Extended Range Electric Podcast

[00:00:14] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. And on today's episode, we mostly have just EV news. So normally we'll do EV and Tesla news, right? Well, it turns out that there was so much EV news, before I knew it, I had already written four pages of notes. And

[00:00:42] usually this shows about three and a half to four pages. And we're almost, I have like one line into five pages of notes. So technically it's five pages, but it's four pages and one sentence. So instead of going through and doing the EV news and then the Tesla news, we're just going to do the EV news this episode. And then we'll make sure to hit the Tesla news next episode. And there might be some EV news in there to fill in the gaps. But next episode will be

[00:01:12] mostly Tesla news. At least I think that's how it's going to work. All right, let's go ahead and jump into the show. And I want to thank David for this tip. Polestar would like to convert current Tesla owners into Polestar owners. So right now Polestar is offering up to $20,000 off when

[00:01:36] trading in a Tesla so that you can lease a Polestar 3 SUV. Now, if you have a fairly new Tesla, this may not be a very good deal for you. But if you have, you know, you're rocking a 2017 Model S, this might be a great deal. There's two parts to this deal. It comes with a, the first part is a $5,000 Polestar conquest promotion credit. And this is eligible to customers who either own or lease a

[00:02:06] Tesla. And then there's a $15,000 Polestar clean vehicle incentive. So that's a total of $20,000 off the lease. If you need more information on this, because the Polestar website, honestly, I thought, you know, left a little to the imagination in terms of terms and service, go contact the Polestar dealer and they should be able to help you out. You can call them or,

[00:02:33] you know, if you live in Scottsdale, you can go to the mall. They have a Polestar display there or store there at the mall. Let's see. In the latter part of 2024, Volkswagen had to stop selling the ID four due to faulty electronic door locks. Basically when it rained, it could cause the door locks to, to short out and the door would actually open. Now, no accidents or injuries were reported, but

[00:03:03] Volkswagen did have to recall a hundred thousand units, which is a lot. That was late 2024. In 2025, it has been a much better year for the ID four Volkswagen has seen a much improved software upgrade. So the, the previous version of the, uh, software we'll call it dog water. I work with a guy who's 23

[00:03:28] years old and likes to play Pinochle. And when we play Pinochle on shift, he'll say things like my hand is dog water. Like he's from the 1950s, but he's only 23. Anyway, uh, I'm going to say the previous software was dog water, um, in honor of Jake, but the current software, huge improvement. The ID four was also the third best selling EV in the United States in January of 2025. They sold

[00:03:57] 5,000 units total. So not too bad. That was behind you. Yes, that the model three and the model why. Um, so congratulations to Volkswagen on, uh, the triumphant return of the ID four, the ID buzz on the other hand, uh, when it was announced, uh, this is the, the minivan for lack

[00:04:21] of a better way of describing it. When it was announced, the spec and the price, uh, for the U S the, the response was underwhelming. Like we're talking 234 miles of range. With a starting price of $60,000, not great, not great. But if you are still interested in that vehicle, um, go online, check out the prices in different States. Like for instance, in Boulder,

[00:04:46] Colorado, you can get an ID buzz pro S rear wheel drive for $48,000. So much better price than the $60,000 starting price that they initially, uh, they, they initially set out to get. I, I, I, I am looking forward to seeing the next model year of the ID buzz. I'm look, I'm looking forward

[00:05:09] to significant, um, efficiency increases and upgrades in the battery pack for sure. And, and price, uh, corrections. Cause I think that's too much money for that vehicle. Moving on to lucid motors. I have good news for everyone who hates lucid motors, CEO,

[00:05:31] Peter Rawlinson. And I, most of you hate his voice in his, his, uh, his confidence. Um, maybe you think he's too posh. I don't know, but I like Peter myself, but he is stepping down from the CEO position at lucid. Uh, here's a statement. Now that we have launched a, now that we have

[00:05:56] successfully launched the lucid gravity, I have decided it's finally time. Finally, the right time for me to step aside from my role at lucid. This is what Rawlinson said in a statement. I am incredibly proud of the accomplishments. The lucid team have achieved together through my tenure of these last 12 years, regrew from a tiny company with a big ambition to a widely recognized technological

[00:06:22] world leader in sustainable mobility. Words are hard for me. Um, this announcement came right before lucid's Q4 2024 earnings call, uh, which was last Tuesday. I don't know, which was yesterday as I'm recording this. I don't know if I'm going to have time to do, cause I told my wife, I wasn't going to

