Texasota

Yes, Quantumscape is getting very close and just signed a licensing agreement with VW's PowerCo subsidiary.

True, but I was responding to the point about heavy duty towing and how an EREV becomes a disaster once the battery has become depleted. You will have a small displacement ICE burdened by an inefficient drive train trying to keep a super duty truck (with a heavy depleted battery pack) and a 12,000 pound trailer moving. It won't be any fun at all driving up a long interstate grade in that situation (20-25 MPH?). I'm not saying there aren't outstanding use cases for an EREV. @Captainp4 described a use case that would be good for an EREV Super Duty. But for long distance heavy duty towing (e.g. snowbirds with a 5th wheel) an EREV would a poor choice. A Super Duty Powerboost would be much better.

The different use cases and opinions on EREVs are interesting. Only my opinion, but I think a Super Duty Powerboost (similar to the F-150 Powerboost) would work very well for long range towing guys. With an EREV I see two huge downsides. First, I have seen very few charging stations that can accommodate a large trailer. That means unhitching your 40' 5th Wheel RV before charging and re-hitching after charging. Second, after charging you still have a limited number of miles (perhaps 250ish?) before the small displacement ICE is overwhelmed. Not the driving experience I would want traveling from Minnesota to my Florida snowbird location.

I'm very skeptical of this. What happens when a contractor's Super Duty is towing a heavy load (say a skid loader) and the battery reaches a depleted state which happens very quickly when towing in BEV mode? Now you are left with a small ranger extender ICE converting mechanical energy to electrical energy (for the battery) and then back to mechanical energy via electric motors. I see that Super Duty (8000+ lbs) towing a 12,000+ trailer limping along with a severely limited amount of power. For contractors time is money and I don't think they would accept that.

Super Duty trucks are used for, well, super duty towing and hauling which is the the use case where BEVs perform poorly. With current battery technology I think it will be a very long time before we see Super Duty BEVs. But, contractors would love a Super Duty with F-150 hybrid design that will provide them with Pro Power Onboard.

Ford and many other auto manufactures found the allure of a market with 1.4 billion consumers impossible to resist. Unfortunately, it did not turn out so well with the forced technology transfer and outright IP theft.

This is good news. It will be interesting to see what Consumer Reports survey results from Ford owners shows for reliability/quality over the next couple of years.

That is the challenge and sometimes manufactures stumble into it. I think Ford was somewhat surprised with how successful the Maverick has become.

My 2015 Fusion hybrid had ANC.

I had a 75 Pinto Wagon for my college years. It was reliable for me also but also had rust holes in body. Lots of good memories. My friend had a Chevy Vega and the Pinto was far superior.

Not sure if this is a real thing or not but this little generator in a trailer captures the idea of an EREV in my mind. I get ICE, HEV, PHEV and BEVs but not so much for the EREV.

In the case of the Ford Escape the HEV is 2 MPG better on the highway than the ICE (36 vs 34). The EPA does not report the highway MPG of the PHEV but I think I seem to remember it being one less that the HEV making it 35. For this particular comparison the hybrids are around 3-5% more efficient on the highway (not very significant). As mentioned above, the EREV has the disadvantage of converting mechanical energy to electrical and then back to mechanical again. That may outweigh the advantage of generator constant speed operation as it did for the Volt.

An EREV adds yet another power train choice for consumers to choose from. Having multiple options is good but it is getting more complicated for the non-enthusiast. For the case of highway driving on longer trips (e.g. family vacation, snowbird destination travel etc) and given the current state of charging infrastructure and battery technology I would rate the different power train options in this order (best to worst) based on convenience and peace of mind: HEV PHEV ICE BEV EREV Am I close or way out in left field? The issue becomes a lot more complicated with many more variable for city/local driving.

In your situation where you can’t plug in at home or the office you will be driving mostly via power generated from the ICE. In this use case wouldn’t a conventional HEV be more efficient and practical? As I said above, I’m struggling with the use case of an EREV vs HEVs or PHEVs.

That makes sense and is what I was thinking too. The use case for an EREV is harder for me to get my head around vs the PHEV. Our Escape PHEV satisfies all of our town driving with the 37 miles of EV range and it also gets very good highway MPG on long road trips. Solid state batteries are not far away and I think they will make the PHEV an even more attractive option with the EV range doubling or else cutting the battery pack size/weight by half.