I'm still interested in buying a Ramcharger, despite your being 0/3 in providing any new information in any of these "episodes." When will we learn more about pricing, trim options, and most importantly, real-life towing range and MPG?
@@garycrum6486 really need to know what kind of outputs we get from the generator. my sense is that this thing is *perfect* for an RVer because that genset can not only recharge the truck's battery but provide juice to an RV. but we need to know! can it produce 220VAC? can it produce 12/24/36/48VDC? will it have a 50A plug?
@@0xKruzr I've heard 20A, no 50A. But yeah I agree, would love to learn more about output. Would be amazing to have multiple bed and chassis options. A ram charger with no bed, slap a flat bed on it, massive slide in. Good to go!
Hey ram, will we ever get a video of the breakdown between the levels of the Rev and ramcharger, I've seen all you have for the tungsten but would love to see what's available on the tradesman or big horn
I work out of my truck. I’m currently running a 1500 ram. I turn my truck on at 6am and shut it off at 6pm. I drive 40mi to work, it sits idling with the ac on almost all day and then I drive it 40mi back home. I wondering how this use case could be for me. I’m wondering if the battery would allow the truck to stay stationary with the ac on most of the day. I wouldn’t even mind if the gas engine ran while I’m actually driving it.
No new info for several months? Rev is supposedly to be available 4th quarter but no updates in a year, even dealerships are in the dark... When will pricing info be released?
Having driven a Pacifica PHEV since 2017, with hundreds of thousands of miles on the platform, I'm admittedly both excited and skeptical of the Ramcharger! I'll be getting the first one offered, but I definitely have feedback from years of driving the PacHY and other EV/PHEV vehicles. I cancelled my Cybertruck reservation when they announced the halved range and immediately placed a reservation on the Ramcharger when I saw the announcement! If you have a spot for feedback from potential customers and external validation tests, please reach out! Otherwise, I'll see you on the road towing our camper in our new Ramcharger!
@@0xKruzr The looks of it alone put it way ahead of the cybertruck... I want a truck that looks like a truck, not something that belongs on the moon LOL
Did any Ram insider+ members receive an email prior to this video drop? I'm asking because I bought my membership in Feb 2023 and other than the welcome email, I've never received anything from the insider+ program.
I cancelled my insider+ and got my $100 back. When I signed up they promised updates and a whole other mess of things, but I never got one email or notification other than the welcome email. I was originally hoping they would have some sort of event to go see the trucks in person, but now we are just a few months out from when the REV is supposed to become available and absolutely nothing... no thanks, still love the trucks but I can find something better to do with my $100 rather than donate it to Stellantis when any info they have put out is available to everybody LOL...
I feel your pain. I'll probably request a refund too. My Dakota's water pump died today, and I really don't want to put more cash into a 24-year-old truck. Looks like a Lightning may be much sooner than I thought.
Amazing, love the Ramcharger, finally the second pure serial Hybrid after the BMW i3 REX. I got an older RAM 1500 and I currently own a EV. Would be amazing to trade the old gas guzzler Hemi for a small generator and drive electric most days.
@@promastersonly1419 the Volt can operate as a series hybrid. But It also can directly drive the wheels with the engine. It is an amazing drivetrain in the Volt, but would not fit the modern definition if a series hybrid, where the engine is unable to drive the wheels any shape or form.
@@sebastiant5695 I remember this being a big stink in the news. My recollection is that the engine would only drive the wheels under rare and specialized circumstances. Ruling those out, the Volt was a series hybrid 99% of the time. Am I wrong about that? For me, I dont want a “parallel” hybrid of any kind, because it’s two powerplants working together. That means twice as much complexity and half the reliability. A series hybrid however…if the gas engine fails its still an electric car. If the battery wears out it’s still an electric car. Not having a transmission and not having a 5500 rpm range makes the ICE part drastically more reliable. That’s the appeal for me, as someone who works on cars for a living!
@@promastersonly1419 it's down to semantics. A few years ago we only used "Hybrid" these days we use Serial and Parallel, lets see what linguistic comes up 5 years from now for those drivetrain concepts. The volt still has a planetary transmission, two electric and one gasoline engine - lot's of complexity - which nobody wants. I like what RAM is doing with Ramcharger - a big well know engine, bolted to a generator- should hopefully making it a super reliable generator.
@@sebastiant5695 Agreed. I could bore you to tears with details, but a big factor of why I'm interested in it is that engine. I work on that engine all day everyday, and it is a true gem of reliability. We take them out to 600k miles no sweat. It basically has 2 flaws, both of which are permanently fixable (rocker arm wear and oil cooler leakage, if you're interested). Fun fact: we have NEVER replaced a water pump on the pentastar. Amazing. I about fell off my chair at the reveal of the RamCharger, because you would expect the same I4 that's in the 4xE products. Ram hasn't said it, but they went this route because of the height of the engine - it has to fit on top of the front EDM. And the lack of the turbo that would be needed on the I4 saves cost, weight, complexity, and validation. AND, 3 cyl deep vs 4 gave them room to put the starter on the front, as opposed to having to put it on the rear like a normal engine. In short, it's going to be super easy to keep that engine running FOREVER. No direct injection to carbon up, no wastegate to fail, no MAF sensor (a chrysler thing), no cylinder deactivation....bulletproof.
