Lots of questions, areas of concern, for when this vehicle goes from Vapor Ware to an actual on-the-lot item.
Sorry long reply.
The Ford Lightning weighs in at 6500 lbs. Add a Pentistar v6 and Generator to that weight and the truck is upwards of 7500lbs?
Price?? this will be a very expensive vehicle. Will Ram loose money on every REV sold like most other EV manufactures?
Four wheel drive or all wheel drive?
Over the air updates, or do I have to take it to the dealer like VW, because they can't perform OTA updates?
Since the truck has a V6 Pentastar gas engine, will I have to take it to emissions like my other gas vehicles?
Still have all the maintenance issues of a gasoline engine: oil changes, air filtration, radiator, etc.
We owned a 2018 Chrysler Pacifica with the V6 Pentistar engine. Great mileage on the road, common to hit 31mpg. After 69,000 miles, we had a cylinder head/head gasket go bad. Researching this issue online, many people are having this issue. The engines are made in Mexico and USA. The VIN can be decoded to find country of manufacture. There is a high occurrence of this issue on the engine with engines built south of the border. $4600 later at the local Chryco dealer, and only 2.5 days time, the vehicle was back on the road. Chrysler Cares was contacted and sent us a check for the full amount. Kudos to the dealer on the turn-around time.
Since this engine has 2 cylinder heads, we worried about the second cylinder head going south (pun intended).
Vehicle was traded in for a Tesla model Y long range. With gasoline at $4.00/gallon, we save close to 1/3 in costs using home charging during low peak hours over the cost of gasoline.
When is Stallantis going to change to the NACS. The North American Charge Standard was developed by Tesla and MOST auto makers have switched from CCS to NACS. A much better system. Lighter electrical cord, uptime well over 99% at Tesla Super chargers when traveling compared to Electrify America and other CCS charge stations.
With both feet in the ICE and EV world, it will be interesting to test drive this vehicle.
No I won't get rid of my '63 Dodge m37, '07 Hemi Magnum, '14 Ram 1500 or other ICE vehicles.
I'm okay with long posts. Gives me a chance to provide a long response
Concerning the weight. I don't think you are taking into consideration the fact that the Ramcharger battery pack will be considerably smaller than the one in the Lightning. Maybe not enough to make up the difference, but the two will probably be much closer in weight than your post mentioned. We also don't know what other steps Ram may be taking to reduce weight further.
Price at this point is pure speculation. No doubt it will be more expensive than a traditional Ram 1500. But then again the same is true for all other EV/hybrid vehicles with ICE counterparts.
Unless I missed it, information on 4WD vs AWD hasn't been released, so anything we discuss is speculation. Both systems have their pros and cons. Which would you prefer it to have?
My assumption would be that updates will be provided in the same way as for other CDJR vehicles. Why would they change that? *BTW, I as an owner of two Audi's, I feel your pain about having to take the car to a dealership for updates. Closest one is over an hour away. And they always seem to mess it up, which means I'm at the dealership pretty much all day for that.
Emissions is a great question. It's in a vehicle, but its only purpose is to spin a generator. This could be a little messy right now, but I'm sure it will be ironed out before Ram starts taking orders on these.
Sure, there will still be maintenance required. I'm curious to know what the recommended intervals are for this application. I'm assuming it will be based on hours run instead of mileage. But whatever that is, in the grand scheme of things oil and filter changes, cooling system maintenance, spark plugs, etc are just minor inconveniences to me since I would do all that myself.
Regarding charging stations, I agree that NACS is far superior to CCS. I've read that Stellantis is considering adopting NACS, but so far haven't done that. Having said that though, I don't see that affecting the Ramcharger. Who is going to stop at a charging station with a vehicle that has its own charging station on board. Maybe there will be scenarios where it will happen, but I don't see it being common to see Ramcharger owners at charging stations.