Tacoma diesel?

Waterproof electrical systems are easy to manufacture. They just have to try. Submarines are electric for instance. The benefit is there doesn’t have to be an air intake. In theory, you could drive a properly designed electric Tacoma on the bottom of the lake, not that they would go that far with waterproofing, but in theory it is a possibility.

 

Our land cruisers in Africa were diesel. The 70 series is diesel. If Toyota wanted US diesel, it would have happened already. The future is electric.

 

No I get it, I just don't trust that in an inexpensive application like a truck (comparatively to a submarine) that they would get it right every time for all the units they sell, especially when you consider most are not going to go in water like that anyways.

 

You know what, that's just crazy enough to work. Only needs all the manufacturers to standardize on a battery pack. I'm pretty cynical so I don't think it's something I'll be holding my breath waiting to see.

But I like the idea, at least if you never plan to travel off main routes or on backcountry trails. On-board generator or at least packing one to recharge in camp. OTOH the powers to be would love nothing more than to see vehicles made off limits on trails, so that probably won't matter anyway.

 

Not a good idea in my opinon. The reason is with gas we are dependant on oil companies to provide us with it. With swappable batter packs again we are dependant on a company to provide the pack and charge it. Right now, I can charge my pack with solar in my own home. I'm not dependent on someone for day to day driving. I think swappable batteries is a good idea from a maintenance perspective, easy in easy out when they go bad.

Even tool companies dont have standardized batteries, why would an automanufacturer

 

this guy gets it

 

Never going too happen.

 

I don't think anyone suggests you shouldn't be able to charge your own batteries, but my point was how are you going to solve going 1,000 miles across country when you're range is 250 on a charge and plugging in will require hours waiting.

Right now it takes 10 minutes to put on the order of 500 kW-hr into your tank (a gallon of gasoline contains about 33 kW-hr equivalent times 19 gallons is 627 kW-hr). With your solar it's going to take days. Let's say you have a 200 watts of solar and even assuming you get 100% of that all day (which isn't the case) to return the same energy in 19 gallons of gas will take 2,500 hours of daylight.

So you need thousands of watts of solar panels. If you cover your whole roof with panels you might generate 2,000 watts and even then it will take 250 hours of sunlight to generate the same energy as one single tank of gasoline.

BTW, just to give you an idea. The average American household uses about 900 kW-hr of electricity per month, so about the same energy as one gallon of gasoline each day. Now the real amount of gasoline we use is much higher because engines aren't 100% efficient. You only get maybe 1/3rd of the actual energy converted into work, the rest is lost to heat, friction, etc. So all of this is just quick numbers to give rough magnitudes of order.

No matter how you look at it you need a high energy primary source of power, gasoline, diesel, coal, nuclear, natural gas, etc. Solar is endless but you need a whole lot of surface area to harvest it. Batteries only store energy, like a gas tank. Hydrogen fuel cells have potential in this area, though.

And you're still relying on someone making solar cells and batteries, which are often Chinese. We do not mine the raw materials such as lead in the U.S. anymore and there's only a handful of plants domestically that can even recycle lead.

 

I get it, right now its difficult to drive 1000 miles, but an electric car capable/wanted of driving 1000 miles isnt on the radar of most consumers. They want something they can commute in and it doesnt need to go 1000 miles. Logistics on the other hand it will likely be a bigger market.

The dependency on manufacturing of batteries and solar is moot in this discussion, considering that applies to everything in the modern world. When I'm driving to and from work for 10 years I'm not thinking about by when I'm going to get my next battery or where I'm going to get my next solar panel. I do however need to worry about when I'm going to get gas.

I didn't dive too deep into your numbers and while the theory is correct it's not practical in application because no one owns a single 200w panel, but maybe I missed it, Home solar systems generate as much electricity as you want, in my case 13KW. Additionally you do not need 500KW to charge a Tesla Battery its about 85KW. That being said it will still take a couple days to fully charge but, from a commuter perspective you arent running your battery empty everyday.

