EVs – those battery powered devices that look like cars, trucks and SUVs but which are far less practical and much more expensive than vehicles – aren’t selling very well. Chiefly because they haven’t got engines and so tether their owners to generators, where they get to wait while their device gradually recovers charge.
Solution?
Bring along a generator – an engine – for the drive.
Behold the 2025 Ram 1500 Ramcharger, the apotheosis of EV idiocy. It is a device made to look like a Ram 1500 pickup truck that carries a 3.6 liter V6 to keep its batteries charged up so that the owner of this device doesn’t have to wait for a charge.
All he has to do is keep the tank filled up.
Genius!
There are some catches, of course – including what Ram charges for this device. It will sticker for about $60,000 to start when it becomes available sometime later this year. If so, that would be about $20,000 more to start than a 2025 Ram 1500 with the same 3.6 liter V6 but sans the battery and electric motors, which gives you some idea about the cost of those batteries and motors – and how much you’ll be “saving” on gas.
Another catch is the weight of this device, which will reportedly be in the vicinity of 7,507 lbs. – which gives you some idea of the weight of this device’s batteries and motors. A Ram 1500 with just the V6 has a curb weight of 4,880 lbs. The device is thus almost twice the weight of the truck it looks like – and that of course entails the consumption of a great deal of energy – in the form of electricity and gasoline – to move it.
The device will reportedly deliver about 20 MPG when the gas engine is burning – in order to keep the device moving – by generating the electricity needed to feed the batteries that keep the motors (and so, the wheels) turning. This is slightly worse mileage than touted by the Ram 1500 with just the V6: 19 city, 24 highway or 21 MPG combined.
So what’s the point?
Apparently, to be able to lug around two tons (roughly) of batteries and motors without being tethered to a cord.
This – according to Yahoo news (if you want to use that word) – “has the potential to throw a wrench into the established order.”
So, of course, did “COVID.”
It would probably be better for “the environment” to lose the two tons (roughly) of deadweight that this device is carrying around and convert it back to a vehicle driven by an engine that doesn’t tether its owner to a cord. It’d certainly be better for the tires. This device requires special, heavy-duty tires to handle that 7,500-plus pounds of curb weight and those will wear down about 30 percent faster, due to the weight – and the load – as well as the friction bearing down on them.
And then there’s the roads. They, too, will wear out faster under the asphalt-crushing load of these devices, which weigh as much as two or even three vehicles. Asphalt and tires are both made of oil, by the way. Wasn’t the whole point of this exercise to reduce the “emissions” of the dread gas that doesn’t cause pollution by reducing the use – the burning up – of oil? How does it prevent the “climate” from “changing” to use up tires (and asphalt) faster and thereby use more oil than would otherwise have been burned up?
Then there are the parking garages that – hypothetically – will need to able to safely bear up under the weight of several of these devices without collapsing. The good news, of course, is that they probably won’t have to because not many people are going to be purchasing one of these devices – because there aren’t many people who can afford to spend $60k-plus on a device.
This is the ultimate idiocy of devices such as this.
If the premise is that there’s an existential crisis looming on account of people driving vehicles with engines and because of that it is imperative that as many people as possible stop driving vehicles with engines and trade them in for a device, how does pricing most people out of devices help ameliorate the “crisis”?
Put another way, what kind of existential crisis is it when the major inducements to buy a device are not efficiency and affordability but extravagance – in the form of gratuitousness and wastefulness that result in unaffordable devices? The Ramcharger device touts 647 horsepower and 610 ft.-lbs. of torque, which is only needed because the device weighs almost 8,000 pounds and so it can tout the ability to pull up to 14,000 lbs. That’s impressive but as beside-the-point as the dinner menu on Titanic for the evening after she foundered.
If there really were an existential crisis, absurdities such as 7,500-plus lb. devices touting 647 horsepower, 610 ft.-lbs.of torque and towing capacity far beyond what almost anyone who isn’t regularly hauling loads that heavy needs – and who does, other than contractors? – needs would be laughed off the stage.
