Was this written in 1900? Because that is about when this happened and EV's fell to the way side.
Camping / Overland Ideas
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Sure though depending on the situation and how much fuel one has on hand that may or may not be as convenient/useful.
Considering people are already switching to EVs despite the less developed infrastructure and the large disparity in R&D on the vehicle side versus internal combustion over the decades, its seems unlikely an internal combustion ecosystem in a more primitive state would fair well against an EV ecosystem in a much more advanced state as proposed above. In other words, people probably would not switch to an internal combustion ecosystem (as proposed) for all the same reasons people are currently moving away from one now and in the scenario above the internal combustion ecosystem would be in a primitive state and lack infrastructure making the chances of adoption even more remote.
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The problem is that migration is stalling. EV's are sitting on lots. Companies are still not making a profit from the sales of these and they are already more expensive then the ICE vehicles they compete with. Ford and GM are pulling back on EV because they lose money on every sale, and now they are having trouble even selling them. There is 100% an EV market. But it is not 50% of the market, let alone 100% like the planned mandates want. Big cities great, commuter vehicles great, but all other areas are hit and miss. I love the tech they put into these, but almost none of that has to do with the power plant. Look at the Hummer or Silverado EV, you don't think 4 wheel steering, air ride, a large power inverter and the mid gate are items that would do well on ICE vehicles? We would love that stuff on a vehicle that cost 20 to 30 thousand dollars less. And there is a market for a midsize off-road capable EV, just a much smaller market then if it was ICE.
Personally don't think the migration is stalling per se but rather the growth was slower than some had expected (YOY), though given the prices and the state of the infrastructure combined with the interest rates, it's not too surprising.
For sure but the EV market will continue to grow over time regardless (though the growth may not be as fast as some would like). This is for many reasons but the main ones are the volatile geopolitics surrounding oil as well as climate change. Both are leading governments to steer people away due to the risks they pose to their economies/national security. Though there are some geopolitical difficulties in regrades to EVs, they are much more manageable.
The other reason being that as battery/storage tech improves and becomes cheaper, there will be fewer and fewer use cases where internal combustion makes sense from a performance, financial, efficiency, convenience, or environmental perspective. Electric drives are just better suited for this kind of application, battery/storage is the only barrier to domination and the degree to which that occurs will be bound to their improvement.
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This is the same story we keep hearing, and I assume it will become true at some point. The question is will EV's become a logical choice in 5 to 10 years or 50 years. These statements are always based on hopes of tech advances we don't have yet and possibly never will. I do think it will at some point personally.
EVs are already a logical choice for some, for others how long will depend on what their barrier to entry is. EVs are not going to work for everyone overnight, it has and will continue to happen gradually (baring some strange breakthrough) but economies of scale, optimized supply lines, and more infrastructure would go a long way to that end.
It would be better described as acknowledging a trend, there have been many battery advancements over the years, don’t see any reason to believe they’d randomly stop now.
If EVs had a 100-year head start on R&D and global support like ICE then I don't think we'd see such a gap between the two options. Mass market electric vehicles are young and great things are to come as we learn from building them. Plus ICE definitely isn't free from causing environmental damage as well. Change has its challenges. I bet the early adopters of ICE vehicles had concerns about how to get fuel and had to justify themselves to those who had been using horses their whole lives. We're just in the process of improving and advancing like we humans have always been doing.
I suspect that like most words, overlanding means different things to different people. I used to kayak a lot. Overlanding was not a word yet - but driving to destinations, having our vehicles turn into mobile campsites that took at most minutes to take down to move to different locations... That said, the previous term car camping was pretty accurate (abet most of us either had modified minivans or trucks with fiberglass caps). For long trips, we would have drivers sleeping in back while others continued the drive - We did a handful of overnight drives that way, so we could would not loose a day of paddling.
I went to watch Starship's 3rd launch this week. Lots of people had offroad van life vehicles, and there were a lot of trucks with caps or campers there as well. I was in a 2dr Jeep Unlimited (they were made for 2.5 years). With the rear seats pulled and a gear deck installed (giving me plenty of cargo room under it), I can slide the front seats forward and tilt them forwards, flip some wings on the deck - and have essentially room for a full sized bed in back (abet I only need a folding cot mattress). After the launch, I crawled into my bed (after being awake for 24hrs), crashed for 3hr on my cot, hit rest room and 5 minutes later I was on the road again.
So what I would like... I would like enough room that I could fold the front seats forward and have room for a platform with a 6' bed behind them (a bed will always beat sleeping in a reclined seat). I would like the ability to climate control the interior over night (AC or heat, but AC is more important to me - a sleeping bag or electric blanket can work against cold, but AC really helps against Texas heat. That said, I would also like something that is nice enough to drive that I want to do the trips and does not needlessly exhaust me while I am doing it. I have spent a few days just trying to sound proof my Jeep so I can drive it without noise cancelling headphones on. Even so, I don't like driving over 60mph due to the noise. If I was not going camping or offroad - I would be in my TDI Golf (a joy to drive comparably).
