Plug-in Hybrids and All-Electric vehicles exclude all consumers who are not homeowners. The USA does not have the electric charging infrastructure to support a Plug-In-EV lifestyle without the ability to plug-in at home. Cities are the ideal places for All-EVs as usually you don't need a long mileage range; and yet the majority of cities is comprised of people who RENT housing, and do not have plug-in at-home options. It blows my mind that what feels like all auto makers besides Toyota, Honda, and Kia are going towards All-EV only. These are basically just cars for rich people at this point. I don't understand why auto makers would willingly exclude so many people, especially when conventional hybrids have been so reliably popular for 2 decades now.
Scout Should Offer a Conventional Hybrid Motor Option
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Interesting points for sure. I have no way of charging at home either. And that is huge. I can't buy an EV and spend hours every week sitting at Walmart in a charger. My hope is the new batteries hit 1000+ mile range and rapid charge so that I can do it that way. I've read up on new battery tech a bit. It'll happen but when? Idk.
There's no reason you can't use a fast charger as you would a gas station. I know several people with electric cars and no ability to charge at home. They plug in when they are out and about whenever they can, or they might occasionally spend 10 to 20 mins at a DC fast charger like you would at a gas station. Seems to work great for them and is still much cheaper than buying gas. My current EV for example takes less than 20 mins to charge up at a fast charger.
Automakers aren't excluding people. People just need to adapt to a new way of doing things just as they needed to adapt form using horses to using cars. There are plenty of places to charge, both fast and slow so there are numerous options for people who aren't able to charge at home. Unlike a gas car you don't need to wait around and babysit your EV while it charges. You can go do other things. Last night for example I plugged in at a public charger while I was out with a friend having dinner. The charge cost me about 4 bucks and I'm good for another week of driving now.
It's not like a gas station where you have to physically be there at the pump while it fills up. You can use level 2 chargers when you're shopping or at the gym or movies or doing stuff you already need to do. Or you can spend 10 minutes once a week at a fast charger while you grab a coffee or something. Up to you. Lots of different opportunities to charge an EV all over the place. It's just a different way of doing things than you're used to.
I can understand where you're coming from, if you don't already drive an electric car you wouldn't necessarily know where the charging spots are. But you just need a bit of an open mind and believe me, it's completely doable and in fact lots of people do it already. It's also way more convenient (and much cheaper!) than having to take time out of your day to make a special trip to a special building (aka gas station) one or more times a week and then spending ten minutes standing around outside at a smelly pump out in the cold or rain. With an EV you just park in a charging spot (of which there are plenty), plug in and walk away to go do whatever you were going to do anyway. Come back a few hours (or minutes depending on the speed of the charger) later and you're good to go.
Automakers aren't excluding people. People just need to adapt to a new way of doing things just as they needed to adapt form using horses to using cars. There are plenty of places to charge, both fast and slow so there are numerous options for people who aren't able to charge at home. Unlike a gas car you don't need to wait around and babysit your EV while it charges. You can go do other things. Last night for example I plugged in at a public charger while I was out with a friend having dinner. The charge cost me about 4 bucks and I'm good for another week of driving now.
It's not like a gas station where you have to physically be there at the pump while it fills up. You can use level 2 chargers when you're shopping or at the gym or movies or doing stuff you already need to do. Or you can spend 10 minutes once a week at a fast charger while you grab a coffee or something. Up to you. Lots of different opportunities to charge an EV all over the place. It's just a different way of doing things than you're used to.
I can understand where you're coming from, if you don't already drive an electric car you wouldn't necessarily know where the charging spots are. But you just need a bit of an open mind and believe me, it's completely doable and in fact lots of people do it already. It's also way more convenient (and much cheaper!) than having to take time out of your day to make a special trip to a special building (aka gas station) one or more times a week and then spending ten minutes standing around outside at a smelly pump out in the cold or rain. With an EV you just park in a charging spot (of which there are plenty), plug in and walk away to go do whatever you were going to do anyway. Come back a few hours (or minutes depending on the speed of the charger) later and you're good to go.