Of course, there isn’t an existential crisis – except as a rhetorical device. A lot like “COVID.”
And for essentially the same underlying reason, we are faced with devices such as this one that few have any use for and even fewer can afford.
A vehicle with an engine that serves the purpose without extravagant weight or wastefulness is much better for “the environment” than a device.
But that would make too much sense – and it’s beside the point, which is to render owning a vehicle something like owning a private airplane.
That is to say, something almost none of us can afford anymore.
. . .
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Isn’t this thing just a giant Pry-ass?
Burning EeeVee chargers in Littleton, Taxaxchusetts:
https://tinyurl.com/2jh6pray
Nice little charging lot you got here … be a shame if somethin’ were to happen to it. 🙁
Who knew that EV chargers are so flammable. Must be the diesel fuel for the generators.
Can we just get a g** damn Toyota Hilux Champ in the USA, this is getting f*cking ridiculous, I want a cheap little truck to do truck stuff.
Joan Claybrook says NO to your peal for sanity.
Seems like the scam has gone full circle. Kinda like how in Europe/UK the windmills have a box in the bottom with giant diesel generators because you know they need to make a certain amount of power to make sure the grid doesn’t go to crap. Ofcourse they dont naturally make that much power so the wise overlords in the government allow a certain amount of generation by diesel generators…. All in the name of saving the planet ofcourse!
Hmmm… unaffordable to buy
Unaffordable to maintain…
Unaffordable to operate…
Almost looking like there’s an an (((agenda))) here or some sort of “cohencidence”, maybe???
I think it has promise as a concept, but not in how Ram has executed it. I also don’t know if it could be as efficient as an ICE vehicle. Imagine a low speed 4cyl diesel that only runs at a single RPM. It could be optimized for that single speed. That, coupled with a smaller, lighter battery, could be a good solution to the problem that government created (that of mandatory EVs). It’s analogous to a modern locomotive or a large ship which both use diesel engines coupled to electric motors.
It’s amusing that this counts as an EV. It could have been a good stick in the government eye if it was better executed and had Trump not been elected.
By itself, in the absence of EV mandates, it’s a poor product.
Hi Plain,
Yup. It’s an absurd product. Almost twice as heavy, $20k more expensive and gets the same or less gas mileage unless you keep it externally charged up, which means being tethered to a cord again. Yeah. That’s the ticket!
We have reached peak stupidity.
Let’s flush this turd of a nation and begin again.
Hi Mark,
Dark Thought early in the morning: It’s mostly a matter of flushing the useless class – constituting about a third of the population. The government “workers” and tax-feeders. Get rid of them somehow and America would be great again.
Have a good laugh,
https://rense.com//1.mpicons/slider20200710/cyber-truck.png
Elon, age 4, drawing
https://i.imgur.com/dFFfMie.jpeg
Several people at Stellanis thought this was a good idea. Mull that over.
If they made it like a train locomotive, it wouldn’t need all those heavy, expensive batteries. Yes, the diesel (or gas) engine would have to always be running to make power for the electric motors, but you wouldn’t need a transmission either. Would a generator weigh less than a transmission?
Probably still too complex and expensive than just having the engine turn the wheels, the way its been done for a hundred years.
From a discussion on Quora:
Why don’t hybrid cars use the engine as a generator only vs partial powertrain?
Anthony de Vries. Very simple: because at highway speeds, using the engine as a generator is LESS efficient than having it connected directly to the wheels.
Converting energy always comes with losses. Using the engine as a generator means that you need to convert mechanical energy into electricity, optionally store it in a battery, and then convert the electricity back into mechanical energy. All these processes introduce efficiency losses. Even assuming a very high 90% efficiency for those steps, with three of them you have lost 27% of energy.
That 27% energy loss is far higher than the loss that you get from a mechanical transmission. So a pure serial hybrid is not energy efficient in a constant power state!
