Skip to the bold if you don’t want to hear about the Hummer or my background, like one of those online recipes. TL;DR at the bottom.
This is an effortpost sharing my experience living with an EV for the first time in my life, as an ICE afficionado. My reservation is for a Traveler Harvester with the offroad package and a bench seat to replace my Bronco.
Background: lifelong enthusiast with ~8 years in and around the auto industry, including shops, dealers, and aftermarket horsepower. I’ve got seat time in everything from 70s Volvo beaters to McLarens and turbo’ed Ferraris; road tripped in Chevy Sparks, Ford Foci, supercharged Raptors, and 1200hp turbo Cadillacs. Driven a Model S P85, some Chevy Bolts, and the last gen of Ioniqs, but none of the recent Rivians, Kias, Hyundais, Mach-Es, etc., and never for more than a couple hours.
Wife and I visited Salt Lake this weekend to see if she wants to take a job there next year, and (as I am wont to do) I took the opportunity to rent something absurd for “research purposes”. Found a Hummer EV truck on Turo for only a little more than a 4Runner (or anything from Hertz et al) so pulled the trigger.
Aside from the usual Hummer impressions:
First off, nobody that I’ve seen here talks about how much better one pedal driving is for any sort of city driving. We spent a solid 10 hours just driving around neighborhoods, and it took all of 5 minutes to adapt. It’s smoother, more intuitive, and (obviously) more efficient than any ICE driving.
With purely city driving, range seemed to drop at about half the rate I expected based on miles traveled (purely subjective).
Driving up into the passes, range dropped fast, as one would expect hauling 9000 pounds of American Excellence up a few thousand feet of incline. That said, of the three passes we went through, we recouped about half of the range burned as we came back down, thanks to regenerative braking.
Hummer EV also lets you use the regen paddle as extra braking if you overcook it coming to a stoplight, rather than burning brake pads. This was handy and a nice touch, note to Scout engineers…
Second, charging really is easy and simple, but for my purposes I don’t think I’d buy an EV without a Level 2 home charger. Ditto for World’s Best Wife, who probably has a Rivian R2 in her future once her Subaru gives up.
The Hummer is an exception and a glorious abomination with its huge battery pack, but having to sit for 30 minutes to gain 120 miles of range (150>270; 66kwh) was something I wouldn’t want to have to deal with all the time, personally.
That’s equivalent to charging the Harvester variant fully from zero (minus shenanigans with charging rates for the last 20% capacity, which I guess isn’t actually that bad) or the full BEV Scouts halfway.
Maybe if Costco had chargers in every spot I’d use my 1x a week trip to charge, but for my current lifestyle, without a home charger this isn’t a compromise we’d make. That said - as little as I drive weekly, charging the Harvester’s 60-70kwh battery off a level 1 outlet would probably suffice for me. I probably wouldn’t put off my Scout purchase if my slot came up over this, due to Harvester. If my commute changes a lot, that would be a no-go, and for her it’s a hard no. My goal is to EV-only for daily life and on the trails, and use Harvester to keep me out on the trails or for long trips where there aren’t chargers near trailheads.
I dunno, maybe I’ve talked myself into not worrying about it.
Third - EV driving experience is superb for torque and power delivery and responsiveness. Probably preaching to the choir in this forum, but coming from a performance background there really is no comparison. I think the wizards at Scout have probably thought of this, but a low speed offroad mode with a gentler throttle tip-in would be great. I’d hate to be negotiating something tricky and hit a bump that jars my foot halfway down the throttle with 1000ft-lbs on tap, but maybe that’s just a skill issue.
It’s just a perfectly flat power and torque curve, with instant responsiveness and everything on tap all the time at every speed.
Fourth - size and fender visibility is a killer. Traveler looks like she has wide hips and something I noticed immediately was that I missed the trail sight cues from my Bronco. Even though I can’t see my fenders in the Bronco, the trail sights at the corners of the hood make it very intuitive to sense your width and front bumper location.
