription of smallish batteries and small engines. My point being that it will be tough for Scout to complete in the small battery, small engine market. We will see what the market rewards.

Series hybrid vs PHEV: You're right that this is a series hybrid not a PHEV — the engine never touches the wheels, it only charges the battery. The key difference from a conventional hybrid is the generator runs continuously at its efficiency peak, not in response to throttle demand. That's why a small high-output generator works. It doesn't need to match peak power demand — it just needs to sustain average load while the buffer handles peaks.

I think we have a misunderstanding here. At one point I believe you said something along the lines of using a more powerful generator such that a driver towing up a 7% grade won't be watching their charge level like a hawk. This belies your statement above that the engine only needs to sustain average load. In that case, the driver with a 23kWh pack will be sweating that grade a lot more than the driver with a 65kWh pack. So that means that your design will require a (much) larger engine than the current design which increases fuel consumption. Now maybe this is offset by the decrease in weight?

Your pack size point is sharp — you're right that discharge rate may be driving pack size as much as range. A 63kWh LFP pack at 1C discharge = 63kW, not enough for hard acceleration or towing. To get 300kW+ peak from LFP you need a big pack. NTO at 10C discharge from 23kWh = 230kW peak. Same peak power from a fraction of the cells. That's actually the core of the argument — NTO achieves the same peak power capability from 1/3 the pack size.


On LTO being used by "nobody" — that Wikipedia page is about LTO specifically. The chemistry has quietly been running London's double-decker bus fleet since 2014, Siemens trains since 2024, transit buses in China since 2011. What I'm actually proposing now is NTO — Niobium Titanate Oxide — Toshiba's next generation cell that matches LFP energy density while keeping the fast charge and cycle life. Sample shipments started June 2025. Primary source: global.toshiba/ww/news/corporate/2025/06/news-20250604-01.html


High cost per kWh is real — but at 1/3 the pack size the total cost is competitive. Poor energy density compared to NMC yes — but comparable to LFP, which is what Scout is already planning to use.


What you're missing is that energy density only matters for standalone range. When you have a generator for range, what matters is power density and cycle life. NTO wins both of those by a significant margin.

So NTO is even less common than LTO? Hard pass. It would be foolish for Scout to use an untested chemistry. These vehicles must be seen as reliable on day 1. The damage to the brand if these batteries don't live up to the hype would end the company. I would think if NTO lived up to the performance you list, that the EV hypercar makers like Rimac would use them. But even they are sticking with NMC for now and experimenting with Sold State.

Also, you're saying 1/3 of the capacity for the same price? That seems like a terrible bargain. LFP can go 5,000 cycles. That is 750,000 miles. I don't care who you are, you're not going to drive your Scout that much.