[00:06:44] do any recording in February or in March. I will do some editing still in March, but I told her I'd be done recording new material through all of March. Uh, so I don't know if I'll have time to get to the lucid and Rivian earnings call, but I might go back and revisit those in April. We'll just kind of have to see how it goes. But anyway, the, the point to this, uh, is Peter's leaving. I wouldn't read too

[00:07:12] much into this. They did say that there was a succession plan, um, already in place and this was planned for a while. So Peter seems to have a good relationship with their biggest, uh, investor, which is the Saudi wealth fund. You know, there's different flavors of the Saudi wealth fund that invested, but they, he seems to have a good relationship with those folks. So I don't think

[00:07:35] he was pushed out. He's been there for 12 years and he, you know, has millions of dollars. He might just want to hang out with his millions of dollars in his family. On the other side, he hasn't really grown the company into something that would be considered significant. Like Rivian's doing a far

[00:07:56] better job. Uh, Rivian had its first, uh, profitable, uh, quarter in Q2 20 or Q4 24, 24. So Rivian's doing a much better job at this, um, at this stage and lucid's been around or at least public for longer than Rivian has. So Mark Winterhoff, lucid's chief operating officer will be the new interim CEO. And

[00:08:21] Peter's going to stay on as a strategic technical advisor. Now, if you've ever heard Peter Rawlinson give a tech talk and the YouTube channel on lucid, he gives plenty of them. Uh, he talks about this stuff. First of all, he has an extreme amount of knowledge when it comes to the technical side of this stuff. He is an engineer, but he talks about it lovingly. And I say this all the time. When you

[00:08:45] talk to, uh, uh, somebody who engineered a certain piece or a certain part on a vehicle, they, they talked about it as if they're bragging about their children. So I had a chance to learn about electric motors from Peter when I was in Monterey and, uh, yeah, uh, very passionate, very passionate gentlemen, uh, when it comes to that stuff. Uh, so Mark is, uh, going to be the CEO.

[00:09:14] Peter's going to stay on as a strategic technical advisor. And then lucid, if you're curious, they sold 10,241 vehicles in 2024, which brought in a total of $807 million in revenue. That is great. Unfortunately, lucid reported a loss of just over $3 billion for 2024. That is not great. So I'm sure

[00:09:42] investors would like to see that turn around so that, you know, they can make money. Cause right now, let me look at the stock cause I know it took a little bit of a dip. So it's $2 and 26 cents is what the lucid air stock or lucid stock is at the moment. Let's move on to another luxury brand Mercedes. Mercedes recently announced that they are testing prototypes of their new solid state

[00:10:12] battery technology that they developed with factorial in energy. Now, factorial energy is also working with Stellantis and, um, Hyundai motor group. So whenever we talk about these companies, or at least those three companies that I just mentioned, whenever we talked about these solid state batteries, factorial energy is in there somewhere. So that's, that's worth, um, keeping

[00:10:39] note of as, as we go forward in this, because I think we're closer to solid state batteries than, um, previously thought. So they're going to be doing real world road tests with the solid state batteries. Mercedes says they're, uh, they have an EQS equipped with the solid state battery. They said that they expect to get 620 miles of range out of this battery, which is a thousand

[00:11:04] kilometers. If you're curious, and I am suspicious of their estimates. Um, I do think they would probably, you know, the range would probably do quite well, but I think 620 miles or a thousand kilometers, uh, seems optimistic, but why does solid state batteries matter? We've been talking about solid state batteries a lot. And I always all say, well, since we've been talking about this a lot, I'm just going to skip over all of the benefits of solid state batteries and what we'll get to the

[00:11:34] meat of the story, right? Well, I can't always do that because we have people who've listened and maybe, maybe people who don't pay attention to me, which is fine. I don't know why you'd listen if you didn't pay attention, but somebody might've missed it that, uh, what's important about solid state batteries. So solid state batteries promise longer range, faster charging, and they promise safety. There is less chance of fires occurring because it doesn't have a liquid electrolyte,

[00:12:02] which makes the EV safer, but which is great. Um, but there's also problems to solid state batteries right now. Solid state battery production is really difficult to scale, which makes manufacturing costs higher, at least until they can figure out how to build them at scale. When I started this story, I said, we're closer to solid state batteries than, than maybe some think that doesn't mean

