I see Amazon's electric trucks in Berkeley quite often. I wonder how that fleet is working out for them. Of course the mail in my city is delivered primarily on foot.
I have no idea for certain, but I would guess really well.
Mostly because I saw one of them for the first time ever in Seattle about 3.5 months ago. At first it was just one, then I saw another one a week later. The frequency kept increasing to the point where I see multiple ones every time I go on a short grocery trip a few miles away. They expanded to the point where they are everywhere here now, and I doubt they would continue expanding it so aggressively if it wasn't working out.
EVs are still not campervan ready unless you have no plans to boondock (i.e you will always have a connection to the grid when you stop for the night).
If you use solar for recharging, best efforts (with a huge unfolding PV array) get you maybe 100 mile hops. That might be enough for some folks, but it's probably not going to be generally satisfactory (and, btw, it is a huge PV array that is required).
My plan is large PV array for supplying daily needs but paid charging or campsites for the vast majority of travel energy. Slow or local travel is the primary usage.
Now you have to carry the diesel inside the cabin. I have no idea what the efficiency is, but I have to assume diesel generator->electric battery is going to take a sizeable bite out of the energy budget. At that point why not just buy an ICE?
>Now you have to carry the diesel inside the cabin.
Or have a trailer with the generator and fuel tank, I always thought (if we can depart from the "ideological" part of EV vs. ICE) that it could be a "standard" range extender for any kind of electric car, a sort of hybrid on demand, you normally drive (short range) an EV and if you have to do a longer trip you rent the trailer with the generator set.
I know with the Leaf that would be relatively easy, because it doesn't ensure current from the battery matches the current going to the motor, so if you add a plug into the HV and inject power so the battery current nets zero, it can drive indefinitely. The gen2 (non-plug-in) Prius throws errors if it detects current out of balance so it's a lot harder to hack. So whether any given car could easily be hacked to use a generator is up to the particular implementation and us hackers don't have those Rivian vans! Though, I wonder if anyone has hacked the pickup yet?
It'd be for emergencies or maybe the one planned night you can't charge from the grid. Same as those primary-EV hybrids, it's just that you wanted this specific truck that happens to be full electric.
