In a surprising twist of the ‘country bumpkin goes to town’ fable, it turns out the hit of the recent auto show in New York  — possibly the most congested inner city in the world, and certainly the most cosmopolitan — was a great, giant, hulking pickup truck. Oh, Toyota’s Highlander probably drew more cameras. And any time Subaru introduces a new Outback it’s a media event. But in terms of the sheer number of “have you seen the (fill-in-the-blank)?” questions generated per square metre of booth space, it was Rivian, an upstart electric truck maker from Plymouth, Michigan, that was the talk of the town. The only issue is that so many of those questions remain unanswered. While the company talked loudly and proudly about the $1,000 deposits it had taken on its R1T pickup and R1S SUV, beyond the generic “our powertrains are very efficient,” there was little detail on how the EV startup was achieving its signature marketing message, namely the whopping 400-mile (640-kilometre) range attributed to its top-of-the-line R1T. Lacking the requisite detail, I did a bit of basic number crunching to see if there might be some illumination to how the company is achieving such game-changing range and exactly what it will cost for us to haul our cordwood emissions-free. Here’s what I came up with: The mid-range 135 kWh version — there’s a 105 kWh base model, and the 400-miler boasts a whopping 180 kWh — is, for now, the only model for which Rivian is providing specific details. It will, says the company’s spec sheet, weigh 2,670 kilograms (5,886 pounds). Now, it’s impossible to know how exact these specifications are. Rivian’s own director of communications, Michael McHale, says that the numbers are mere “guidelines.” But a fairly educated guess would be that, of those 2,670 kilograms of unladen weight, its 135 kWh of lithium ion accounts for about900 kg. That, thanks to my trusty calculator, leaves some1,770kg of full-sized truck. Applying the same calculus for a typical gas-powered pickup, like a Ford F-150 SuperCab4x4,gives you about 1,950 kilograms of engine-less truck (arrived by assigning 250 kg for the Ford’s twin-turbo V6, but not deducting the weight of the transmission to account for the Rivian’s four electric motors). That makes the R1T almost 200 kilograms lighter than what you’ll remember is Ford’s newly lightened aluminum-bodied truck. Doing the same numbers for the Ram 1500 or Chevy’s Silverado just widens the gap. In other words, unless the Rivian’s frame is made of carbon fibre, McHale’s “guidelines” may indeed be fluid. More importantly, the point of all this geeky guesswork is thatthe top-of-the-line, big-battery version is probably going to weigh over 3,000 kilograms. Meanwhile, some really basic math (for which I don’t need a calculator) reveals that its 180kWh and 400-mile combination work out to 45 kWh depleted every 100 miles driven.While hardly spectacular — a 2017 Chevy Bolt needs only about 28 kWh — it isabout the same as Audi’s new e-tron and just a little worse than a Tesla’s Model X 100D, both of which will weigh at least 500 kg —possibly even 700 — less than the topline R1T. In other words, right out of the gate, for Rivian’s proposed numbers to work the company’s engineers would already have to be slightly ahead of Tesla, the industry leader in electric powertrain efficiency, and way in front of Audi, that paragon of German automobile engineering. It might also be worth mentioning that, at current prices, the batteries for this long-range pickup will cost somewhere in the region of US$35,000. This is, for those looking for some context, about $7,000 more than a base Ford F-150. Yes, for the entire truck. As Motor Mouth has noted, there’s a growing market for upscale pickups, but at almost $90,000 Canadian for the base truck — the 105 kWh model is supposed to start at US$69,000 when it goes into production in about 18 months — that would make the 180 kWh Rivian a $100,000+ pickup here in Canada. Even at US$125 per kWh — the consensus basement of lithium ion’s economies-of-scale pricing — that’s US$22,500 for the batteries alone, not far off the US$24,300 Ford is asking for its all-new Ranger, which thanks to its fuel-sipping 2.3-litre EcoBoost four-cylinder engine, also ekes out about the same 400 miles from a tankful. Oh, and by the way, by the time you factor in the weight of that giant battery, the compact Ranger’s payload will probably dwarf the long-range R1T’s cargo-carrying capacity. What makes the cargo-carrying ability even more interesting is that Rivian has also applied for a patent for a “removable auxiliary” battery that would extend range even farther. Though Rivian doesn’t specify how big this battery would be — the patent applications mentions a boost of anywhere from 10 to 20 kWh — it does say that said battery, which fits into the cargo bed like a bolt-in tool box, “may weigh several hundred pounds or more.” Both cargo and payload capacity, one assumes, would be
Origin: Motor Mouth: The Rivian paradox raises a few questions