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Comment on Slate Truck is a $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

I found the specs a bit interesting. 52.7 kWh battery and a curb weight of 3,600 lbs is nearly identical to the Chevy Bolt, but this only has a range of 150 miles instead of 240. Is it really that much less efficient? The only thing I can think of is the aerodynamics, but that’s a 40% difference.

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CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
As I understand it, the aerodynamics can be no joke on EVs. The motors are very efficient, and there’s very efficient regenerative breaking. That means drag is pretty much where your whole battery charge goes.

For an example off the top of my head, the Arrow concept car manages 500km by not having side mirrors.

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- Umbrias@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  This is generally in line with ice, the drivetrain efficiencies anymore are in the high 90%s (applies to ev too), so from engine out you are losing basically everything to drag.
  
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  - CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    And breaking. There’s no turning it back into petrol.
    
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  - Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    On ICE vehicles you lose a lot more to braking
    
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    Umbrias@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    depends entirely on the kind of drive.
    
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  - BlueEther@no.lastname.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    This is one thing I don’t get for the complaints about EV’s: Drag and towing. You have the same losses in ICE, just that the ICE powerplant is so much worse ‘before’ the drive
    
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AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Also, the “(after federal incentives)” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The basic option for the 2023 Bolt comes out to about $20K after federal incentives, but you get way more range and a bunch of those “luxury” features this is missing. Considering how cheap low-end smart phones are, I have a hard time imagining that infotainment systems actually add more than 1-2% of the cost of the vehicle. Feels more like a type of virtue signal than a real cost-saving measure.

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- Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Your vehicle not being yet another surveillance vector can be a selling point.
  
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  - AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    I mean, I guess, but that’s only a selling point to the small number of people without smartphones, which isn’t a large enough group to make it a sound business strategy.
    
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Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
EV truck vs. car? 40% difference sounds about right, even an aerodynamic truck isn’t much better than an aerodynamic brick

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