[00:12:30] they're right around the corner. You know, they're right around the corner in that. I think we're going to see them, um, we're going to be able to buy them in 2020 or 2030, maybe 2029, but 2030 for sure. Uh, 2031, and hopefully I'll still be doing this, uh, podcast. Uh, you may have heard that some automakers are doing this like semi solid state battery, which uses like a gel type electrolyte. It's not liquid. It's not solid. It's just this weird

[00:12:57] gel. It's kind of a hybrid between the two. Um, some of those from what I understand are on sale now. And if they're not on sale now, maybe I'm getting that wrong. They'll be on sale soon, but those are not solid state batteries. And we want to make sure not to confuse those. All right. We're going to take a break here and, and ask you if you'd be so kind to support this show on Patreon. If you go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com

[00:13:26] and just pledge $1, $1 will get you an ad free experience on, on this and all of the kilowatt shows. So if, if you do that, I would really appreciate it. All of the money goes back into the show to make it better. None of the money goes into my own pocket to pay my bills. You can also support the show on a cast plus, and there's a link in the show notes to both of those places.

[00:13:49] If you want to do such a thing. All right, let's move on to the 2026 Ram Ram charger, extended range EV. So we've got a little bit more details on this vehicle. This is not the pure EV version of the Ram, uh, uh, pickup truck, the Ram Rev. This is the extended range EV or E-R-E-V, which is a new

[00:14:16] acronym I'm learning. Um, this, this vehicle is going to come equipped with a 92 kilowatt hour battery, which will give the owner 145 miles of range. That's just from the battery pack. And it's interesting because of that 92 kilowatt hours that you, you have in the battery pack only about 70 kilowatt hours is actually usable. So 20 kilowatt hours is being used for other things. In addition

[00:14:44] to the battery pack, you're also going to get a 3.6 liter V6 engine, which will be used as a generator to generate electricity, um, and a 27 gallon gas tank. So this generator can send electricity directly to the electric motor or, and, or I guess it could charge the battery pack when the battery gets low.

[00:15:10] So for most people, 145 miles is going to be more than enough range to get you around town. You know, you can maybe take a short trip or, you know, get to the grocery store or your job and run errands and stuff like that. And still have plenty of range with 145 miles. But if you wanted to go out, you know, I don't know if you wanted to go camping or you wanted to take a longer trip, you would be able to

[00:15:35] access the electricity generated by the, the V6 generator, which is just being powered by gasoline, which is still more efficient than the, um, than the, the, than a typical ice motor, which is what kilowatt community member Joseph mentioned a few weeks ago on a show. Uh, this is also good for people who are, you know, in the trades, like I said, good for people who want

[00:16:04] to go camping or tow a trailer, all that good stuff. By the way, you can tow up to 14,000 pounds with this vehicle, which looks like from what I can tell is about double that of the ice version, but not too bad. Um, all right. So I did say that there's about 145 miles of range just from battery electric. If you combine the generator along with the battery, uh, you can get a total range of 690 miles, but that has

[00:16:34] not been EPA certified. So look at that with some skepticism. Uh, this truck only gets about 20 miles per gallon, 20.2 miles per gallon, which is pretty close to what the ice version gets. Uh, the good news is most of your driving is going to be in that 145 miles a day or so you're, you're going to, you're going to be fine in most cases, but yeah, when you're using, when you're using the generator,

[00:17:00] um, not as good as I would like it to see. It sounds like Ram honestly has a long way to go when it comes to efficiencies in their system, but this is a, this is a good first step. This honestly seems like a expensive product for Ram. We don't know what the price is going to be. Hopefully they'll be really aggressive with that, with the pricing, but I, I don't think they're

[00:17:29] going to be, I would not be surprised to see this vehicle start over a hundred thousand dollars. I could be wrong, but it just seems like it's going to be really expensive. Uh, but who knows? Um, hopefully they'll, they'll price it competitively and it will be successful, but we'll keep an eye on it. Now in that same vein of, uh, extended range electric vehicles, Scout Motors is also offering

[00:17:56] an EREV extended range electric vehicle version of their Terra and Traveler. So, uh, we learned a little bit more about, uh, how the battery chemistry of these two vehicles is going to work. Scott Keogh, the CEO of Scout was on Jay Leno's garage. I put a link in the show notes and we got details of both versions of the Terra and, and Traveler. So the full electric version of those vehicles will come with

[00:18:26] nickel manganese cobalt batteries, which have higher density, but they're not as, um, durable is not the right word. They're not as robust as the LFP batteries, the lithium iron phosphate batteries, but they have more energy density. So you can have a smaller battery pack and get more range. The harvester version, which is the extended range electric version of the,

[00:18:52] of the Terra and the Traveler. Uh, they, that's the one that has the gas generator. So if you see one that says harvester on it, and it's got a cool picture of an international tractor, um, plow in a field. If you see one of those with that badging, that's what that, that's what that is. That's the, the harvester. It'll have a gas generator generator that will charge the battery when the energy is low.

