Stellantis EREV platform with 690 mile range

[Rivdog]

For those who are enamored with the potential of the REV and RAMCharger, understand Stellantis is having severe difficulty with EVs. Dodge Charger EVs are bricking at dealerships. More than half the EVs at the Windsor production facility (they only make 10-12 a day) won't charge. Wagoneer S has the same problem. Not true? Take a look at TK's Garage video where he shares photos and texts from employees. But the REV and RAM Charger will be good-to-go in a few months? Doubt it.

But let's say they figure it out. Why would you want the complexity of ICE and battery. If long range is important (and to many it is) why not just stay with proven ICE and get over 500 miles. Adding another 200 miles may seem worth it but most bladders can't handle more than 4 hours of sitting. You're going to stop anyway.

I agree with you, but the issue is charging infrastructure. Granted, it’s a bigger issue for the west where I literally cannot take my Rivian to lots of places I want to go because there is no charging available. You have to get back to a charger so you really can’t go more than about 150 miles away (for those with a large pack with around 320 mile range) from the closest charger, especially if you’ll be at a campsite for several days since the vampire drain will be 1-3%. My favorite place anywhere around here is the Wallowas in eastern Oregon but it’s literally impossible for me to take my Rivian there.

Even for those who might never have that issue, the number of EV’s on the road has led to such long lines at non-RAN chargers that it’s hard to rely on them. Then you always have to worry about the charger not functioning and you’ve put all your eggs in that basket…I nearly got burnt by that like 2 weeks ago where every CCS DCFC at a location was down despite having a 10 rating on PlugShare and it said they all worked. They had one NACS DCFC and, with the unexpected delivery of my NACS adapter, I was able to charge. Had I been one of the folks who hasn’t gotten their adapter, it could have been a disaster.

I’d love to have both a generator and the battery, even though it’s more complex.

Sponsored

 

[Dark-Fx]

Dodge Charger EVs are bricking at dealerships.

Maybe I'll trade my Fisker in. At least it works.

 

[tpoltron]

Personally I abhor the idea of hauling a high-maintenance ICE engine around but I think the RAMcharger is a great solution for certain use cases. My brother in Canda for example, 49 days of 50 he could drive electric but a few times a year we like to tow his boat to a nice lake to fish and play that is 3 hours past the last charger. Now Stellantis making it reliable or even surviving is another matter....

 

[zjl19902003]

IMO it is crazy for any car-makers to design an EV without a proper frunk. Who wants to store things on top of a car or on a hitch-mount cargo carrier when they can fit them in the frunk? Yuk!

 

[Thedude]

Personally I abhor the idea of hauling a high-maintenance ICE engine around but I think the RAMcharger is a great solution for certain use cases. My brother in Canda for example, 49 days of 50 he could drive electric but a few times a year we like to tow his boat to a nice lake to fish and play that is 3 hours past the last charger. Now Stellantis making it reliable or even surviving is another matter....

High maintenance is a bit of an exaggeration. A ten minute oil change once or twice a year isn’t high maintenance.

 

[Throwdown]

I know it's stellantis which seems to be going through it at the moment, but if it's comparably priced with the other 1500s I don't see why they wouldn't sell, on paper to a regular person who wants an ev but has reservations about range, charging etc, it has what they need. It gets them in the door to see that if they plug it in, they'd never even use the gas generator.

 

[tpoltron]

High maintenance is a bit of an exaggeration. A ten minute oil change once or twice a year isn’t high maintenance.

Not my lived experience. Our last ICE SUVs (VW Tuareg then Audi Q7) pretty much cost $500 a year for scheduled service which also took all day. Plus every year they have to be taken for a smog check for another $40 and couldn't have any error codes. Contrast that with my Tesla Model 3 is 6 years old and 90k miles and the only thing I've had to do (beyond the expected tires, wiper blades and cabin air filter) is have the starter battery replaced in my driveway for $150 in 20 minutes. By half that many miles the Q7 had the engine light come on 3 times requiring various sensors to be replaced. At 60K miles the rear main seal (a $30 part) failed and the dealer quoted $11,500 to fix it as they had to pull the engine - thankfully I sold it a year before.

 

[BigSkies]

I have a feeling the EPA rules will be greatly relaxed or eliminated next year. Now whether the automakers relax their standards is anyone's guess.

