Big Rigs Begin To Trade Diesel For Electric Motors (nytimes.com) 156
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Two years ago, the eCascadia [the electric version of the Freightliner Cascadia] was nothing more than a PowerPoint presentation -- a virtual rendering to expedite a diesel stalwart into a zero-emissions future for goods movement. Now it's one of several competing models, from start-ups as well as established truck makers, that are gearing up for production next year with real-world testing. Orders have poured in, from companies eager to shave operating costs and curb emissions, for trucks that won't see roads for months or even years. Volvo Trucks North America announced this year that it would test 23 of its VNR battery-electric heavy-duty trucks in and out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The Washington-based truck maker Kenworth is already there, operating the beginnings of Project Portal, a 10-truck fleet of semis powered with hydrogen fuel cells. And Daimler Trucks North America is making deliveries in 20 of its preproduction eCascadias with two partner companies, Penske Truck Leasing and NFI.
Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are responsible for about 8 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Electrics not only reduce tailpipe emissions to zero, they cost less to operate. With fewer moving parts, they are also easier to maintain. On average, it costs about $1.38 per mile to operate a diesel truck, according to the trucking information website TruckInfo.net; $70,000 of the $180,000 annual operating cost is fuel, and $15,000 goes toward maintenance. Tesla, by comparison, estimates its electric Semi will cost $1.26 per mile. Electric trucks do, however, cost more to buy upfront. While most manufacturers have yet to set pricing, the longer a truck's range, the more batteries it needs and the more it will cost.Tesla plans to sell its 300-mile-range Semi for $150,000 and 500-mile Semi for $180,000. The price of a new diesel tractor and trailer is about $150,000. [...] The electrification of trucking is rolling out in three distinct phases, starting with medium-duty box trucks and vans, followed by heavy-duty semis used for regional hauling, like the ones Volvo, Kenworth and Daimler are testing at Southern California's ports. "With battery vehicles, it comes down to range, because batteries cost money and they add weight," said Jim Mele, an analyst with Wards Intelligence. "Long haul will probably be the last to see electrification because they'll probably need fuel cells to get the range they need, and those are still in development."
Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are responsible for about 8 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Electrics not only reduce tailpipe emissions to zero, they cost less to operate. With fewer moving parts, they are also easier to maintain. On average, it costs about $1.38 per mile to operate a diesel truck, according to the trucking information website TruckInfo.net; $70,000 of the $180,000 annual operating cost is fuel, and $15,000 goes toward maintenance. Tesla, by comparison, estimates its electric Semi will cost $1.26 per mile. Electric trucks do, however, cost more to buy upfront. While most manufacturers have yet to set pricing, the longer a truck's range, the more batteries it needs and the more it will cost.Tesla plans to sell its 300-mile-range Semi for $150,000 and 500-mile Semi for $180,000. The price of a new diesel tractor and trailer is about $150,000. [...] The electrification of trucking is rolling out in three distinct phases, starting with medium-duty box trucks and vans, followed by heavy-duty semis used for regional hauling, like the ones Volvo, Kenworth and Daimler are testing at Southern California's ports. "With battery vehicles, it comes down to range, because batteries cost money and they add weight," said Jim Mele, an analyst with Wards Intelligence. "Long haul will probably be the last to see electrification because they'll probably need fuel cells to get the range they need, and those are still in development."
Orders have poured in, (Score:2, Interesting)
Two words: Bull and Shit.
I've been in the transportation (int'l and domestic) for 30 years, and have made a number of friends over the years who own or are in management for everything from small owner-operator-coordination firms to massive national firms across the own-to-broker spectrum like Schneider or CH Robinson.
None, I repeat None, of them are even faintly interested in electric trucks. So I'm not sure from whom these orders are "pouring" in?
Oh they might be academically, but there is little to no
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Aye. Long-haul OTR is going to *laugh* at a 500 mile range, I have friends that go coast-to-coast with maybe one or two fuel stops...
You better have real expensive clients in a regional look to make electric semis even remotely viable from a business perspective.
Regarding the pollution, it really is a giant exercise in shifting the problem elsewhere once you factor in all the externalities.
Re:Orders have poured in, (Score:5, Interesting)
It depends upon how well a large fleet of trucks is managed. It's more about driver time, how many hours of operation without a break. How far that is, say four hours and running a depot there. So the truck goes there, drops the trailer, which is picked up by another truck and the driver has a break, gets in a fresh truck with a relayed trailer and drives home. A larger fleet in the digital age can be really well managed to maximise savings and manage drivers and trucks and accelerating the movement of cargo by keeping the trailer moving, whilst trucks and drivers run to their schedules, getting them home, every day. It is complex but worth it but only for larger fleets, which would be electronically managed at all times.
At the depots they would manage batteries trying to charge as many overnight as possible, off peak and cover their entire yard with solar panels where appropriate. The drivers, would probably sit on standby for a particular four hour route unpaid and only get paid when driving. All far more efficient than the current system with sleeping drivers, trucks and cargo, very inefficient and most drivers would make it home every single night, well, except those working night shift, who would make it home every single day.
You would have to carefully choose depot locations, for that 3 to 5 hour journey, so as to pick up and drop off local cargo, generate increased returns from each depot. Electric fleets demand a different management pattern to maximise efficiency. A driver that only has to drive two 4 hour trips there and return, will charge a lot less, when they get home every day. Cargo would shift much faster, no stopping overnight. The trucks would maintain and recharge on rotation to keep cargo moving and drivers would simply be assigned a route with a truck and cargo ready to go and wait for the next truck at that location to drive back home. To work well it would need to be planned well.