[00:19:18] Those batteries are LFP batteries, uh, but they will have a range of 150 miles on full electric. And then the generator is, is a four cylinder gas power generator. Uh, whereas the, uh, Ram charger is a six cylinder, six cylinder gas generator. The difference here is that the Ram charger, you can

[00:19:43] send power to the electric motors. You can't do that on the scout. The, the generator is only there to charge the battery. There's no mechanical connection to the wheels at all. So the generator charges the battery and then you're able, uh, to, to drive the vehicle. By the way, next week,

[00:20:05] you'll hear an interview with that. I had with John Harris of Harbinger. And we talk about this a little bit because Harbinger has, uh, they do medium duty trucks, which is, you know, basically delivery vans and they have a version of, of, or they, they have a, um, this kind of extended range version for their Harbinger chassis. So it was, it was a good conversation. I know I've been talking

[00:20:32] about it a lot, but it's, it's a good, good conversation. Anyway, the scout harvester with a combined total of the battery and the, and the gas power generator, you're going to get a range of around 500 miles. So again, not EPA tested. That's just what they're saying. So not too shabby. Um, I have, I go back and forth with this kind of hybrid, um, uh,

[00:21:03] powertrain, right? I don't like the old hybrid where you have a gas motor that takes over and powers the wheels when the battery, uh, gets low, which is, you know, usually 30 to 50 miles. I do like that. They're using the generators in a way there's no transmission in these trucks. So they're using the generators in a way that's much, much more efficient. Again, Joseph pointed this

[00:21:26] out the, I would rather not have to have, uh, uh, a gas power generator, but for like, well, I'll give my wife as an example. We're looking at getting her another vehicle as soon as mine's paid off this summer. And, uh, you know, her, her car has got quite a few miles on it and we've had it

[00:21:49] for a while, 10 years, I think now. And so she's due for a new vehicle. She really likes the, um, Chrysler Pacifica. That's what we have. What's what we're driving right now. She really likes that vehicle and she would like to continue to drive that vehicle. If Stellantis took this technology

[00:22:11] from the Dodge and put it into the, the Chrysler Pacifica and it was sold at a reasonable price, it would be very difficult for us to pass up on that because it has what my wife wants, which is, uh, a sense of security that if she runs out of electricity, there's something there that will continue to power the car, which totally reasonable, but it has my thing of, I don't want an,

[00:22:40] an extra system. I don't want an extra transmission. I don't want an extra, uh, you know, engine that that's not needed. There's like a whole bunch of other parts that has to go into that vehicle when it's a traditional hybrid. Whereas this it's, it's less, it's not perfect. It's not, it's not what I would want to buy, but this might be a good solution for folks like my wife. Whenever we travel, we don't take my Tesla. We take her car because it's bigger and we can fit more

[00:23:08] things in it and we live close to California and we have family in California. So that's typically where we go when we travel, if it's not on a plane. So yeah. Um, I'm again, I'm conflicted. I, I, in a lot of ways, I like what they're doing here, uh, with this technology and I'm looking forward to see what comes in the future in other ways. When the solid state batteries start kicking in, hopefully we will,

[00:23:33] hopefully this will be a short stop gap, uh, to, to the next level of electric vehicles or the next generation of electric vehicles. All right, everybody, that is it for me today. We'll still going to have an episode on Friday or maybe Saturday. We'll kind of see how it goes. Um, and then after that, it's all pre-recorded shows. So, um, I'm currently in the middle of editing all of these shows and trying

[00:23:58] to get them up and, and, uh, posted so that on each Tuesday and each Friday you get an episode. If you're not subscribed to beyond the post, the podcast I do with Rob Dunwood, I'm doing the same thing with beyond the post, but that has a video and audio and it is significantly longer to edit. So, um, go, go check out that podcast as well, but thank you everybody for listening to the show.

[00:24:23] Uh, Friday will be my last, uh, uh, non pre-recorded episode and then I'll talk to everybody in April.