My inch-deep understanding is that to really impact the market, the EPA would have to dramatically reduce standards, AND eliminate California's waiver to set independent standards (which something like 20 other states follow). This would be fought to the Supreme court.

In addition, California crafted separate compliance contracts with the major automakers that allow some flexibility, and these contracts are designed to survive even if California's CARB waiver is overturned.

Maybe all of this gets overturned, but I wouldn't bet money on it. Automakers that don't figure this out will be left selling to a small enough group of states that it would be hard to justify staying in the car business.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

I have a feeling the EPA rules will be greatly relaxed or eliminated next year. Now whether the automakers relax their standards is anyone's guess.

I don't think it matters as back in 2020 the various states has the option to go with Federal Standards or with California's Emission standards.

Quite a few states opted to go with California's Emission standards.

Those standards require a certain percentage of a companies fleet to be BEV's. I'm not sure how the EREV' qualify. I would think so but I haven't done any research.

I don't question the need to have EREV's especially with Trucks and Camper Vans because the battery technology simply isn't there to support those applications.

Edit: I should have read the whole thread before I posted. What I mentioned was already covered.

 

[BigSkies]

I think this focus on PHEV's (or whatever you want to call them) is a mixture of desperation and an over-reliance on focus groups.

The target market for cars like Highlander or a RAV4 could easily be convinced to go electric. The small and midsize CUV market is electrifying quickly. EV's can be made to meet the needs of those customers in ways that aren't completely out of sync on pricing with their gas counterparts.

Go take a survey of RAM drivers and tell me how many are interested in EV's. It's not many. Take a focus group of RAM drivers, and you'll hear things about how horrible EV's are, how maybe they'll consider one with 500 miles of range, or maybe they'd consider a PHEV just to sound slightly open-minded on the topic. Except these are all excuses for why they don't want electrified transport. Approximately a dozen of them would actually buy a PHEV or EV.

But this doesn't make the supply-side constraints of CARB states (among others) go away. Either Stellantis has to figure out how to supply EV's and PHEV's to a disinterested customer base, or they probably won't last more than another decade in the US.

 

[Kaiju]

I kind of see the range-extender stuff as a better transitional step than conventional hybrids honestly.

Engineering-wise the electric drive train is a simpler, more powerful and more efficient option than a combustion engine with a mechanical drive train. If you're going to have both an ICE and a battery with an electric motor that can fully power the car, it's more efficient to use the engine to run at constant RPM generating power for the battery than it is driving the wheels with a wholly independent electrical system in parallel. Constant RPM power generation alone makes the engine vastly more efficient even if the battery was never plugged in. In that respect conventional hybrids always seemed backwards to me, adding instead of eliminating complexity.

BEVs are the natural end state of that development because getting rid of the engine makes it simpler again. However the hurdle to mass market adoption was always batteries and charging infrastructure. Real or not, range anxiety is a major point for EV buyers regardless of whether or not they ever knew how far they could go on a tank of gas. I don't know about any of you but I never bothered to figure out how far I could go on a tank of gas for a road trip nor has being able to go for 6 or 8 hours without stopping ever been a selling point.

The main benefit of the gas range extender (and I'm going to call that the more correct hybrid approach) is mostly that you can get away with a smaller, cheaper battery that covers 90% of daily commuting without scaring people with range anxiety about their semi-annual road trip. They can just shove gas in it and it will still go. The distance it will go without stopping is honestly pretty irrelevant. It's more that it takes 5 minutes to gas up and go again. So that approach solves two short term problems: reducing overall cost by getting rid of some of the (presently) most expensive part, and not having any of the vulnerabilities caused by charging infrastructure being spotty.

I'd still embrace them because they do keep moving us toward the end goal of improving electrification, transportation efficiency and breaking down the barriers that keep people from taking a risk on a big purchase. The hard spot they're in though is that they're going to be expensive and marketing to truck people will have to convince them that the electric drive train is better and the performance is worth the extra money. I think Ford came to the conclusion mass market adoption will not come from convincing people they're better for the environment, it's from convincing people they're just better period.

 

[kenyee]

convince them that the electric drive train is better and the performance is worth the extra money

If it's similar to the Scout, people might be convinced.
3.5sec 0-60 is noticably faster than a gas engine can do unless your in hypercar territory...
Plus you get to charge at home (if you can) and be cheaper than gas unless you live in CA ?