I'm tracking though that this doesnt work for cross country trips and a battery swap will work but from a consumer perspective I cant see it being feasible. I can see it from a shipping and transportation perspective though. Those companies would have battery swap stations for their trucks, makes sense

 

I'm more inclined to think the future is in hydrogen fuel cell technology.

 

Curious, not sure, about that technology. I ve read about it and I see Toyota has a car but other than that, I have no idea.

 

Quoting an old joke about hydrogen power:
It’s the fuel of the future, and always will be.

Toyota will probably give up on hydrogen fuel cells eventually, but they have invested a lot of "energy" in the technology.

https://electrek.co/2017/10/26/toyota-elon-musk-fuel-cell-hydrogen/

Electric vehicles will eventually dominate because they will be less expensive to manufacture and maintain, and also perfectly suited to autonomous technology, imo.

 

The company I work for has partnered with Toyota and Honda to make advances in the components that the fuel cell is made from.
The department I work in is far removed from what they are doing, but from what I understand, some significant advancements have been made.

 

Agreed, technology will get pushed. But we work with what is and what appears possible in the near term.

Seems like the same thing, you are relying on somebody doing something for you. I dunno if I'm understanding the argument. Right now it's oil and gas stations, which have a 100 year head start on pervasiveness. There's almost nowhere you go that you can't get gasoline. In the future it may be batteries and solar. There are a lot of places without charging stations right now, though.

You have 13 kW of solar or can generate 13 kW-hrs? It would take 50 x 260 watt panels, which is about 880 sq-ft of surface area to have 13 kW peak capacity. It's possible but that is a large installation. Ones I've seen about about half of that, 25 panels to generate 7 kW, which over the course of day usually collect about 20 kW-hr. In Colorado we figure it takes about 8 kW of panels to cover a typical household's daily needs and this annually harvests about 10,000 kW-hr of power annually.

Mix a Tesla in and you'll need increase your solar by 5 times what you have now. Is that 85 kW-hr? BTW, I said one tank of gasoline contains about 627 kW-hr of energy and the 500 kW-hr is a number you expect in a fill-up. That would recharge a Tesla almost 6 times and if the Telsa gets 250 miles from 85 kW-hr that makes it 6 times more efficient than gasoline. So the economics are there, no question.

 

All great points.

I'll switch gears here, mildly derailing, 8KW of panels in CO is a bit high, though this obviously depends on the area and efficiencies and some variables. My friend's system is a 4.7Kw system with 13 panels and a Tesla Power wall and hes 90% grid free. I think the Tesla Power wall holds 7kw so with maybe 2 more panels hes looking at 100% energy coverage. The biggest problem in solar is the loss of energy through conversion.

 

Is that even feasible?

Average gas station sees 500-1000 cars a day. That is an awful lot of batteries to keep on hand...especially for how long they take to charge currently.

 

Toyota released these dyno numbers this morning.

 

tbh i'd rather they release a turbo'd 4 banger as an option in these trucks

 

No seriously back in 2003 I had a F350 7.3 International AKA Powerstroke sitting on 37s. Making 500 horsepower and almost a thousand pound feet of torque and that truck would get 22 miles to the gallon. Not to mention whoop a GT Mustang off the line. And it would do it pulling 4000 lb trailer.
So why are we so impressed when these little trucks get 24 miles to the gallon. They should be doing way better than that by now. That wasn't the point of this thread. But everybody's trying to steer this off in the wrong direction. I don't want a stupid little vehicle that needs to have a sound maker. So the blind people can hear it coming.
If they ever start making all electric vehicles and that's all we can buy. I will buy every 1989 Dodge 2500 with the mechanically injected Cummins 5.9
liter.
And blow black smoke everywhere.

 

Oh and by the way I sold that truck to my dad,
And he still has it with 392,000 miles on it
Short of rebuilding some suspension it's still running fine. A little bit of AC work and cooling system components. Edit
(Oops I forgot that's the second transmission that's in the vehicle it was rebuilt at 120k miles)