This is why I was confused. 100kw is 134hp…that is extremely within the realm of possibility for an NA 4cyl.
23mpg efficiency seems optimistic to me for off road 35s, but not for some street focused tires.
What am I missing here? Very new to EVs.
Charging while driving…Wild, irresponsible speculation...
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23mpg efficiency seems optimistic to me for off road 35s, but not for some street focused tires.
What am I missing here? Very new to EVs.
Not if they’re running 70 mph the entire time, which was the presumption in the interview.
If the engine is designed well for its use as a genset engine, it will run at essentially one small RPM range for peak efficiency.
The 23 mpg isn’t really the appropriate measure (because the engine isn’t directly fighting drag). But it’s the only real measure of efficiency we have for ICEs and 23 mpg is the right math for 350 miles on 15 gallons, which are the metrics I’ve seen for the Harvester. The proper measure is gallons/hour. The Harvester engine won’t be driving the wheels directly. It’ll be driving a generator motor that will be charging the battery and that will be driving the wheels.
So it’s difficult to say whether a 100 kW engine will provide the right gallons/hour of fuel efficiency to meet the requirement of steady state (same energy into the battery as the vehicle is drawing from the battery).
I’m starting to lean toward it being able to do be close to steady-state on flat highway as I dig around in the literature of VW’s NA inline 4 engines.
Now, the trailer needs to be able to charge and discharge at the same time. Stop, plug DCFC or level 2 into the trailer, and plug trailer into vehicle...everything getting charged at the same time but at a different rate.
The base (not towing) case is a 30.3 kW draw at 70 mph, 41.2 hp, which seems like a pretty modest load.
The towing case is 60.6 kW (82.4 hp) at 70 mph, 56.3 (76.5) at 65, and 52 (70.7) at 60. Adding in losses I have no idea how that translates into a real ICE and what kind of peak performance Scout can provide. I agree there may be a speed versus longevity compromise for towing, hopefully they can provide good reliability at least at 60 or 65. Which we never go over anyway, wanting to improve mileage and keep tires cooler.
These estimates assume 100% peak power 100% of the time. That’s not a good way to run an ICE.
At 70 mph, trucks the size of the Terra that are not towing draw approximately 2 miles/kWh. Some people can get better, many get worse.
While towing or elevation climbs, the efficiency is about 1 mile/kWh.
Divide 70 mph by 2 miles/kWh = 70 mile/h * 0.5 kWh/mile = 35 kW from the battery.
That’s the optimistic power draw for 70 mph for 350 miles = 5 hours.
This is based on the statement that they want steady-state power for a 500 mile range with a 150 mile battery.
For towing, you can assume ~70 kW power draw.
The standard for mission critical genset engines is to provide 100% of peak output for no more than 5% of the time that the engine runs and for those runs to be widely spaced in time (days at least). Typically they want to run the genset at 50-80% of peak for no more than a couple of hours with an ~12 hour rest between runs. Very high-quality gensets allow 70% of peak for longer run times (several hours, sometimes more) but with long rest times between.
For a continuous (or basically continuous) runtime of 5 hours, you don’t want to run the genset engine at more than 50% peak output, and you would be happier if it were to run at 20% of peak for that long time period. The power ratings of automobile engines are for peak output.
If you want steady state at 50% peak, you need a 70 kW genset. If you want steady state while towing, you need 140 kW. If you want to build in some lifetime guarantee, you drop from 50% of peak to, maybe, 35% of peak, meaning you want 35/0.35 ~ 100 kW while you’re not towing and you want ~200 kW while towing.
Again, I have no idea what they’re going to choose to do, but if their Harvester engine is running at peak power RPMs all the time it’s on, it’s going to be loud and annoying; it’s going to be inefficient; it’s going to have longevity problems.
That is way too reasonable for this thread.
Remember, the OP said "wildly irresponsible ideas for EVs." You can't just go and hijack a thread like this with a suggestion like park-and-charge. We need ideas on how to take advantage of connecting power from the trailer to the truck when it is driving. And, if by some miracle we can come up with an actual use case, maybe someone will work on the engineering to provide that connection. But I'd rather see unreasonable suggestions - they are a lot more fun!
