Ford sells an EV crate motor -- here's their announcement from November:
Ford.com - Ford Unveils All-Electric F-100 Eluminator Concept With New EV Crate Motor Customers Can Now Buy

Here's the order page: ELUMINATOR MACH E ELECTRIC MOTOR

The engine costs $4,095, which seems really reasonable to me given that a rebuilt used gas engine would probably cost around $2,000. Of course you'll also need a traction inverter, control system, battery and the knowledge to figure out how to fit all of it into your Impreza.

Problem is that you need 2 of them to get the power and AWD action in the test truck, so about $8000, plus the necessary center diff clutch arrangement.

I have little dooubt that Ford will have effective drive circuitry for these, and we can presume that the necessary battery capability, with cooling and sensors, will be coming down in price by the time it starts to be 'packaged' to fit different applications.

The question I have is what Ford's version of Ludicrous+ mode for this set of equipment is going to be. Reminds me of a discussinn decades ago about one of Carmack's vehicle projects: what starts to fail on Ferraris and Lambos accelerating on onramps when the horsepower goes over 2000? (The answer was axle shafts...)

Perhaps folks here have forgotten just how much government funding paid for the technology that led directly to the jet engines and the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC 8 -- both of which which were a big factor in the death of passenger trains and ocean liners.

There is all kinds of technology that taxpayers have funded both the basic research and the product development only to see zero economic benefit to the US Treasury.

Blasting Governments for attempting to improve the human condition is a sure sign that you have forgotten / are ignoring history. Little Johnny will feel bad.


Brian

One little data point.

After four days of driving a Mustang GT around Chicago, I missed the Mach E sitting in my garage at home.

So, to all you skeptics, maybe you should try one. I bet you'll like it.

You discretely left out the favorite "whipping boy" of anti-rail activists: the "land grants" that "subsidized and enriched" the "robber barons" and their stockholders, as academia would tell you now.

On top of which, there's an entire industry centered around the concept of calculating supposed "indirect economic return" on things such as jobs creation, increased land valuation and tax revenues, increased visitation, "multiplier effects" from jobs, and the like.

The entire concept of estimating "economic benefit/return" on subsidization of industry or enterprise (tax breaks for resorts and nonprofit museums, seashore beach replenishment, construction of sports arenas at taxpayer expense and leasing to teams for peanuts, etc.) has always been fraught with quackery, snake oil, voodoo, and exaggeration based on the typically extreme biases of those advocating that such returns occur. In addition, the "popular/populist history" of the concept of the land grant program as typically recounted in textbooks is also largely composed of a combination of exaggerations, oversimplification, and urban legends.

But as one example of such calculations, the Association of American Railroads once commissioned a study on the issue, apparently in response to too many overly-simplified claims of "the government gave the railroads all those land grants and made them rich!" claims around the time of Penn Central and Conrail, which supposedly found that between nearly eight decades of taxation on railroad properties, free/reduced rates imposed for railroad carriage of postal, military, and freight, and other costs, the railroads involved in federal land grant programs repaid the monetary benefit of the grants between five to seven times over. (That study used to be published on a far corner of the AAR website, but no longer.)

Similarly, it becomes foolish to claim that there was "zero economic benefit to the US Treasury" from any technological development that the "government" had any financial stake in. Just because we don't get to sell off public shares in, say, NASA or military development, or even agricultural or medical innovations, the way we did with Conrail does not indicate "no economic benefit."

ONLY offering this as background as to how inordinately complex the who subject of charging stations is.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtemple ... low-costs/

Now, I will grant you that ultimately this is an editorial against using government grants to advance change instead of the free market, but just the data points are sobering: Apparently, depending on what your cover one should expect a charging station to cost, including electrical supply upgrades, from $100-300,000 per multi-charger station.

TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER:

Pennsylvania Trolley Museum:

https://www.facebook.com/pennsylvaniatr ... DvPEaymryl



More on their solar power projects:

https://pa-trolley.org/our-trolleys-run-on-the-sun/

How much of the "$100,000 to $300,000" did the installation cost? (Break out the cost of the solar panels and controllers, but include the added high-amperage connections if installed...)

It will be interesting to see how much actual charging is done over the following years. Does the PTM share in the revenue from charger operation, or is it a 'free' perk of museum attendance?

The EV charging installation was a small part of the cost for the overall solar energy project. EV charging is a free perk to Museum visitors. We plan to advertise this feature and feel that it will help to attract new visitors to our museum.
Scott Becker, Executive Director & CEO - Pennsylvania Trolley Museum

This is just not unusual anymore. Here in Europe, fast food restaurants have charging stations.

Costco in US is adding chargers.

https://electrek.co/2024/12/10/costco-electrify-america-offering-ev-fast-charging-in-three-states/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2_XPdf7PoymlA84hBVppyKEcKdz3vlf-y0r8E0eH7xx_y72bQDo6AVeZ0_aem_KbF642dLf4B7ERqI8H_a9Q

You're comparing apples and submarines. Don't use the $100k to $300k numbers as an actual estimate for putting in EV chargers. Most tourist railroads aren't going to be putting in a bank of 16 Tesla superchargers. They're going to be doing exactly what PTM did. Well done, PTM.

Over on reddit, someone posted photos of their electric F150 being charged at Cass while Shay #5 was switching during a snowstorm. The link:
120 years of transportation history

Remember it's still a West Virginia State Park, some advantages there, but there's some irony that you can now charge an electric vehicle in a location where there's absolutely no wireless service or cell coverage because of the nearby Green Bank Observatory.

When Randy wrote



it made my ears prick up. Assuming there is some landline connectivity available to the chargers... could they not install wireless femtocells or spot WiFi coverage to enable cellular communication to be sent and received a short distance from the charging locations? I believe AT&T, for one, manufactures these things OTS to fill in 'coverage holes' and dead areas in wireless coverage, and might be willing to provide equipment and perhaps connectivity as a 'public service' and for emergency enablement...

I'll plead guilty to thread drift, but for anybody that hasn't been there, this may be the only place in the US that does this....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... Quiet_Zone