One other issue, My Jeep gets about 150 miles to the tank. Give us enough range that I don't have to worry about drives between charging stations (I had to worry about getting between gas stations on this trip - the King ranch is 60 miles without a gas station). This trip, charging would have been a nightmare. Maybe not so bad - but I would need to add 50-70 miles to the round trip to get on a corridor with recharging stations every 120 miles (and honestly, the only reason the recharging corridor exists is because SpaceX is near Brownsville and Tesla is in Austin - so Musk made sure you could get a Tesla from Austin to Boca Chica). Add to that, I had to deal with a 25mph headwind a lot of the way - not sure what that would do to the range of a Scout.
I went to watch Starship's 3rd launch this week. Lots of people had offroad van life vehicles, and there were a lot of trucks with caps or campers there as well. I was in a 2dr Jeep Unlimited (they were made for 2.5 years). With the rear seats pulled and a gear deck installed (giving me plenty of cargo room under it), I can slide the front seats forward and tilt them forwards, flip some wings on the deck - and have essentially room for a full sized bed in back (abet I only need a folding cot mattress). After the launch, I crawled into my bed (after being awake for 24hrs), crashed for 3hr on my cot, hit rest room and 5 minutes later I was on the road again.
So what I would like... I would like enough room that I could fold the front seats forward and have room for a platform with a 6' bed behind them (a bed will always beat sleeping in a reclined seat). I would like the ability to climate control the interior over night (AC or heat, but AC is more important to me - a sleeping bag or electric blanket can work against cold, but AC really helps against Texas heat. That said, I would also like something that is nice enough to drive that I want to do the trips and does not needlessly exhaust me while I am doing it. I have spent a few days just trying to sound proof my Jeep so I can drive it without noise cancelling headphones on. Even so, I don't like driving over 60mph due to the noise. If I was not going camping or offroad - I would be in my TDI Golf (a joy to drive comparably).
One other issue, My Jeep gets about 150 miles to the tank. Give us enough range that I don't have to worry about drives between charging stations (I had to worry about getting between gas stations on this trip - the King ranch is 60 miles without a gas station). This trip, charging would have been a nightmare. Maybe not so bad - but I would need to add 50-70 miles to the round trip to get on a corridor with recharging stations every 120 miles (and honestly, the only reason the recharging corridor exists is because SpaceX is near Brownsville and Tesla is in Austin - so Musk made sure you could get a Tesla from Austin to Boca Chica). Add to that, I had to deal with a 25mph headwind a lot of the way - not sure what that would do to the range of a Scout.
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Last year JD Power reported that “Electric vehicles account for less than 1% of the 250 million vehicles, SUVs, and light-duty trucks sold in the United States.” And then last month the LA Times reported, “For the first time in more than a decade, electric vehicle sales dropped significantly in the last half of 2023.”
I’m here for a Scout, whether it’s electric, hybrid, or gas. But just because it’s electric doesn’t mean I should delude myself into believing that electric vehicles are the greatest thing ever. They’re not.
Not sure where JD Power is getting their figures from but Cox Automotive is one source that tracks these things and BEV sales crossed 1.2 million in the U.S. last year and made up 7.6% of the U.S. vehicle market.
The EV sales slow down is a different headline that is muddied a bit. Quote from Cox Automotive:
"EV sales in the fourth quarter set a record for both volume and share: 317,168 and 8.1%, respectively. And while records were set, the oft-reported slowdown is real. Q4 EV sales increased year over year by 40% – a strong result by any measure, except when compared to the growth the industry saw in previous quarters. The market posted a 49% gain in Q3, and EV sales were up 52% year over year in Q4 2022. By volume, EV sales in Q4 were higher than in Q3 by roughly 5,000 units. The EV market in the U.S. is still growing, but not growing as fast."
So while Q4 was slower growth than the previous quarters, it was still up year over year. Will it ebb and flow? Sure. So does overall sales of vehicles in general.
I'm playing devils advocate a bit here, but did you figure your power tools would be battery powered? Would you go back to a corded tool at this point? There may have been some skepticism about using a battery powered drill at one point, but today we don't even think about it. Would you go back to a bag phone or old Motorola brick phone? No, technology improved.
We are still very much at the beginning of a big transition that will have growing pains along the way. Here in the States, realistically it is a 10-20 year process but will likely happen faster than most of us would think. More money is being spent on batter research than ever before. Batteries will get smaller, more powerful, safer, more recyclable and less dependent on rare minerals. It isn't just a car thing, so much of what we use these days runs on batteries.