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-hybrid-cars-use-the-engine-as-a-generator-only-vs-partial-powertrain
The Chevy Volt was the best hybrid made. It had a pure EV mode that would handle most short commutes on pure electric power, and when it needed the gasoline engine, it could drive the wheels directly.
Hybrids, if you want to save fuel, are a great idea if the battery pack is small. A hybrid can recover some energy that went into acceleration when it brakes and uses regenerative braking, which is one reason they’re so efficient in city driving. It also allows running the gasoline engine at its peak efficiency, and filling in the less efficient areas with electric power.
I think the best hybrid ever made was the 2nd gen Prius.
The Volt was likely a reasonable solution before the full on green insanity came to light.
Either way, the key to the connected or disconnected hybrid is size.
They work great in small applications like compact commuters – and perhaps up to a midsizer.
After that, its totally impractical and pointless
I amen that, Flip – as regards the Volt.
It was designed to be efficient rather than quick so it’s light and that makes it . . . efficient. One can drive this thing as an EV – in a meaningful sense – because it has about 50 miles of all-electric range. That’s sufficient for many people’s daily drive and almost everyone’s close to sufficient, meaning that if one has to drive say 70 miles a day, the difference is made up by the onboard gas engine, which burns very little gas to provide enough electricity to get you home without having to stop for a charge. I got to test drive Volts when they were new and thought they were a superb way to design a sensible (because efficient and not particularly expensive) real-world EV.
Yep: I have a guy at work who has about a 20 mile trip into work. He says he only burns gas on the weekends, when taking his kids to soccer games and such. Fills up once a month. And I think the tank size is 10 gallons. Yeah the Volt and those like it are very good in that regard. I think the term is called “plug in hybrid”? I think that the Ford Fusion came as a plug in hybrid, for a few years. Have some friends in NY who had one of these and loved it. (They are retired so not much driving for them, so the plug in hybrid suited their needs perfectly.)
Julia
Please fuck off.
Morning, Nova –
Thanks for that. A spammer got through that hijacks the identities of real people here; it’s very clever. I wish I could punch the teeth in of one of these bastards.
The Chevy Volt worked TOO well…Kinda like VWs latest generation diesels.
You see, the name of the game isn’t to reduce emissions or fuel consumption…it’s to reduce mobility.
They should just stick a turbine engine in there to be a generator at that point. They are pretty good with a constant load and at least it would sound cool and be unique.
lol – rehash of the 63’/64’ Chrysler turbine cars with a modern twist
What always gets me is the assumption that electric is cheaper to buy than gasoline. Have you looked at electric rates lately? You ain’t saving s**t!
And electric won’t get cheaper neither…
The circular firing squad continues.
Can you name the truck with four wheel drive,
smells like a steak and seats thirty-five..
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down,
It’s the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown!
Canyonero! (Yah!) Canyonero!
[Krusty:] Hey Hey
The Federal Highway commission has ruled the
Canyonero unsafe for highway or city driving.
Canyonero!
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide,
65 tons of American Pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!
Canyonero! Canyonero! (Yah!)
She blinds everybody with her super high beams,
She’s a squirrel crushing, deer smacking, driving machine!
Canyonero!-oh woah, Canyonero! (Yah!)
Drive Canyonero!
Woah Canyonero!
Woah!
What ! Another IQ test?
This is just sad. I recently bought a 2014 RAM 1500 (far newer than I like) as a daily/business rig. It averages 22.8 mpg in bitter cold with lots of idling and crappy winter fuel, and driven 55-60 on rural 2 lane gets somewhere north of 30mpg. I expect it to average 25 or better once it warms up and the fuel gets thicker. It weighs in that 4500 lb range, and is by many measures the nicest rig I’ve ever owned.
RAM canceled it a couple years ago. It is an Ecodiesel.
You don’t know sad, Ernie. Imagine being in poor Hunter Biden’s shoes:
“In the 2 to 3 years prior to December 2023, I sold 27 pieces of art [sic] at an average price of $54,481, but since then I have only sold 1 piece of art for $36,000.