Please add "hold state of charge" to the Ramcharger like the i3 REX offers - don't draw down the battery all the way before turning on. You want to drive electric in the city you get into - but on generator on the highway between cities. Or program some sort of setting - Generator only used above a certain speed - or define a minimum state of charge the generator should be maintaining. It's all only code and software.
Not sure it's a good idea if most people don't have a good understanding of NVH, series hybrid and how soc affects battery lifespan. Maybe have those settings in an expert mode with warning that it may affect nvh and component lifespan.
@@hi9580 It's all about programming values, BMW only lets you enable hold under 75% SOC. Not really a concern for lifespan. SOC only really starts showing up on lifespan when you charge above 80-90% depending in the chemistry. For most people, age cycles or heat will kill the battery way before SOC would do damage.
Few questions: The ram charger seems to be included in all the Ram Rev marketing materials. Is the implication that a pre-order for the Ram Rev gives you the option for a RAM Charger instead? Can we learn a little bit more about the infotainment Ram, Chrysler, Dodge all seem to have very slow, infotainment systems. I appreciate physical buttons, but the infotainment when you're forced to interact with it needs to be responsive especially at startup. I have a 2018 ram rebel infotainment works fine. Still not as fast as I'd like and a 2023 Chrysler Pacifica that takes a good 10 seconds to actually be responsive when I'm pulling out of the driveway, which is not great when the radio was too loud, from last person who is in it. Also, a lot of the marketing and Auto source switching drives me crazy. Just leave it on the screen and the source that I left it on regardless of whether that source is available. Can we learn more about other trim levels? I understand tungsten is the one you want everyone to buy but probably isn't feasible for everyone. It'd be great if you could tap your ram insider program a little bit more for the questions that we care about as it might help drive a little bit more interest from The wider community. These really seem like videos to show a board of executives, not your customer.
I have a question that I can't find any answer the battery on the Ramcharger is located on the bottom is there a water protection in between the battery and the body which is the under or it's a steel panel who's only lying down on the battery I live in Canada and I don't want any salt to be lodged in between there
Love the design of the RamCharger. If Ford doesn't come out with a similar series hybrid design when I'm in the market again come 2027 I'll be ording a RamCharger instead.
I will fully retire in 2027 and at that point I will retire my 2007 Silverado which I have driven since 2010 and my 2002 Lexus which I have driven since 2006. I plan to get the Ramcharger but will probably be a used one and I look forward to it.
I'm super excited about this vehicle - a true gamechanger if done right. I run a business based solely on servicing Promasters, so I'm intimately familiar with the Pentastar. Very hard to tell from the photos, but am I seeing the Gen II valvetrain here, without VVL? Can't seem to spot an obvious EGR cooler. I love what you've done with the cats - tipping them to clear the drive motor. All I can say is that if you make the generator and inverter a "crate" package, I'll start another whole business of retrofitting that drivetrain into other vehicles! A pentastar based generator would be the small block chevy of the future!
don't need variable valves on a Generator - it will only run at a few possible, one constant speeds. Optimize fixed valve timing for that. Less things to break.
@@sebastiant5695 True, but the Gen II (without VVL or EGR) went out of production for the 2023 MY, so it's likely they will use the Gen III since that's still in production. Might be a blessing, since the G3 doesn't suffer the rocker arm wear problem of the GI and G2, and the EGR system appears to be robust. Anyway, it may also be possible that the VVL allows them to REALLY optimize it for steady state operation, moreso than VVT alone. Unknown. Elsewhere, it's been reported that this engine will have 2 modes - high output and low output, simply a difference of rpm I assume.
@@promastersonly1419 possible that is has a few speeds. The BMW i3 Range extender had 3 different speeds. But they where not much space out - I think it was a warmup speed at 2400rpm normal operations I think was 3600 and max at 4300.
@@sebastiant5695 Clearly, the engine in the i3 was too small. I dont know where motorcycle engines make peak torque, but 4300 rpm has got to be noisy, shakey, and annoying.
@@promastersonly1419True, then engine was a bit to small. That car and plattform had a lot of potential but BMW decided to go another route. The high rev engine speeds only engaged during highspeed driving, where road noise and vibration where much more. You never really hear and feel the engine from inside.