When it comes to charging outside the house, my third favorite spot to charge is at the grocery store. DC Fast charging while shopping is bad ass and efficient. Only draw back is when the charger is taken and you need to wait. My second favorite spot to charge (for free) is at the airport while on a day trip. And my #1 first favorite spot to charge (again for FREE) is at the ski local area. EV owners aren't all rich, but they all love a good deal when they can get one while parking! In reality, and in the city, you should be able to top off ONCE a week and be totally fine
I'm with ya that I'd like a hybrid option and there's been a few others that have brought it up in this community too. But for me it's more of a utilitarian thing than an argument about strain on the grid or a class thing. It's not that I dispute the infrastructure will catch up and battery technology is improving every day...
I'd just like to know that if things are getting down to the wire I can still fill up using the existing infrastructure as well as the charging stations of tomorrow.
Keep in mind that Scout likely won't be delivering vehicles to the public until 2026, that is a few years for the charging infrastructure landscape to evolve. I think everyone would agree there is room for improvement in that regard, but there is also a big push (both public and private) to fix the problem. The writing is on the wall for ICE vehicles, and it just doesn't make sense for a new company to handicap itself with legacy technology that is being phased out. Hybrids and plugin hybrids make perfect sense for existing OEMs to bridge the gap, but this is a new company, new product.
After driving a pure EV truck now for a year and a half, I would have ZERO interest in a new Scout as a hybrid or plug-in hybrid truck. Not to mention the clunkiness, maintenance and lack of benefits that a pure EV brings - lack of performance, space & storage being top of mind. No thank you.
Yes, exactly this. Most of the hesitation and anxiety I'm seeing here comes from people with no experience living with an electric vehicle. EV owners know that charging isn't a big deal and range concerns are exaggerated. The worst thing Scout could do at this point is try and cater to legacy technologies that include fossil engines. Assuming Scout sticks with its EV-only plans (which it absolutely should!) the next worst thing they could do is not adopt the NACS connector. Nearly the entire industry has already committed to moving to NACS by 2025. If Scout were to launch an EV in 2026 without NACS at this point it would be DOA.
That seems like quite an exaggeration, and if that were the case all other non-Tesla EV's would be "DOA" already. Given VW's stake in EA, I think this could become more of an adapter / interoperability consideration (as opposed to NACS connector straight out of the gate), but who knows. We have already seen Tesla open up their superchargers to non-Tesla vehicles, so even if the new SCOUT is not using a direct NACS connector, it will not mean NACS won't work, and it definitely won't be DOA.
SCOUT charging on EA and other chargers might also be a helluva lot cheaper than at a TESLA super charger (depending upon the structure of those arrangements), so it might not be all bad to support J1772 from a cost perspective if you need to supercharge a lot. I get the convenience thing with the density of the superchargers. Could be a case down the road where all chargers work for all vehicles, but pricing may dictate where you CHOOSE to charge. It works that way for chargers already...
SCOUT charging on EA and other chargers might also be a helluva lot cheaper than at a TESLA super charger (depending upon the structure of those arrangements), so it might not be all bad to support J1772 from a cost perspective if you need to supercharge a lot. I get the convenience thing with the density of the superchargers. Could be a case down the road where all chargers work for all vehicles, but pricing may dictate where you CHOOSE to charge. It works that way for chargers already...
It's not an exaggeration and has nothing to do with being able to charge on Tesla's Supercharger network (although that's a perk). The fact is that the entire automotive industry is moving to NACS except VW group (for now, they are currently in talks with Tesla about adopting NACS) and Stellantis. Literally every other car maker will be using NACS natively on their vehicles starting in 2025. It will be THE new standard charging connector and I doubt Scout wants to be one of the only holdouts still clinging to CCS.
I have a CCS car and yes, adapters will work but native NACS support will put Scout in line with the industry. If it insists on remaining with CCS it will be at a competitive disadvantage as all of its competitors (except Jeep apparently) and all the charging networks including Electrify American/Canada have stated they too will be transitioning to NACS. CCS is a clumsy, dead standard and it would be foolish for Scout or any car company to launch a brand new vehicle on a charging standard that everyone else is now dropping.