Hummer required using the side cameras (which was actually super fun!) to parallel park right up on curbs. After a couple days it was a lot easier to sense it without cameras, but damn if it wasn’t nerve wracking every time. A testament to this is the dent that a previous renter left in the right rear quarter panel…
Maybe Scout will have a lower beltline along the windows for better side visibility, which would help a lot compared to Hummer.
Scout should be about 6 inches narrower (15.24 centimeters for those of you in the frozen North) which should also make a big difference.
Fifth, last, but by no means least - air suspension was really cool, but I’m pretty sure I hope it isn’t required for the offroad package. I only bring this up as Scout had mentioned there will (I think for sure?) be an optional air suspension.
I have the Ford-branded Bilstein 6100s from Ford Performance, and while they don’t glide over the small stuff like the air suspension, they feel far better over large features. I mostly ignore water bars, train tracks, and speed humps. They’re also really cheap and effective.
I really hope Scout goes with something like that, especially with more damping capability versus the usual small diameter factory shocks since it’ll probably weigh 6-7000 pounds. If not, I hope the aftermarket can come up with some…
Auto leveling for car camping or rooftop camping would be really cool, but I wasn’t impressed with the air suspension over bigger gutters, speed bumps, railroad tracks, etc. Since it was a rental, and from an actual human instead of Hertz, we were gentle on all those bigger bumps. The giant anti-sway bars probably didn’t help (again, 9000 pounds of ‘we’re better than you’).
Maybe a load leveling rear air suspension wouldn’t negate the benefits of a full steel setup, while allowing a modicum of lateral leveling for camping?
Anyway, this is probably my biggest concern. Maybe someone with serious Rivian off-roading experience as well as non-air suspension offroad experience can chime in?
TL;DR Living with an EV was easier and more fun than I expected, air suspension is cool but feels gimmicky and I don’t think I want it for off-roading, if I wasn’t wanting to go way off the beaten path I’d go full BEV.
This is an effortpost sharing my experience living with an EV for the first time in my life, as an ICE afficionado. My reservation is for a Traveler Harvester with the offroad package and a bench seat to replace my Bronco.
Background: lifelong enthusiast with ~8 years in and around the auto industry, including shops, dealers, and aftermarket horsepower. I’ve got seat time in everything from 70s Volvo beaters to McLarens and turbo’ed Ferraris; road tripped in Chevy Sparks, Ford Foci, supercharged Raptors, and 1200hp turbo Cadillacs. Driven a Model S P85, some Chevy Bolts, and the last gen of Ioniqs, but none of the recent Rivians, Kias, Hyundais, Mach-Es, etc., and never for more than a couple hours.
Wife and I visited Salt Lake this weekend to see if she wants to take a job there next year, and (as I am wont to do) I took the opportunity to rent something absurd for “research purposes”. Found a Hummer EV truck on Turo for only a little more than a 4Runner (or anything from Hertz et al) so pulled the trigger.
Aside from the usual Hummer impressions:
- Holy crap this is huge
- Wow, rear axle steering is amazing
- I cannot believe how big this is
- Crab walk is cool!
- Good god how does this thing fit in any normal city
- Man 9000 lbs scoots well even with the “only” 570hp trim
- This is an enormous monument to man’s arrogance, and I love it
- Supercruise is really cool
- Did I mention this is big?
First off, nobody that I’ve seen here talks about how much better one pedal driving is for any sort of city driving. We spent a solid 10 hours just driving around neighborhoods, and it took all of 5 minutes to adapt. It’s smoother, more intuitive, and (obviously) more efficient than any ICE driving.
With purely city driving, range seemed to drop at about half the rate I expected based on miles traveled (purely subjective).
Driving up into the passes, range dropped fast, as one would expect hauling 9000 pounds of American Excellence up a few thousand feet of incline. That said, of the three passes we went through, we recouped about half of the range burned as we came back down, thanks to regenerative braking.