“Similarly, for my book sales, in the six month period before September 30, 2023, 3,161 copies of my book were sold, but in the six months afterward, only approximately 1,100 books were sold.”
https://tinyurl.com/2vp7cta4
Persuaded, paraded, inebriated, and down
Still aware of everything life carries on without
‘Cause there’s one too many faces with dollar sign smiles
Got to find the shortest path to the titty bar for awhile
— Uncle Tupelo, Whiskey Bottle
You think Hunter’s sad, think about how Art feels about that….
“This Is Madness”: from some movie.
While I might admire the engineering involved in getting this over engineered Turducken to fly, I suspect it won’t and will just be another nail in the coffin of Stelantis.
Closing in on 8k pounds? Insane. Hope you have money for a new set of tires at the end of the month.
My ‘79 Pontiac stock size was 195/75-14 which, being the cheapskate I am, could be had in the early 2000s for $48 – the “Arizonian” from Discount Tire. And they were quiet!
The age of affordable motoring is now behind us. Cheap used cars, cheap tires, cheap repair parts and home repairable with basic tools.
Have these automobile manufacturers gotten the message that most people just aren’t interested in EVs or if they WERE interested, couldn’t even afford one? I’ve read stories here and elsewhere of new EVs just sitting on the lots of various dealerships. I even see used EVs for sale on the internet. I imagine people trying to sell them would be LUCKY to find a buyer, though if those used EVs need a new battery, the cost of one would probably be just as much as the used EV for sale if not more so.
Hi John,
There’s a lag built in. This device was being planned/designed four years ago. And now, here it is – and times have changed.
Hi Eric,
Yes, times have changed. Many people have experienced what EVs are REALLY like as opposed to the MASSIVE propaganda campaign involving them. I think the whole COVID hysteria may have also contributed to times changing the past few years. However, people who want to create new hysterias or keep the existing ones going, be it over COVID, climate change, measles, bird flu, Russia, or something else are not going to give up easily.
I thought the Chevy Volt had a similar “cheater” ICE motor to keep the device charged but was cancelled a few years ago because it was not “green enough?”
The more weigh displaced on the tires*speed the quicker the tires need replacing. The more wheel passes with more weigh the quicker the road becomes compromised. Trump holding off on automobile tariffs as then there will be one if he continues down this road
A little off topic, but in addition to climate change, the latest things now that corporate media and sociopaths in many governments are trying to frighten people over are measles & bird flu. I suppose they’ll add Russia & its President, Vladimir Putin to their list of things to frighten people over after the dustup between Trump and Zelensky last week. Oh wait, many people have bought the rampant propaganda that corporate media was already running regarding Putin. Remember the “Trump-Russia collusion” nonsense from Trump’s first term? To this day, there are people who STILL belieeeeeeeeeeeeve that BS.
Dealing with measles in 1969 vs. today.
https://rumble.com/v6q4a0m-dealing-with-measles-1969-vs.-today.html?e9s=src_v1_upp
I’m not so sure this ailment known as “measles” is caused by a “virus” anyway, but regardless, this ailment is nothing to worry about and passes quickly. Same thing goes for the “flu.” This is all a preposterous scam to create a market for a BS product known as a vaccine, where there otherwise is no demand.
Brady Bunch measles episode (1969)
https://odysee.com/Brady-Bunch—S01E13—Is_There_A_Doctor_In_The_House:8
The Big Pharma bought-and-paid-for corporate media continues with the fear mongering over the “measles” CASES. Sound familiar? All sorts of claims without one single Goddamn citation. Fuck these duplicitous assholes, and Goddamn them to hell.
Without action, Spring Break could create The Gulf of Measles:
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5177814-measles-outbreak-texas-vaccination/
Won’t be long before they go full on Rube Goldberg. Or MC Escher.
Exactly what I was thinking, why bother with the EV part when you already have a V-6? Next step will be finding a way to put tires on a diesel-electric locomotive.