I am the OP!That is way too reasonable for this thread.
Remember, the OP said "wildly irresponsible ideas for EVs." You can't just go and hijack a thread like this with a suggestion like park-and-charge. We need ideas on how to take advantage of connecting power from the trailer to the truck when it is driving. And, if by some miracle we can come up with an actual use case, maybe someone will work on the engineering to provide that connection. But I'd rather see unreasonable suggestions - they are a lot more fun!
I will start this by saying, I have a lot of respect for you and really appreciate all the time you spend here sharing your knowledge.... but for once I am hoping youre wrong about something.
You clearly know what youre talking about with the maths and calculations but HOLY SMOKES $10k for the Harvester would be a deal breaker for me.
The LFP battery will be cheaper and smaller. The engine may cost a few grand to install and plumb for cooling with the volume VW does.
The BEV and EREV should cost Scout close to the same to build, and I appreciate that there is some more complexity and utility with Harvester... but a $10k premium is just not justifiable to me.
Maybe $3k is more reasonable. Especially with how they are pricing the vehicles.
Scott was asked about this and dodged it, but then he alluded to Harvester probably being more expensive since it will be their volume seller. I just dont think $10k will sit well with a lot of people, especially for a vehicle with slightly slower performance numbers.
First I agree. Thank you for all your hard work! Second I too about had a heart attack when I saw $10,000 more.
It is one of those things we just have to have patience and I’m not going to panic yet.
The only thing I could think to look up is the 4Runner. Toyota is charging $2800 extra for the iforce max hybrid engines. I think that’s why I had $3,000 in my head for the Harvester.
It’s a what if question and my great grandma always said you can’t worry about something when the question starts with what if.
So again just sitting here being patient.
I have to admit it’s a WAG.
To me, $10k seems to be the mark in distinguishing vehicle trims, etc these days. The hybrid vs non-hybrid for non-lifestyle gas vehicles seems to be around $2500 (I have not done an analysis of the actual price differences). For the higher-end, hybrids can sell for up to $15k more. And these are the kind of hybrid with a rather small battery, often NiMH rather than LFP.
Turning it around and reducing the size of the battery while adding a large-ish engine and all of its additional stuff? I don’t know. I can see some arguments that it should be cheaper (but battery costs were coming down quite a lot before all the everything going on in international trade). I also could imagine the hybrid could be much more expensive than the BEV.
But Toyota has been developing Hybrids for more than a quarter century. They don’t have to fund much when it comes to integration development. So their R&D cost for hybrid vs non-hybrid is, essentially, $0 and the premium price on the hybrid is for parts, labor, and profit.
A new design, like the Scout Harvester? Nobody has successfully brought this to market yet. BMW had something similar, but they discontinued it pretty quickly, it doesn’t really compare. Stellantis/RAM is trying—and struggling—to get theirs out and they’ve just delayed it for the umpteenth time.
A new company creating a new design? I expect a lot of R&D costs. And I expect they’ll have to price the Harvester pretty highly to recover those R&D costs. They will already be facing the inane “they lose money on every vehicle they sell” statements in the press, so they’ll need to find that sweet spot between too expensive and just expensive enough.
Of course, I don’t have any market analysis behind me to justify this WAG.
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Damn you and your perfectly reasonable line of thinking!
I am not sure how R&D is being managed, and I am sure they can lean into Dad (VW) for advice on some implementations.
We can also consider how much R&D they are saving by using Rivian's intellectual property and systems through VW's investment.
Scout is getting a lot of sweet deals with their parent companies buying power and resources so I hope they can remain aggressive, garner market share, and adjust pricing once they become a more establish brand.
I can guarantee that they arent planning to be profitable for at least 5 years. We would be paying $300k for each Scout if they were trying to immediately recoup their costs. And unlike Rivian they have forecasted piles of cash to sit on when they launch.
