I'm into off roading as well, my weapon of choice was a Cherokee 4.5" lift on 32" tires. Lots of time in the woods. Built it up myself.

I'm super excited for electric off road vehicles, but when you're way out there you really still need a gasoline engine. It's just too convenient to store 100+ miles of fuel in ~60lbs strapped to the back of your truck, your friends truck, and every other person's truck who you meet on the trail. On a longer trip it's easy to be a day or more from fuel (because the roads are bad, and average speed is very low)

Torque from 0 and independent control of each motor is going to be a game changer. Add in new suspension possibilities when you don't have differentials and axles (hub motors?) and next-gen trucks could be extremely capable. If we can figure out the range/refueling problem (...and I don't think we can for 10+ more years for this use-case)

I think folks are getting confused about 'off road' in the comments here. Image search '4x4 rock climbing' - that's the stuff many trails have short (or long) sections of. Add in the isolation, constant use of aircon or heat (or both), high power demands to go very short distances, and electric just won't do it right now. We need better batteries or some way of producing electricity from liquid fuels.

The Tesla Cybertruck with 500+ miles range, plus the solar tonneau vault door that generates 40+ miles a day might be pretty good though. Super excited to see the production model with all the improvements Elon has been mentioning from his recent visit to the design center in the past week. I can't believe it's already been in manufacturing design for a year next month!

For energy density it's pretty hard to beat things like gas or diesel. Do you see any practical reason you couldn't carry liquid fuel and a generator for offroading? It would take longer to recharge than just dumping fuel into the tank but I'm not convinced that would be a dealbreaker.

What's the efficiency of such generators? Surely you lose 70% of the energy?

Even if the generator is less efficient than a truck with an ICE engine I think it would be a net win. You would only be using the generator on long off road trips where you're isolated and don't have an alternative way to charge the vehicle. If having the generator means the EV is a viable choice then you would still get the environmental benefits of someone using an EV instead of ICE for 95% of their driving.

Generator->electric->drive gives a longer range per gallon of gas than ICE->drive, since the generator is always in its optimal power band.

No one needs to drive one of these pedestrian death traps on public roads. Which is where these will be driven.

If Chrysler made an electric Wrangler or Ford an electric Raptor, now that'd be interesting.

FWIW the model 3 is better than one would expect off road since there's a lot less stuff to worry about on the underside (no oil pan, for example).

Ok but the thing is people do. Unless you're going to make hummers illegal this seems like the best we can do.

Oh you're gonna hate me when I finally get my Bollinger B2.

It's a frame of reference. Just to get an idea of how much energy a big truck EV requires relative to a sedan.

The target audience for this vehicle isn't Tesla model 3 owners. It's people like me who get ~10.5 mpg in their fully built 6800 lbs Land Cruisers.

It's appealing to me.

I'm surprised it's only 2.25x less efficient really. I have my Cybertruck on order, you're not the only one interested in off roading on HN!