Kei trucks typically weigh around 1,500 lbs. That is elegance in design — great productivity and adaptability from a very small and economical vehicle.
One guy even put steel-wheeled subframes on the front and back of his kei truck, to drive it on abandoned railroad tracks. Toot-toot!
Whereas the lard-ass, 7,500-lb Ramcharger is just a costly embarrassment. Chrysler World Headquarters and Technology Center (CTC) in Auburn Hills, Michigan: big building (5.4 million sq ft); tiny minds.
If these clowns designed a toaster, it would weigh 20 pounds, have a 12-inch douche-screen to control it, and cost a low, low $799.
“Chrysler World Headquarters and Technology Center (CTC) in Auburn Hills, Michigan: big building (5.4 million sq ft); tiny minds.”
There used to be some really amazing people and things happening in that building. Not so much anymore.
Let us not forget how Daimler destroyed Chrysler.
First by firing any management that knew how to use the word “no”.
Ultimately by bleeding Chrysler dry primarily by forcing the expensive (and often less reliable) Mercedes components into Chrysler products so they could get better volume pricing on parts for Mercedes. Then there were the “technology transfer” infra company cross charges.
And never forget there was at one time an DaimlerChrysler airbus A319 flying between Detroit and Stuttgart several times a week largely footed on the back of what used to be Chrysler owned Pentastar Aviation. That was a giant expense as the two “merged”. Once you’ve traveled on a corporate jet like that – you are wrecked and never want to fly commercial again.
That’s a lot of weight. But then again everything is getting bigger and bigger. My first used car the Plymouth Valiant weighed about 2,500 lbs. My next new car the VW Karman Ghia (poor mans Porsche) weighed about 2,000 lbs. The 1972 911 weighed 2,200 lbs.
Even people are getting bigger. Prior to 1951 anyone who weighed more than 181 lbs was in the heavyweight class in Olympic style weightlifting.
Where this will end is anyone’s guess. Maybe we can see the future in the Disney movie Wall-E where people on the outer space cruise liner are seen lounging about the pool. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/
It is truly amazing the amount of knowledge there is in the world.
Ram needs to cool its jets. Just install an engine in the engine bay and call it a day.
Reagan to Gorbachev: Tear down this wall. Automotive manufacturers need to tear down the regulatory wall, it’s just not right what is being done.
We don’t need no steeeeen-king a one-ton battery. Cool pics, can’t deny that .
You know, you have to use LOX to cool the nozzles on rocket engines so they don’t melt from the heat of the combustion at blast-off, you need some knowledge to make that work. It is definitely rocket science when it comes to rocket know-how.
The nozzles have tubing wrapping the outside of the nozzle to cool the metal so the spacecraft stays on the trajectory into outer space. Re-entry is even more important if the spacecraft contains astronauts.
10,000,000 pounds of thrust at lift-off requires some serious knowledge. Somebody like Werner von Braun did do the work. Goddard too, remembering the good old days and stuff.
You have to write it all down on paper.
You’re building more than a piano.
The piano is the greatest invention on mankind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xA8z1nRZfs
In addition to this asphalt, tire and BUDGET annihilating monstrosity, look at the recent stories of Tesla owners trading them in for Polestars because Enron Musk no longer (on the surface appears) to share the values of their Green Cult.
Nothing says “I care about the environment” more than buying YET ANOTHER new device.
Tells you what you need to know about these lunatics, but even worse, all the money, time and development resources for the whole auto industry that have – and continue – to be pissed away in pursuit of nonsense.
‘Another catch is the weight of this device, which will reportedly be in the vicinity of 7,507 lbs. A Ram 1500 with just the V6 has a curb weight of 4,880 lbs.’ — eric
So the Ram pickup has gone from merely overweight to morbidly obese. To analogize to the Sputnik era, EeeVees have reached the ‘peak tail fin’ configuration of the 1959 Cadillac. Only decadence lies ahead.
To hijack a great Eric quote,
‘There are some catches, of course – including what Ram charges for this Ramcharger.’
Die, Ram, die.