With the weight of the batteries in back it might be fine. The issue with RWD trucks with traditional drivetrains is the lack of traction owing to all of the weight being over the non-drive wheels. Driving my F-150 in the snow or rain was always dicey because of this.
That being said I wouldn't touch a Tesla with a barge pole for reasons numerous.
Batteries and the engine. The engine sits in line with the wheels rather than being under the hood of the car. That puts all the weight right next to the driving tires.
But agree, cybertruck is a really silly purchase for numerous reasons. The only reason you'd buy it is to signal your support for Elon. It's a very bad vehicle.
I don't see why it would be an issue in most cases. Obviously you'd want AWD for proper off-roading, but for just driving around on streets it should be fine. My EV van is RWD and it's totally fine in everything I've dealt with - including deep snow - and I really only even noticed when trying to parallel park on ice.
The biggest difference in AWD vs RWD cars to the average consumer is usually gas milage. In the case of electric cars this is largely unaffected because there is no active driveline components just an electric motor
This has been a question the Slate team has been trying to answer. They claim the weight distribution being more even front-to-back (batteries offsetting motor, I presume), but I don't know whether I believe them. I was interested in a Slate, but the changes at the company lately (new CEO from McKinsey, rather than an engineer), along with decisions like RWD, and the anemic acceleration (0-60 in 8 seconds) gives me pause.
I don’t know how the slate is designed but I have a rivian
The battery pack is by far heavier than the motors. In the r1 they are also positioned with the wheels (quad) or front/back (dual) so weight distribution is great.
If the slate has a single motor and is RWD then I would assume the weight might be biased toward the rear where the drive unit is powering the rear wheels. Either way the motor is relatively small compared to ICE trucks and that’s where you want the weight anyway for a RWD vehicle.
I know little about this, so I suspect you're right. I've mostly been looking for the car version of a "dumb phone", and Slate looked like a nice fit, but it's thrown me into the world of EVs and I'm still pretty new to it.
That said, your explanation makes sense. Slate engineers claimed it would handle well, but it was vague enough that I'd want more detail before I believe them.
My old car is a Honda Civic hybrid from 2008. Your comment sent me checking out the current Civic (ICE) performance, and it's also eight seconds! So I see your point, I guess my expectations have changed since EVs came on the scene.
I probably wouldn't buy a truck, but it's at least a possibility that I'd get one for hauling materials and towing around town. If I did, I'd prefer a RWD model just to save a little money. I find the modern obsession with AWD a bit baffling. AWD doesn't help you stop in bad weather, so it feels like an illusory advantage there. RWD can be "interesting" compared to FWD, but modern traction control on an electric drivetrain should make it a non-issue. (In practice, I can abuse the accelerator on my non-truck RWD Teslas pretty badly without any issues with losing traction.)
Basically never? And I live in a deep rural area 30 minutes from the northern border. Where do you live that you drive through unplowed roads? The only time ive ever wanted AWD or 4WD is once or twice knowingly risking getting stuck by pulling off of people's driveway onto their lawn.
Half of my vehicles are RWD only, and my roads are very rarely plowed. No big deal most of the year...
Of course, when it snows, it's diffferent, but local geography means if it's snowing enough to matter and the plows haven't gotten around, it's not worth it to be driving, regardless of drive configuration.
If driving throw unplowed roads with snow and ice is a regular thing for you, sure. But lots of people never drive in those conditions, so AWD adds weight and complexity that's unnecessary. But people like to be prepared for everything.
I used to occasionally drive a V8 with no traction control in Wisconsin winters. It was fine, just took a little care. A modern electric drivetrain is about a million times better.
Unpowered wheels still steer just fine. AWD certainly does better. But I'd rather be cautious and take it slow anyway.
I frequently think about this when weather gets bad! I already have AWB (all wheel braking?). Seems like AWD could make it too easy to get in a situation where my AWB isn’t sufficient to stop
>Seems like AWD could make it too easy to get in a situation where my AWB isn’t sufficient to stop
It's the opposite. You're more likely to carry too much speed into a situation in a FWD/RWD vehicle because doing so improves things a lot of the time. Take for example a highway merge. You can't accelerate well, so you carry more speed through the turn to make the merge more safe. Well that works great and improves safety for all until some moron stops at the end of the ramp. With the AWD vehicle you can come into that situation and many, many more with less speed.
Acceleration is the weakest link in the snow. The sketch factor goes way down once you get AWD. This is why no matter how hard the internet screeches about snow tires the median consumer who drives in a fair bit of snow will choose AWD first.
That's never been the case for me. Acceleration may be the issue I'm most likely to encounter, but the worst thing it'll do is inconvenience me. If traction is bad to the point where I won't be able to accelerate properly on a ramp, then either everybody's going slow enough that it doesn't matter, or I'm going to stay off the highway because it's too dangerous.