Please explain why this has nothing to do with TESLA? And for the record, my truck is quite operational and charging without NACS as we speak. So, not so DOA as you say.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, and I'm not saying it wouldn't be smart to consider NACS for new vehicles, BUT NACS is ELON's standard. What that means to becoming a true open standard (and not a proprietary TESLA standard masquerading as on open standard) leaves a lot of questions unanswered in my mind.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, and I'm not saying it wouldn't be smart to consider NACS for new vehicles, BUT NACS is ELON's standard. What that means to becoming a true open standard (and not a proprietary TESLA standard masquerading as on open standard) leaves a lot of questions unanswered in my mind.
I didn't say it has nothing to do with Tesla. I said it has nothing to do with being able to use Tesla's Supercharger network. And yes your truck will work well for many years to come with CCS, as will my Ioniq 5 but we will increasingly find the need to use adapters in order to use public chargers. But both Rivian and Hyundai are switching to NACS starting as early as next year so all future Rivian trucks like yours will be NACS, not CCS, going forward.
NACS is no longer "ELON's standard". It is being taken over by the SAE. It will be officially known as SAE J3400.
If you want to get technical it will still use the CCS protocols which is why adapters will work for legacy vehicles like ours but make no mistake, NACS is the new charging standard for North America. The industry has already made the decision. Do you really want to buy a brand-new Scout with a "legacy" CCS plug when everyone including all the charging networks are throwing all of their weight behind NACS support?
I certainly wouldn't.
This may be all moot as VW will probably be announcing it's 2025 switch to NACS by the end of this year or early next anyway.
Great news then, I didn't realize that this was official, because I am operating under the assumption that SAE J3400 is still a WIP.
And I am wary of anything that is still a WIP that has ELON attached to it..
There are approximately TWICE as many public NACS (TESLA) chargers today. Yes, with a truly open standard, the network will grow. To your point, conversions of existing public EA, Chargepoint, EVGO, etc. stations to NACS would be great for everyone with this open standard, and simplify life for SCOUT and other manufacturers. And, we will all have an adapter that will allow us to charge at these new / retrofitted stations (eventually).
But if I pull my Rivian into a Tesla Supercharger station, I'm expecting a tax. And this is where all the NACS chargers are today.
Also, I'm sure you know how Tesla Supercharger stations work for us non-TESLA owners, and that we don't need to carry a NACS adapter to use them. I do need the TESLA app and a TESLA account. When I pull up to charge and connect, the app tells the station that I am in a R1T, and when the charger releases, it releases with its own adaptor, so I just plug in. There are exactly zero of these NACS stations that have been "opened up" for non-TESLAS in New England though.
And I am wary of anything that is still a WIP that has ELON attached to it..
There are approximately TWICE as many public NACS (TESLA) chargers today. Yes, with a truly open standard, the network will grow. To your point, conversions of existing public EA, Chargepoint, EVGO, etc. stations to NACS would be great for everyone with this open standard, and simplify life for SCOUT and other manufacturers. And, we will all have an adapter that will allow us to charge at these new / retrofitted stations (eventually).
But if I pull my Rivian into a Tesla Supercharger station, I'm expecting a tax. And this is where all the NACS chargers are today.
Also, I'm sure you know how Tesla Supercharger stations work for us non-TESLA owners, and that we don't need to carry a NACS adapter to use them. I do need the TESLA app and a TESLA account. When I pull up to charge and connect, the app tells the station that I am in a R1T, and when the charger releases, it releases with its own adaptor, so I just plug in. There are exactly zero of these NACS stations that have been "opened up" for non-TESLAS in New England though.
That's how current Superchargers work yes, but with the industry all switching to native NACS support I'm not counting on the integrated adapters continuing to be installed going forward. It's an extra expense for charging equipment suppliers and if the vast majority of cars will be NACS I can easily see them deciding that CCS will be supported so long as you bring-your-own-adapter. The transition to NACS overall won't happen overnight of course, it will likely take a decade or so but I'd rather have a car on NACS than a car on the outgoing CCS.
We legacy CCS owners will eventually be second-class citizens just as CHAdeMO drivers are today (I used to own a Leaf which uses CHAdeMO). As it is I can't even really use the Tesla Supercharger network anyway even with their Magic Dock or whatever because they don't properly support 800V vehicles. The charge speeds with my Ioniq 5 on a Supercharger are currently barely over 50kW which is suuuuper slow plus Superchargers are way more expensive than the competition.