I still stand by my original comment. This truck needs to have a transfer connection when connected to a trailer. A way to transfer power to/from a trailer, so if a trailer has onboard batteries, it could extend the range, or be an off grid power source, or be a way to charge the REV without unhooking the trailer (if you can only back a trailer into a charging station). You can add a selection option, to only use truck batteries, to save trailer power, or switch to range extender mode, to use both sets of batteries going down the interstate.
I don't think this is as important as you think. Camp trailer batteries are usually in the 1-3 kWH range, so being able to charge the truck battery from them is pointless. As far as charging the trailer battery from the truck, there is already a wire for this in a standard 7 pin trailer connector (it's low current, but just to charge the battery, should be fine.) If you want to run the AC or something like that, just plug the trailer into the truck's 7.2kW power panel. As far as charging the truck through the trailer.. Why? As far as I know there are 0 trailers commercially available with 400v or 800v electrical systems to deal with level 3 charging. Is there really an advantage to backing your trailer into a charger spot to plug into the trailer over just pulling the truck in and plugging in the normal way?
@@skrubol it's not what's available today, but what could be built to fill a need in the future. If Ram is the only one with that option, it sets their truck apart. If camper/toy trailer manufacturers start adding substantial batteries as a feature for range extension, they're going to design it with Ram's connector in mind. Cattle/horse trailer manufacturers would do the same.
It's an interesting idea, but I wouldn't hold my breath for such a specialized use-case. @skrubol makes a good point about using the offboarding power if you really needed to do that. I sympathize with the designers on this one - what you propose would have to interface safely with ANYBODY's trailer, and if it burned down Chrysler would be tied up in court forever. It would also have to PREDICT stardards and handshakes for stuff that doesn't even exist yet. I can easily see why they wouldn't want that, and even though I want complete control and wide open hackable software architechture, I can see why they dont let me.
I was disappointed to find out the 229kWh (500mile range) all battery version is now pushed out to 2026. The RamCharger isn't an option for me. This puts the RAM's range with everyone else. I'm hoping RAM does something else to differentiate themselves.
Stellantis wants to delay these trucks as much as possible, they think the market is too small. They are waiting on the ev truck segment to expand to release them.... So guys do not expect anything before fall 2025....
Hey, @farklestaxbaum4945. Are you having battery concerns with your current vehicle? If you are, our team would like to explore how we can best support you with this concern at this time. To do this, we ask that you please send our team a private message of Facebook, X, or Instagram, and we will meet you there to help you further.^DS
COMMENT FOR RAM: It's probably not feasible from a sales point, but this truck could EASILY make due with a smaller battery pack. 100miles of EV range is FAR MORE than enough for most use cases. If I get my wish, the Tradesman would be offererd with a smaller (cheaper!) pack, something more like 65kwh vs 90. Granted, it's a hard sell because it takes an educated customer as to why they don't need so much battery. But fleet guys, I think, would get it. Less weight, less cost, advertisable as higher payload capacity.
The bigger the battery the less time the generator needs to run, the more fuel you save. Powerful electric motors require bigger battery to run efficiently.
Since the engine has no physical connection to the wheels the battery has to be big enough to supply the motor while at max capacity with towing and such. A smaller battery would have a huge heat build up trying keep up with the output to supply the motor.
@@JD-yx7be True, but the truck has a promised 90kwh battery. I'm not proposing it have a 10kwh battery, but something more like 60kwh. To the best of my knowledge, all EVs derate the motor output based on battery state of charge, so your Lucid Saphire isn't running 2.0 sec to 60 with a 4% battery charge. I recently drove a Wrangler 4xE, which has a 14kwh battery that works in tandem with a turbo 4 cylinder. It had no problem delivering power and recharging the battery when it was down to 0%, because all EVs keep some power in reserve. I take your point though about thermal.
No one needs a 5000 pound battery. You have lost the plot. Make a small commuter electric truck ford Maverick sized. Ill work for cheaper then whoever us making the decisions at RAM and cant do worse.
@@rickyhawkins7407 because I hate them and there to quit and I hate quit cars and truck I’m a mopar guy and I love the hemis and superchargerd hemis and plus electric vehicles are a waste of electricity
@@rickyhawkins7407because people have made it a socio political thing. Its stupid but thats the answer. Its interesting that years ago Chrysler had done a study on targeting insecure people and talking them into large trucks and SUV’s. It worked better than they could have hoped. A man that is secure with himself has no trouble driving a minivan or car. Some Insecure people buy large vehicles because they need to compensate. You know the ones. Some just need a truck. I am the latter and look forward to having choice. I think the Ram Charger will be a real winner as an all round capable truck. EV efficiency and power with a generator range extender. Whats not to love.
I love my EV, cant afford a gas vehicle anymore for daily driving. My next truck will probably be a Ram Charger. Great on the farm, power to run my house and ideal for RV towing and running house loads.
It is a series hybrid like a freight train. It is better to keep your vehicle as long as possible instead of getting into more debt no matter the power train