It is evolving technology and there are lots of companies that would love to crack the code on smaller, lighter more powerful power storage.
<Shrug> Let's see how it goes. Meanwhile I have plenty of fun between the old and new technology.
The EV sales slow down is a different headline that is muddied a bit. Quote from Cox Automotive:
"EV sales in the fourth quarter set a record for both volume and share: 317,168 and 8.1%, respectively. And while records were set, the oft-reported slowdown is real. Q4 EV sales increased year over year by 40% – a strong result by any measure, except when compared to the growth the industry saw in previous quarters. The market posted a 49% gain in Q3, and EV sales were up 52% year over year in Q4 2022. By volume, EV sales in Q4 were higher than in Q3 by roughly 5,000 units. The EV market in the U.S. is still growing, but not growing as fast."
So while Q4 was slower growth than the previous quarters, it was still up year over year. Will it ebb and flow? Sure. So does overall sales of vehicles in general.
I'm playing devils advocate a bit here, but did you figure your power tools would be battery powered? Would you go back to a corded tool at this point? There may have been some skepticism about using a battery powered drill at one point, but today we don't even think about it. Would you go back to a bag phone or old Motorola brick phone? No, technology improved.
We are still very much at the beginning of a big transition that will have growing pains along the way. Here in the States, realistically it is a 10-20 year process but will likely happen faster than most of us would think. More money is being spent on batter research than ever before. Batteries will get smaller, more powerful, safer, more recyclable and less dependent on rare minerals. It isn't just a car thing, so much of what we use these days runs on batteries.
It is evolving technology and there are lots of companies that would love to crack the code on smaller, lighter more powerful power storage.
<Shrug> Let's see how it goes. Meanwhile I have plenty of fun between the old and new technology.
I could see some strong partnerships forming up in this area. Also, here are the current KOA sites offering charging. It is a small but growing subset of sites.
As we work to provide EV charging at our campgrounds, below is a list of those currently offering charging solutions:
As we work to provide EV charging at our campgrounds, below is a list of those currently offering charging solutions:
- Alamosa / Great Sand Dunes KOA Journey
- Badlands / White River KOA Holiday
- Brattleboro North KOA Journey
- Bristol / Kingsport KOA Holiday
- Cape Hatteras / Outer Banks KOA
- Door County KOA Holiday
- Gatlinburg East / Smoky Mountain KOA Holiday
- Goodland KOA Journey
- Grand Junction KOA Holiday
- Hattiesburg / Okatoma KOA
- Las Vegas KOA Journey at Sam's Town
- Mackinaw City / Mackinac Island KOA Journey
- Medina / Wildwood Lake KOA Holiday
- Mitchell KOA Journey
- New Bern KOA Holiday
- Niagara Falls KOA Holiday
- Orlando Kissimmee KOA Holiday
- Orlando Southwest KOA Holiday
- Sandusky / Bayshore KOA Holiday
- Shelby / Mansfield KOA Resort
- St. Mary / East Glacier KOA Holiday
- Virginia Beach KOA Holiday
- Wilmington KOA Holiday
- Wytheville KOA Holiday
This is how my uncle's Scout 2 was configured. We would flip the rear seat forward and then we had a platform over the cargo area with tools and spare tire laying flat under it, that had a piano hinged piece of wood that was perfectly cut to flip forward and give you a bed the whole width of the scout (over the wheel wells) and from the back for the front seats to the tailgate. Even at > 6' tall, you could sleep back there with all the doors/tailgates closed and it took just a minute to flip the seat forward, flip the cargo floor forward and set up your bed.
When the Fast and Furious movies start featuring unreleased electric cars, it is certain that they’re here to stay.
This is a low-key humblebrag and an honest statement of a proud thing in my life: In my pre-disabled-person life, I worked at an unnamed prestigious institution of technology in Massachusetts designing publications for a lab that did research in micro- and nanotechnology, i.e. stuff that might be used in cars. I don’t have faith in much, but I have faith in the people who attend those schools to come up with ideas that make life better like it ain’t no thang. The stuff that was amazing was the pure accomplishment that took place and the weird sense of optimism like “well, of course we can do this, we just need to figure out how to do it.” It was why I stuck around as long as I did. Hopefully, EV engines will follow Moore’s Law.
P.S. @Jamie@ScoutMotors Please do whatever needs doing to get a Scout prototype in any/all upcoming X Fast X Furious sequels: the kids will love it.
In my day job I am a materials scientist at a national lab- so cool to meet another materials scientist.
Oh, by no means a scientist or engineer, just did their communications! I won’t glaze over if you talk to me about graphene.
I mean sleeping inside a box is cute and all, but… naaahhh dude!!!