Thankfully Elon has very little to do with the NACS standardization now. Tesla has effectively relinquished control of it to the SAE which expects to ratify the J3400 standard by the end of the year. Regardless of whether your car has NACS or not, there will come a time when no matter which charging network you use - even if you avoid Tesla like COVID - the most common connector will be a NACS one.
I expect most of us legacy CCS owners will just need to carry around our own NACS-to-CCS adapters as I wouldn't necessarily count on a given charger to have a working adapter, especially from non-Tesla networks. Sure they'll likely continue installing CCS stalls for several more years but I expect it will be like how CHAdeMo is now where you'll roll up to a charging site and have a dozen or more NACS stalls and maybe one or two CCS stalls which more often than not are broken or busy. That's how it is today if you have CHAdeMO.
You have confused me with the CHAdeMO analogy here... Are you saying that you can now pull up to a station and use an adapter to CCS for your CHAdeMO connector?
Hypothetically, if we had NACS adapters for this new open standard and there were a dozen NACS stalls and one or two CCS stalls, we could charge at any stall.
Hypothetically, if we had NACS adapters for this new open standard and there were a dozen NACS stalls and one or two CCS stalls, we could charge at any stall.
No. I'm saying that CHAdeMO has become an unsupported deprecated standard with abysmal support and that CCS is now destined to follow a similar fate.
With adapters yes, we will be able to charge at any NACS charger but I wouldn't count on the site to support CCS.
I suspect you won’t be driving a new Scout then as SM has clearly noted on multiple threads on this forum that the new Scouts will be EV. I was 100% a Scout fan/prior owner/driver when I joined this forum one year ago. At that time I had your mindset and was about 10-15% on board with it being an EV. Spending the year hearing others points of view and experiences has changed my perception considerably. If Jamie/SM announced tomorrow they were going ICE I’d be thrilled and at the same time I’d be disappointed as this venture/forum ADVENTURE has really opened my eyes to EV’s thanks to the primary contributors like @R1TVT and others. Their early tech talk drove me nuts but I decided to listen to them, do a bit of my own research and lo and behold I’ve be in to like the taste of their Kool-Aid. I am fortunate that if I follow through with this in the long haul it will be a third vehicle/lifestyle vehicle not my daily which maybe would make me hesitate otherwise. That said, even with daily work commute I’m right around 100 miles a week so short of a long haul competition weekend a simple 20 minute charge once a week (home or nearby station) is more than tolerable. I will be able to add a home charger so objection 1 solved and my wife already has a SUV for long haul traveling so objection 2 solved as well. I’m sorry to those who aren’t willing to try/buy into new technology and to echo earlier comments I don’t have a gas pump at home so once charger is installed “filling up” will actually be easier. For those without a charger you’ll still go to a gas station and in three years your wait might only be 10-15 minutes which isn’t worth dying on the sword over EVs and purchase prevention. If 300 miles of range isn’t enough between stops/fill ups then by a hybrid. You’ll get 50 mpg, be a bit more enviro friendly and solve your charging dilemmas. Toyota and Honda make plenty to choose from-the new Land Cruiser instantly comes to mind. Retro-ish, built on historic namesake, well built/engineered and offers hybrid-problems/concerns solved!
In the mean time I’m going to keep hanging out here and seeing where this forum goes next. I’d quote Star Trek or something futurist but I’m tired and it’s not really my thing.
In my experience, most people who are opposed to an EV have never driven one or even been for a ride in one.
I'm reminded of that famous Henry Ford quote, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
FTR, an EV is faster than horses and smells better.
I'm reminded of that famous Henry Ford quote, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
FTR, an EV is faster than horses and smells better.
Interesting to see the news out of Dodge on the new Ramcharger for 2025. Full electric propulsion with an ICE engine (Pentastar V6) to serve as an on-platform 130 kw generator to charge the 92 kw battery when it drops below a certain level. Of course, a Ram 1500 is a different beast than I think what I think a new Scout would go for, but one of the more interesting innovations on the PHEV/hybrid/EV issue. I would personally be happy with a full EV option (I have my '74 to scratch the ICE itch), but if half of what dodge is claiming is reality then this could be a cool alternative.
(more details: https://www.ramtrucks.com/revolution/ram-1500-ramcharger.html)
(more details: https://www.ramtrucks.com/revolution/ram-1500-ramcharger.html)
