I absolutely agree with this. Battery tech is VERY rapidly changing and retrofits would be very cost prohibitive. This is why Iām planning to have a 3yr lease for my EV Truck. I think there is a decent chance someone will make a 1000mi EV truck by the end of the 2020s.
While I agree about retrofitting, electric motors definitely do have different efficiencies at different amounts of utilization. I believe itās usually somewhere around half power is ideal for most of them. This is why you see Tesla stacking up multiple motors on a car and getting more range out of it sometimes, itās more efficient to have 2 motors working at 50% than one constantly trying to max itself out. Itās backwards from gas engines where the bigger engine will get worse mileage because itās running all the time, even if you donāt use all that power, but with electric motors sometimes a more powerful motor will run more efficiently doing the same job as a smaller one if itās not working as hard to do it.
Waiting for the next technology to come out is always an infinite wait. The trick is to find the spot you feel comfortable with. SSB batteries are a better thing no doubt, but getting them ready for EV's is another story.
It's true that electric motors (and power supplies) have an efficiency curve, the motors are so powerful that the single front motor in a Model S is capable of 259 horsepower by itself - and that's the small one. With both motors at 50%, the car is producing 381hp! Tesla puts the rear induction motor to "sleep" when cruising at moderate power to boost efficiency.
Perhaps I wasn't explicit enough; I believe it's an absolute certainty that Ford won't offer new upgraded batteries for used EVs and I never would expect that outside of warranty replacements. What I said was a factual statement about the Lightning being body on frame construction and because of that it will be easier to upgrade and modify. While most people would simply buy a new vehicle, as EVs become more prevalent and better understood, (and more importantly, cheaper in the second hand market) I'm speculating that a new generation of hot rodders who are more comfortable with a multimeter and computer tablet than a timing light and vacuum gauge will seek out the challenge of taking their grandparent's mint condition EV with a clapped out battery and finding a way of making it relevant or even better performing than a brand new vehicle. I knew a dude that had zero experience with working on cars and who works as a regional sales manager who bought his company's old Prius fleet and successfully rebuilt the battery packs with nothing more than YouTube and eBay as a resource. While the Prius battery pales in comparison with the Lightning's, the basic principles remain. Already, there are exotic and classic car EV conversions using wrecked Teslas. I can only imagine how much more that will happen with drivetrains from manufacturers that don't fight tooth and nail against that. If customization happens and the aftermarket steps up, it would also benefit those who choose to keep their trucks stock and simply just want to keep them on the road and running.
I agree 100%, however you are giving elected officials and bureaucrats far too much credit if you think that they won't try some silly shit to ruin a good thing. I can almost guarantee that they will talk about limitations on motor output once people are stuck waiting in line to charge their cars or use it as some red herring for energy mismanagement and grid problems, which has already begun.
Yes, on the Model 3 the permanent magnet motor is in the rear, so the front induction motor sleeps. On the newer S and X it's reversed and the rear motor sleeps. And on the earlier S / X (before 2019) both motors were induction. The rear slept as it was bigger and less efficient at low power.
There was a video a while back about this subject that used the U.K. as its basis. The nitty-gritty was that compared to historical peak energy use in the U.K., they are currently well below that level due to modern appliances, etc. If they were to convert 50% of cars/trucks instantly (impossible of course) to electric would still have put the UK around 6% below the historical high power demands. Just another hypothesis.
But 90% of Tesla's, the 3's and Y's are basically RWD cars with on demand AWD. You could feel it during the winter snow storms as the RWD would push the car off course and the FWD would kick in.
As someone that's been following EVs for about 10 years, and has owned 2.5 (one a PHEV so that's the 0.5) of them, the next big thing is always "Just right around the corner!"
