At Scout Motors’ huge debut final evening, the brand new designed-and-built-in-America subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group confirmed off the way it hopes to ship on some huge guarantees. The Scout Terra and Scout Traveler are huge, rugged, retro-inspired electrical automobiles full of off-road options, bodily buttons and as a lot classic allure as a battery-powered automotive can have.
Whereas the truck and SUV each look hanging, the occasion itself was a lot as we anticipated it to be—save for one huge shock. The Scout EVs will include the choice of a gasoline-powered vary extender, an engine hopefully able to boosting the vehicles to an estimated 500 miles of vary. With out the vary extender, Scout is focusing on its EVs to pack at the very least 350 miles.
That makes the Scout, at the very least in its “Harvester” trims, an extended-range electrical car, or EREV. It is a new and fast-growing class of car that’s constructed from the bottom up like a purpose-built EV, however finds house for a fuel engine that solely recharges the battery. (Usually, these don’t drive the car’s wheels in any respect, however merely act as a form of generator.) Different EREVs embody the unique BMW i3, the upcoming 2025 Ram Ramcharger truck and deliberate new fashions from Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz.
In doing so, the automakers are turning to a time-tested good friend—the inner combustion engine—to assuage fears clients have about vary anxiousness or getting stranded in a purely electrical automotive. Whereas that consequence is statistically very uncommon, serving to clients beat their misconceptions is seen as key to EV adoption.
Furthermore, since these automobiles are constructed as EVs, they permit automakers the flexibleness to construct up electric-specific platforms and batteries, with the choice of maybe transferring on from the vary extender totally sometime as charging networks get constructed out.
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Scout Motors
In that manner, extended-range EVs are a type of hedge on the long run. Although EV gross sales have been rising steadily, they have not taken off as shortly as automakers projected. And that state of affairs could have raised eyebrows about Scout Motors’ new, $2 billion manufacturing facility in South Carolina, which was initially projected to solely construct EVs. “We have had some conversations on this entrance,” mentioned Scout Motors CEO Scott Keogh, referring to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who attended the occasion final evening.
Keogh and an organization spokesperson confirmed that the choice so as to add a variety extender was made pretty just lately, in the previous couple of months.
“I wish to give the scout engineers a ton of credit score,” Keogh mentioned. “It is fairly simple. Projected vary over 500 miles, make the battery a little bit bit smaller, fill that house with the fuel tank, and get the vary that you simply see there.”
Keough added that this makes the Scout platform and manufacturing facility “future-proof” as the corporate ought to have the ability to alter demand to the partially fuel or all-electric automobiles as wanted. That hedge could also be needed contemplating these automobiles will not arrive till at the very least 2027, and the market then is anybody’s guess.
“It is nonetheless an EV,” he mentioned. “It is bought the packaging of an EV. The battery will drive each of the axles and the engine will energy the battery. So this offers you a correct EV expertise with, after all, the generator.”
It’s unclear how a lot gas the fuel vary extender will devour, however its carbon emissions are presumed to be higher than an engine tasked with transferring a car as properly.
What’s additionally unclear for now’s which engine will likely be used, and even what measurement will have the ability to do the job. Nevertheless, a Scout spokesperson mentioned that the apparent may be very attainable: that the corporate will dip into the huge Volkswagen Group elements bin for a motor appropriate for range-extender obligation.
This all may give Scout one other edge over EV “startups,” which the revived model very a lot considers itself versus simply one other VW Group label. The Scout truck and SUV may communicate to patrons intrigued by EVs, however are nonetheless scared off by vary issues—one thing that purely electrical opponents will not have the ability to provide.
Moreover, creating an inner combustion engine in-house is extraordinarily cost-prohibitive, so many startups outsourced them as a substitute, just like the outdated Fisker Karma’s Basic Motors-derived powerplant.
As spectacular because the Scout ideas appear to be, the phrase “Rivian” was on many individuals’s lips final evening. In addition to the Scout vehicles’ apparent resemblance to the Rivian R1T and R1S, the California-based startup simply inked a $5 billion take care of the VW Group to co-develop software program and electrical architectures. It is an attention-grabbing associate to work with, contemplating that the VW Group can also be ramping up its personal outdoor-focused electrical truck and SUV model.
However Keogh added that Scout may gain advantage from that partnership too—not from any of Rivian’s current {hardware} or techniques, however of the brand new know-how being co-developed between the 2 entities.
“Rivian the automotive firm, we’ve zero interplay, completely nothing,” he mentioned. Nevertheless, “the three way partnership firm may doubtlessly make the zonal structure that’s on this car.”
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