 

[Throwdown]

I kind of see the range-extender stuff as a better transitional step than conventional hybrids honestly.

Engineering-wise the electric drive train is a simpler, more powerful and more efficient option than a combustion engine with a mechanical drive train. If you're going to have both an ICE and a battery with an electric motor that can fully power the car, it's more efficient to use the engine to run at constant RPM generating power for the battery than it is driving the wheels with a wholly independent electrical system in parallel. Constant RPM power generation alone makes the engine vastly more efficient even if the battery was never plugged in. In that respect conventional hybrids always seemed backwards to me, adding instead of eliminating complexity.

BEVs are the natural end state of that development because getting rid of the engine makes it simpler again. However the hurdle to mass market adoption was always batteries and charging infrastructure. Real or not, range anxiety is a major point for EV buyers regardless of whether or not they ever knew how far they could go on a tank of gas. I don't know about any of you but I never bothered to figure out how far I could go on a tank of gas for a road trip nor has being able to go for 6 or 8 hours without stopping ever been a selling point.

The main benefit of the gas range extender (and I'm going to call that the more correct hybrid approach) is mostly that you can get away with a smaller, cheaper battery that covers 90% of daily commuting without scaring people with range anxiety about their semi-annual road trip. They can just shove gas in it and it will still go. The distance it will go without stopping is honestly pretty irrelevant. It's more that it takes 5 minutes to gas up and go again. So that approach solves two short term problems: reducing overall cost by getting rid of some of the (presently) most expensive part, and not having any of the vulnerabilities caused by charging infrastructure being spotty.

I'd still embrace them because they do keep moving us toward the end goal of improving electrification, transportation efficiency and breaking down the barriers that keep people from taking a risk on a big purchase. The hard spot they're in though is that they're going to be expensive and marketing to truck people will have to convince them that the electric drive train is better and the performance is worth the extra money. I think Ford came to the conclusion mass market adoption will not come from convincing people they're better for the environment, it's from convincing people they're just better period.

Correct its the only way to have a "hybrid" at all, as it's an EV drivetrain that just happens to be able to have an extended range with gas, regular hybrids specifically plug-in hybrids are worst of both worlds, more cost, weight and in the plug in case terrible EV mode efficiency. I tell people all the time at work, buy gas or buy all electric, whichever suits you. There hasn't been a long range serial hybrid ever and judging by the specs when it shows the Ramcharger will be the first. 90ish kwh battery 70ish usable which will be more 150ish mile range which would cover most people's weekend and daily use alone. I have a 70-90 mile daily round trip commute, id only use gas once a year when I take a trip. I'm considering it depending on cost compared to the rev or the silverado ev.

 

[Ecupip]

I have a 70-90 mile daily round trip commute, id only use gas once a year when I take a trip. I'm considering it depending on cost compared to the rev or the silverado ev.

Doesn’t seem worth lugging an engine plus the added complexity around for 1 trip a year. Unless you just want the peace of mind for additional longer trips and you don’t like a fast charger. I’d be worried too about the engine longevity and maintenance if it wasn’t ran often. Though I’m sure they’ll use the form algorithm from the 4xe so the engine will run frequently even if you don’t use it to keep the fuel and oil fresh, which just wastes fuel and maintenance when it’s not needed to charge the battery.

 

[Throwdown]

Doesn’t seem worth lugging an engine plus the added complexity around for 1 trip a year. Unless you just want the peace of mind for additional longer trips and you don’t like a fast charger. I’d be worried too about the engine longevity and maintenance if it wasn’t ran often. Though I’m sure they’ll use the form algorithm from the 4xe so the engine will run frequently even if you don’t use it to keep the fuel and oil fresh, which just wastes fuel and maintenance when it’s not needed to charge the battery.

It's definitely a factor, i would keep almost no gas in mine until a took a trip and use stabilant like I do in my chainsaw and snowblower. We will have to see how it actually operates. If it's the same price as a Rev then I'd go with the Rev, but if they jump the shark and the Rev is 20k more for the same trim I would want then it's a no-brainer for me. I'm a firm believer in Evs. I have no gas vehicles in my household and haven't for many years, but until energy density is better this is how all trucks and HD equipment should have been made, that way there are no compromises and people would quickly see that electric propulsion is the bees knees.

Sponsored