It may seem silly to speculate on, but the fact they are going to offer a trade in program at launch makes me think they have enough solvency to float things for a while and not need to squeeze every dime they can out of us.
Would that price difference make you say no to Scout? Or, would you possibly still consider the BEV?
Damn you and your perfectly reasonable line of thinking!
I am not sure how R&D is being managed, and I am sure they can lean into Dad (VW) for advice on some implementations.
We can also consider how much R&D they are saving by using Rivian's intellectual property and systems through VW's investment.
Scout is getting a lot of sweet deals with their parent companies buying power and resources so I hope they can remain aggressive, garner market share, and adjust pricing once they become a more establish brand.
I can guarantee that they arent planning to be profitable for at least 5 years. We would be paying $300k for each Scout if they were trying to immediately recoup their costs. And unlike Rivian they have forecasted piles of cash to sit on when they launch.
It may seem silly to speculate on, but the fact they are going to offer a trade in program at launch makes me think they have enough solvency to float things for a while and not need to squeeze every dime they can out of us.
Taking the other side of my WAG:
One thing that protects Scout that hasn’t protected Rivian and others is that they’re not publicly traded, so they don’t have to answer to demanding stockholders who don’t really know anything except what’s happening to their dividends. That, alone, allows them to spend money more appropriately for a R&D company rather than a production company. Even Ford has had trouble with its Model-E business model because stockholders are a PITA when it comes to actually planning for the future and they’ve demanded profitability from the beginning.
And, as you say, Scout are able to lean on a lot of the previous development for almost all of the BEV. Not all, of course.
The price difference between BEV and Harvester is, IMO, unlikely to be $3k. Could be $5k, maybe $7.5k, maybe $10k.
I think the trade-in program is simply a requirement if they want to get market share that they seem to be hoping for: They need to accept the 4-Runner as a trade-in if they want the 4-Runner customer. They need to accept the Bronco as a trade, or the F-150 or the F-150 Lightning…etc. They’re trying to slip into a pretty niche market and so they have to create as many incentives as they can.
I don’t think this has much correlation with what the asking price will be, though, because they can justify its higher price through it being an upgrade from most of the other vehicles in the same market. And I would agree with them that their concept vehicles would be considered an upgrade against nearly every other vehicle that’s similar.
I would honestly start considering the Duramax AT4 Denali again if Scout wanted anything over $5k for a small 4 banger in the trunk.
The BEV may be able to sway me depending on the price and how much space I would need to give up for a solar charging setup.
I’m curious about what your need would be if you went with BEV + solar.
How many days would you be out? How much additional range would you need? What part of the world would this be happening?
Would a trailer with some PV+battery be an option?
For your need and use case that’s probably one of the more efficient options.
There has to be a premium. $10K. I think that is high but I can easily see $4K-$6K. From the building industry side of things-you’d be amazed at how many people will pay nearly double the price of a similar product that at COST, is Pennie’s difference. It’s the idea of value and emotion.
Sure-the engine and lesser battery quantity will save money. However, when Harvester was decided it likely required way more staffing/engineering because the original plan was EV. I’m sure Scout hired experts on that side but now you add an engine and all the complexities and staffing and R&D probably grows 30% or more. That has to be paid for and since Harvester in theory offers “more” it needs to be priced more. No different that the 3- row SUV argument earlier with a larger profit margin. Can’t imagine the margins-I think it would ruin me to see it but that retail/commodity sales.
And I think it’s important to note that often times the ______ trades, cost differences have been bought down to pennies over years of those high margins going into improving the manufacturing such that the cost of *producing* a “base level” product is minimally different from producing a “premium” product. But that premium product may have cost a lot to develop and so it had high costs for a long time where the margins weren’t much better than the base level product. Once those high costs have been paid for, there’s no incentive to lower the cost of the premium product (or at least not to the cost of the base level product).
I seriously doubt the “premium” materials and tech of a Lexus GX Overtrail are so much more premium that they justify the $28k premium cost compared with a Toyota Landcruiser. But people will still pay it.
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