Hummer EV also lets you use the regen paddle as extra braking if you overcook it coming to a stoplight, rather than burning brake pads. This was handy and a nice touch, note to Scout engineers…
Second, charging really is easy and simple, but for my purposes I don’t think I’d buy an EV without a Level 2 home charger. Ditto for World’s Best Wife, who probably has a Rivian R2 in her future once her Subaru gives up.
The Hummer is an exception and a glorious abomination with its huge battery pack, but having to sit for 30 minutes to gain 120 miles of range (150>270; 66kwh) was something I wouldn’t want to have to deal with all the time, personally.
That’s equivalent to charging the Harvester variant fully from zero (minus shenanigans with charging rates for the last 20% capacity, which I guess isn’t actually that bad) or the full BEV Scouts halfway.
Maybe if Costco had chargers in every spot I’d use my 1x a week trip to charge, but for my current lifestyle, without a home charger this isn’t a compromise we’d make. That said - as little as I drive weekly, charging the Harvester’s 60-70kwh battery off a level 1 outlet would probably suffice for me. I probably wouldn’t put off my Scout purchase if my slot came up over this, due to Harvester. If my commute changes a lot, that would be a no-go, and for her it’s a hard no. My goal is to EV-only for daily life and on the trails, and use Harvester to keep me out on the trails or for long trips where there aren’t chargers near trailheads.
I dunno, maybe I’ve talked myself into not worrying about it.
Third - EV driving experience is superb for torque and power delivery and responsiveness. Probably preaching to the choir in this forum, but coming from a performance background there really is no comparison. I think the wizards at Scout have probably thought of this, but a low speed offroad mode with a gentler throttle tip-in would be great. I’d hate to be negotiating something tricky and hit a bump that jars my foot halfway down the throttle with 1000ft-lbs on tap, but maybe that’s just a skill issue.
It’s just a perfectly flat power and torque curve, with instant responsiveness and everything on tap all the time at every speed.
Fourth - size and fender visibility is a killer. Traveler looks like she has wide hips and something I noticed immediately was that I missed the trail sight cues from my Bronco. Even though I can’t see my fenders in the Bronco, the trail sights at the corners of the hood make it very intuitive to sense your width and front bumper location.
Hummer required using the side cameras (which was actually super fun!) to parallel park right up on curbs. After a couple days it was a lot easier to sense it without cameras, but damn if it wasn’t nerve wracking every time. A testament to this is the dent that a previous renter left in the right rear quarter panel…
Maybe Scout will have a lower beltline along the windows for better side visibility, which would help a lot compared to Hummer.
Scout should be about 6 inches narrower (15.24 centimeters for those of you in the frozen North) which should also make a big difference.
Fifth, last, but by no means least - air suspension was really cool, but I’m pretty sure I hope it isn’t required for the offroad package. I only bring this up as Scout had mentioned there will (I think for sure?) be an optional air suspension.
I have the Ford-branded Bilstein 6100s from Ford Performance, and while they don’t glide over the small stuff like the air suspension, they feel far better over large features. I mostly ignore water bars, train tracks, and speed humps. They’re also really cheap and effective.
I really hope Scout goes with something like that, especially with more damping capability versus the usual small diameter factory shocks since it’ll probably weigh 6-7000 pounds. If not, I hope the aftermarket can come up with some…
Auto leveling for car camping or rooftop camping would be really cool, but I wasn’t impressed with the air suspension over bigger gutters, speed bumps, railroad tracks, etc. Since it was a rental, and from an actual human instead of Hertz, we were gentle on all those bigger bumps. The giant anti-sway bars probably didn’t help (again, 9000 pounds of ‘we’re better than you’).
Maybe a load leveling rear air suspension wouldn’t negate the benefits of a full steel setup, while allowing a modicum of lateral leveling for camping?
Anyway, this is probably my biggest concern. Maybe someone with serious Rivian off-roading experience as well as non-air suspension offroad experience can chime in?
TL;DR Living with an EV was easier and more fun than I expected, air suspension is cool but feels gimmicky and I don’t think I want it for off-roading, if I wasn’t wanting to go way off the beaten path I’d go full BEV.
