The technology is not exactly new: BMW sold a more primitive extended-range EV in the U.S. during the mid-2010s. But now these souped-up hybrids are set to go mainstream. EREVs are the car industry’s new hope for quieting the doubts of American drivers who are wary of going electric. In the Ram, the battery can run for about 150 miles of electric driving, and the whole setup delivers enough range to travel nearly 700 miles between stops. EREVs are the car industry’s new hope for quieting the doubts of American drivers who are wary of going electric. “It takes away the range anxiety,” Jeremy Michalek, the director of the Vehicle Electrification Group at Carnegie Mellon University, told me. “When you want to go on a long trip, you can still put liquid fuel in it and continue to drive for longer distances.” But for all the upside, gas-burning electric cars are not quite the future that we were promised. Just last year, the Ram truck was slated to be fully electric, with no gas engine to be found. Ford recently killed the electric F-150 pickup truck and is now promising to bring it back as—you guessed it—an EREV.
These new hybrids are the latest sign that the electric revolution has not exactly gone according to plan. Sales of EVs, true electric vehicles, had been growing slowly in the United States, but they’ve slid in the past six months, plagued by high prices and attacks from the Trump administration. Automakers have responded by canceling and delaying new EV models. Last month, for example, Honda announced that it would halt the development of three new EVs; a few days later, Volvo said it would discontinue its affordable electric SUV, citing “shifting market conditions.” Other car companies, having invested billions into building EVs, are trying to find new ways to persuade Americans to take a chance on big batteries and electric motors. That’s where extended-range EVs come in.
By throwing in a backup generator, the car industry hopes that it can finally appeal to pickup drivers, who have been especially resistant to going electric. Of the 16 EREVs that are set to hit the market within the next three years, all are trucks or SUVs. “For American brands at the moment, I think it’s an admission that maybe, especially for big trucks and SUVs, EVs can’t deliver the type of utility and the performance that their customers demand,” Joseph Yoon, a consumer-insights analyst at the car-buying site Edmunds, told me. Indeed, electrifying the full-size American pickup truck has proved to be a particularly tough problem. Because these vehicles are so big and heavy, electric versions need colossal batteries to move them. That raises the price, and drivers are still sometimes left with subpar performance: Towing a boat or trailer severely dings their battery range. [...]
However, the curse of any hybrid is compromise. EREVs aren’t likely to solve the biggest reason Americans are not going electric: cost. Though Ram has yet to announce the price of its new extended-range pickup truck, Car and Driver estimates that the vehicle will run at least $60,000. Ram’s gas-powered truck, meanwhile, starts at $42,000. The price difference is partly because an extended-range EV still has a big, expensive battery in addition to carrying around a gas engine with its thousands of chugging belts and spinning gears. That leads to other downsides. EREVs require plenty of upkeep, unlike fully electric cars that have just a few dozen moving parts. In the six and a half years that I’ve owned my Tesla, I’ve done basically nothing but replace the tires and the small backup battery.
The problem that these buzzy new hybrids do solve isn’t as relevant as you might think. For those who aren’t doing any heavy-duty driving—which includes lots of American pickup-truck owners—range anxiety is a vanishing concern. New electric cars can now run for 300 or even 400 miles a charge, which is more than enough to pull off a road trip without having to make lots of extra stops. High-speed charging is also getting more common and more reliable: Tesla now has more than 3,000 Supercharger stations in the United States, and competitors such as IONNA and EVgo have accelerated the previously slow pace of installing new plugs. (The Trump administration tried to freeze billions in federal funding for EV charging, but courts have ruled against that move.)
Two things are clear about electric vehicles: They are far cleaner in the long run, and people who buy them typically don’t return to gas. Perhaps extended-range EVs are the training wheels that hesitant drivers need, providing the benefits of electric cars—instantaneous torque, quiet driving, fewer planet-killing carbon emissions—alongside the comfort of knowing there’s a gas station at every freeway exit. Seen another way, though, a built-in backup generator is poised to prolong the inevitable transition to true electric cars... Considering that vehicles tend to stay on the road for a decade or more, these trucks are likely to be still burning fossil fuels deep into the 2040s. Any driver who buys an EREV to go mostly electric is one who could have gone fully electric and never picked up a gas pump again.
by Andrew Moseman, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Alisa Gao
