And there aren’t even any downsides. The charging and the range? Truckers have mandatory rest breaks anyway and the range and charge speed coincide quite well.
No diesel power? Have you seen a 40-ton truck speed up a hill that a diesel one would be crawling up with 20kmh - the electric one does it at the legal speed limit while being virtually silent.
You barely actually use your brakes, meaning the only significant maintenance is the tires.
And all that while going net-zero for co2 within the first quarter of a year. Add-on: a bunch of commodities derived from the fact that you have a bunch of electricity you can use for whatever you like.
There are one (big, depending on how you look at it) downside, payload, the maximum gcwr is 48 or 60 tons depending on setup. And electric trucks are heavier than their diesel counterparts so the payload goes down. But as longhaul trucks usually aren’t fully loaded weightwise it might not matter. But a big downside to the heavier baseweight is the axleweight which also becomes a problem in this video. But electric trucks are still the way forward, as he also shows in this video, they are a perfect fit for the current rules on drive/rest time.
Like 5 years ago my conservative father said “trucks will never be electric. It’s just impossible”
“Meanwhile” in 1907:
(I think UPS has these too?)1912:
1927:
eBussy too:
We were talking about freight trucks (if that’s the right term?)
Yes, this is how the biggest of them looked at the time, competing between electric, diesel, gasoline, wood, and coal power (all by far exceeding horses even in poor countries where the scale justified the purchase of such a “logistic device”, ie where there was more to transport than a few horses could manege).
I’m just saying that the electric option was killed (and actively kept dead!) by some very market manipulative means, not by product capability or market intrinsic needs.
I mean, look at OPs link - nothing in that achievement is really “new”, batteries of 10 years ago would just be much heavier, but not prohibitivel so, just less efficient. The charging infrastructure is what is new. And that tech is also not “new”, we just “fought against it” bcs of reasons.
Oh, gotcha. Yeah, that documentary on this topic was good: Who Killed The Electric Car.
tbf, my dad was right to question how feasible battery life would be when hauling tons like is the norm today. But going as far as “impossible” I thought was silly and would undoubtedly turn out to be wrong.
Well, it wasn’t feasible for internal combustion trucks either, it took decades of very gradual r&d to get to this point. Imagine trucks in the 80s, they could barely move, much less stop.
120 … or at least let’s say 70 years of quick charging tech development (especially fueled by such a massive industry) would surely mean no issues with power by now.
Big electric trucks are actually easier to develop on a grand scale if we (eg via gov policies over a decade) decided so compared to adopting electric cars (individual use, less frequent stops at fueling/charging stations, spontaneous use, etc - it should be electric cars benefiting from electric truck tech, not the other way around.)
The environmental consequences are also at the very least comparable to fossil fuel powered ones but without the greenhouse gases (which are a very important aspect of it all).Also for heavy loads (:)) you can config electric motors to give way more torque compared to diesel, so scaling up trucks would be easier over the years (we were constantly hearing about engine developments & optimisations each gen, but you don’t hear anything about research into electric motors for road use … bcs it has been just about logistic & mass production, the actual tech needed very little advancement, controllers mostly I would say).
Fuel efficiency of engines is part of that story tho (in the sense that more efficient batteries per weight do affect the overall hauling capacity of a truck, but with freight trucks I think we could have reached today’s standard quicker if trucks would have gone the electric way).Still, environmentally speaking, it all pales in compassion to rail tho (or any combo of putting road trucks in trains for at least the main part of the journey).
They ignore others (electric truck engineers) while saying they know more (than electric truck engineers).
To be fair, 10 years ago, I didn’t think we’d have electric aircrafts, but we do. Not all trips are half-way around the globe and none of them need loud engine noise.
Yeah well those planes are no where near being able to replace the current planes…
They won’t, but they make short flights viable.
Way less maintenance, “fuel” cost is a rounding error. But only good for 100-200km flights with maybe half dozen passengers
For most of those trips a train connection would be better. Hell even a bus connection works…
Check how much 200-300km of railroad costs vs a simple airstrip.
The target isn’t a massive million person metropolis, but a mid-sized city with manufacturing.
Well m, in my country we used to have loads of railroads everywhere connecting those smaller cities and villages but in thats the case anymore. Again I doubt we would want every small 10k cities to have their own airstrip and those cities are always connected with roads, so buses.
Not sure why you mention manufacturing, do you mean that the production would be transported by planes?
Factories usually have expensive people coming in to install and maintain the equipment, as well as visitors from customer companies.
Source: lived in a factory town all my youth, family still does
Which planes are you talking about? You talk like you can’t tell apart a glider from A380.
I dont think when we say planes we mean the small ones. I’m talking about the one’s that are used for passenger air travel. At least where I am from that means planes that have at least fourty seats and not four.
Everything starts small including BEVs.
They always naysay like crazy.
I cant help that feel that large commercial trucking is one area where swappable batteries could work. You already have drivers familiar with operating complex equipment for battery swaps. On a similar level to swapping trailers.
At some point we missed the opportunity to create a standard that would have avoided a lot of very high cost, high speed charging infrastructure and spreading the recharge times to offpeak times of the day.
I agree.
We didn’t miss the opportunity, it was specifically avoided to create vendor lock-in.
China have been doing it for years (apparently)
It’s all about grabbing market share, nothing to do with practicability.
One company sells a short battery trailer to be towed between the tractor and the cargo trailer. I can’t remember the company name. But it sure is possible. The obstacles are not technical, they’re from those who don’t want to change: diesel and ICE companies.
And regulators. Look at how much trouble Edison moters is having in getting a diesel/electric work truck past regulators.
Their drivetrain is 100% electric with a diesel generator. The generator is emissions compliant and much more eco friendly since it always runs at an optimal RPM to charge the batteries. But Canadian regulator cant wrap their head around that, so now they are forced to use a traditional truck engine, add an 18 speed gearbox and connect it to the powertrain, which is a lot less efficient and more expensive. Not to mention it generates significantly more emmissions.
