Ram copies Toyota’s BS with ridiculous PR campaign for new Ramcharger 1500
It looks like Ram has taken a page from Toyota’s playbook on how to spin a hybrid into a “class-shattering battery electric vehicle” that gets “unlimited range”: just make stuff up. Ram, owned by Stellantis, insists too that we not call its new Ramcharger 1500 pickup a hybrid, when it in fact houses a 27-gallon gas tank between the battery and the rear axle. So yeah, it’s clearly a hybrid.
Since making its commitment to go all-electric by 2035, Stellantis has been slowly trickling out new EV models, building loads of hype, and teasing that a range extender electric pickup – the first of its kind for trucks – has been in the works. Last April, the company unveiled the Ram 1500 Rev with a reported range of up to 500 miles due to a frighteningly monstrous 229kWh battery.
Now Ram has released details about its Ram 1500 Ramcharger, which revives the old Dodge Ramcharger name but apparently turns it into the “ultimate” electric machine. The press release says it has “unlimited battery-electric range,” but then pares that down to a range of 690 miles. What? All of this deception just obfuscates what this thing actually is.
The Ramchanger is a plug-in series hybrid, an EV with an onboard range-extending generator. It’s a decent idea, with the REX configuration made popularized by BMW’s i3. But Ram has taken what was pretty modest by BMW’s comparison (small generator/small gas tank) and amped it up into something too big and too annoying.
The vehicle takes the battery-electric powertrain used for the Ram 1500 Rev and adds a Pentastar V6 as a 130 kW onboard generator (it can produce up to 190 kW when pushed). The Ramcharger has a 92 kilowatt-hour battery pack that can deliver 145 miles of range – and when paired with the V6 combination can potentially deliver that 690 miles of range.
Front and electric drive units puts out 663 hp and 615 pounds of torque, for a 0-60 mph in 4.4 seconds. As the vehicle reaches 20% state of charge, the V6 generator kicks on to either maintain or charge up the battery.
Ram executives at the launch event were sure too to emphasize that since there is no direct mechanical path from the engine to wheels, it’s a battery-electric truck, not a hybrid. “There’s no connection between this generator assembly and the wheels, like one might find in even a plug in hybrid — all of the propulsion is electrical,” said Ram Trucks chief engineer Doug Killian, according to Newsweek. “And that’s really important to that story of this being an electric vehicle.”
Story aside, we are talking about trucks here, so this thing is designed to haul an insane amount of heavy stuff. Like the Rev, the Ramcharger will be able to tow 14,000 lb. with a class 5 hitch and will have a payload capacity of 2,625 lb.
The Ramcharger 1500 will go on sale sometime at the end of next year. No word yet on pricing, but it’ll likely be cheaper than the Rev since it has a considerably smaller battery pack.
Electrek’s Take
For those very few among us who actually need a massive truck to haul a lot of heavy stuff for a very long distance, the Ramcharger has you covered. It has way more capacity and range than pretty much any plug-in hybrid out there. And thanks to the freshly launched publicity blitz, it’s getting loads of hype from the media today – and there is a market out there who will find it sensible, an “entryway” into EVs “to bridge the gap” that everyone thinks is needed to get truck drivers to buy electric and stop stressing over range anxiety.
But that’s not the point. Big, heavy EVs, including this Ram hybrid, aren’t part of the inspired electric future that we are need. For one, smaller EVs can easily do the jobs most people use these big trucks for, like picking up kids or running errands. And the deceptive Toyota-esque PR tactics, which we covered at Electrek here and here) at this stage in the game, Stellantis/Ram have no excuses.
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GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.
GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.
As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:
- seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
- two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
- two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona
Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.
“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”
GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.
Electrek’s Take
Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”
All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.
SOURCE | IMAGES: GreenPower Motors.
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While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.
Other prominent investors include Tiger Global, the Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, and ArcTern Ventures.
As for what makes Harbinger such an attractive investment prospect, Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund explains that, “Harbinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach significant milestones far quicker than other EV companies … the market has been impressed by their ability to develop large portions of the vehicle in-house to drive down unit costs, while remaining capital efficient.”
The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.
“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”
The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”
The MSP’s Precision Driving Unit is nationally renowned for its annual Police Vehicle Evaluation, which our own Scooter Doll participated in last year, driving the then-new Chevy Blazer EV Police Pursuit Vehicles in a game of “cops and robbers.”
In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”
Michigan joins other states like Wisconsin and California in deploying electric patrol cars and saving big money on fuel and maintenance, with many more out there and many more to come.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Michigan State Police.
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