Trouble accelerating in snow is common and a non-issue. Trouble stopping is uncommon but a potential disaster.
It's not the highway that gets you (typically). It's all the stupid little roads that are built to substantially lesser standards. Steeper grades, tighter curve, hard 90 junctions, etc, etc.
You carry just a hair too much speed into a curve because you're anticipating not wanting to have to use any gas pedal on the rise just beyond and you wind up in the ditch. Or you go wide into a curb because you took a less optimal gap in traffic at a ~5 roll when taking a left turn because that way makes you less likely to get T-boned than coming to a stop and trying to find an even bigger gap in traffic. Or you slide backwards down some stupid driveway or bump something in a parking lot (ask any delivery, parking lots and driveways are the worst).
A FWD vehicle with snow tires is frequently better in the snow than an AWD without snow tires. Better control, better stopping, better uphill on snowy roads.
>A FWD vehicle with snow tires is frequently better in the snow than an AWD without snow tires. Better control, better stopping, better uphill on snowy roads.
Control and stopping of course, but I'd love to see the justification behind "better uphill"
Napkin math says that doubling the contact patch over which the motive force applies still wins because snow tires aren't going to double your friction coefficient. And this is before you consider unloading of the front suspension on a hill (though for most grades it's still probably got more weight than the rear of RWD).
Furthermore, this seems to be corroborated by reality. People in snowy climates tend to go AWD rather than snow tires and snow tire makers typically advertise by comparing stopping/handling rather than acceleration.
Snow tires can actually double your coefficient of friction on snowy pavement!
The coefficient of friction drops fast on snowy ground, with all season dropping as low as 1/3-1/4 of their dry value.
Of course, snow tires plus AWD is even better, but I find snow tires on a FWD vehicle to be plenty to drive up steep hills in snowy weather. (Before learning of the wonders of snow tires, I used to have to take different routes home if it began snowing because I couldn't reliably make it uphill without losing traction.)
All wheel drive doesn’t matter when you lose traction and need to stop. When you are sliding on ice all cars perform the same, and the quality of your tires is what matters. AWD just gives people false confidence to drive faster than they can stop.
I convinced my wife to stop buying the absolute cheapest tires by telling her it is literally the only part of the car that actually touches the road. Why would you cheap out on that?
I've never driven an AWD, but having a 4x4 in a snow storm is wonderful. Waking up and driving through the pile of snow from the plow to go to wawa before I even think about shoveling is an absolute luxury. Plus, driving on the beach is pretty fun too.
You get better regenerative braking performance out of FWD or AWD. Since typically the front brakes do most of the work, it makes sense to have that energy go into the motor rather than friction braking.
Autotrader says there are 246,000 used trucks for sale nationwide with AWD/4WD and 38,000 with rear wheel drive. For new it’s 429,000 AWD/4WD vs 51,000 for rear wheel.
Volume wise it’s of course Texas with Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota having the largest ownership share.
The majority in that statistic are selectable 4WD, which isn't the same as AWD. Pushing the two groups together skews the numbers a bit. Most trucks since the 1970s have been 4WD, ever since companies like Muncie and Borg-Warner started selling axles to Ford and their cohorts. AWD trucks are a relatively new phenomenon, with the first one I can think of being the limited production GMC Syclone in 1989, and it being a truck was an emissions loophole. I think the 2005 Honda Ridgeline was the first real mass produced AWD truck, or perhaps the Subaru Baja from 2003 if you consider that a truck rather than an open deck car. Right now I think only the Ridgeline, Hyundai Santa Cruz, and Ford Maverick are sold as AWD, whereas every other truck is selectable 4WD.
Push the goal posts of you want. OP specifically said rear wheel drive.
There’s a whole community that doesn’t consider anything without front and rear lockers, dana 44 axels, frame on body, and 37s with bead lock a real off road rig.
There is a difference between AWD and 4WD, because 4WD trucks are RWD until you manually change the mode. AWD is all on all the time and is FWD biased, usually something like 70:30 F:R. For most of their lives, even when towing, 4WD trucks are used as RWD only. As for specialized off-road vehicles that wasn't what we were talking about, but yes those people split hairs down to the micron for what constitutes what.
It's counterintuitive because the prefix refers to the lines, but we're usually describing points along the lines. We know intuitively that "lateral" is side to side, and "long/length" we would expect to be vertical, but that describes where the lines sit, and the measurements are perpendicular to where the lines sit: you choose a horizontal line to describe a height(/length), and a vertical one to describe width.
So just remember that it's opposite to intuition, which will work until you've gotten comfortable enough that your intuition is correct and will then guide you exactly opposite.
I say longitude goes longways, which I know isn't accurate except fairly close to the poles, but I remembered it like that when I was a kid and it stuck.
I use Jimmy Buffet’s song “Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude”, meaning head south to Key West to change your attitude. Ergo, latitude is north/south.