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Yes, the only thing that makes sense is swapping the batteries. Anything else causes too many problems.
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I was really surprised that nobody has a good percentage of the battery in the trailer, so that it can be charging while at a loading dock, and it's naturally swappable as you drop and hitch cargo.
You would still need some battery in the tractor itself so that it can move about the yard and go trailer-less, but unless there are regulatory / weight concerns or just not being able to make an electrical connection that can be both reliably pluggable and transfer the amperage necessary, I would think that a tra
Re:Orders have poured in, (Score:5, Insightful)
In the EU the limits on working time for drivers mean that they have to take regular safety breaks anyway, and with the current charge speeds they are more than enough to charge the batteries back up.
The days of doing unsafe 12 hour stints in a 40 tonne vehicle are long gone.
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Whether or not the DRIVER can go that many hours is immaterial--you can have two or more drivers for the same truck. The depot system used by freight carriers supports this fairly well, and see "team driving" for an example where the truck pretty much only has to stop for fuel, load/unload, and for the drivers to eat and use the bathroom.
A truck with an eight hour charging time would probably require less OPEX but far more CAPEX. You can calculate a break even on that (which may well be favorable for the
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In Europe they don't bother with expensive depots. They just to point to point with one driver who takes breaks. A small bit of forward planning ensures a steady supply, they don't just pick up the phone when the shelves look a bit empty.
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For most deliveries, are you really going to pay 2 drivers salaries while only one is doing work at the time?
I guess if the product absolutely has to be there, but for most stuff, you are going to be more affordable to have one driver. Driving for 8 hours then charging and sleeping.
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For most deliveries, are you really going to pay 2 drivers salaries while only one is doing work at the time?
You seem to misunderstand: both people are working. The value of the asset (the truck) is being maximized by being operated as close to 100% as possible (typically dictated by maintenance needs, be they human or mechanical). When driver A reaches the end of their shift, driver B takes over. This is no different from factory work, where 1st shift leaves and 2nd shift comes in.
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The "non working" time is unpaid. Given that OTR truckers are often sleeping in a truck or a hotel room anyway (it's the nature of the job) this isn't really an issue.
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Don't forget the other fun option on the horizon - automated driving. I have no idea how close that is to rollout phase (10 years-ish based on current tech), but it is coming.
For big trucks that's probably going to be less than a decade. The current plans are for them to drive the interstate between urban areas, drop the trailer outside of town, and have it carried into the city by the human driver. Rural interstate driving is dramatically easier to deal with programatically. Platooning, multiple trucks driving close enough to each other to 'draft' in the prior vehicle's slipstream, is safer with automated trucks and saves an enormous amount of fuel as well.
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you can have two or more drivers for the same truck.
Yeah but they don't because that doubles the labour cost for the trip.
Re: Orders have poured in, (Score:3)
I used to work short haul trucking in the EU, as a student, now I live in the US since when are breaks 2h+?
There are serious considerations, where I picked up we had 12-18 trucks loading at once (bread and pastries for supermarkets) and the trucks stood still for 30 mins (your break period while someone else was loading). Then it was on the road, pee break (15m), lunch break (30m), pee break (15m). Then you had to have at least a 4h break so the truck was being used to pick up all the empty racks by another
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US and soon Canada too. Mandatory ELD (electronic logging device) is now in operation in the US since the new year, and it keeps strict track of who is driving and how long and distance travelled. Modeled from the EU which had it for a
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It's a neat theory. It's also a system that starts falling apart whenever you got delays loading, unloading, road problems, truck problems, sick drivers, ad hoc needs and so on. Electric vehicles don't solve any of those problems it only gives you even less flexibility to manage exceptions, so I doubt you'll see any progress in that direction until we have self-driving cars. Then you could take that idea to the extreme with very low range trucks going from one supercharger point to the next, more like a buc [wikipedia.org]
Re:Orders have poured in, (Score:5, Insightful)
How far that is, say four hours and running a depot there.
You are talking about building a depot every 200 miles or so. Think about that for a few minutes. I worked for a company that had 5 depots across the entire country.
So the truck goes there, drops the trailer, which is picked up by another truck and the driver has a break, gets in a fresh truck with a relayed trailer and drives home.
This means there are no owner-operators. It also means tripling the number of trucks.
accelerating the movement of cargo by keeping the trailer moving.... Cargo would shift much faster, no stopping overnight.
Team drivers only stop for fuel and maintenance, both vehicle and human. If they take a day off on the road, they are either ahead of schedule or their drop off is closed and they are waiting.
the truck goes there, drops the trailer, which is picked up by another truck and the driver has a break, gets in a fresh truck with a relayed trailer and drives home
...
drivers would simply be assigned a route with a truck and cargo ready to go.
You seem to be contradicting yourself here. And, because different loads may have different transportation windows, the companies will be having the drivers drop the trailers in a yard and the next assignment will be by delivery time. This means that there will be no "truck and cargo ready to go", At best, there will be a trailer the driver needs to pick up. At worst, there is no load going back to the driver's home depot.
The drivers, would probably sit on standby for a particular four hour route unpaid and only get paid when driving.. A driver that only has to drive two 4 hour trips there and return, will charge a lot less
Do you even know who truckers are paid? They are paid by the mile not the hour.
Here is the day you plan for a truck driver:
And, they only get paid for the 8 hours they are driving. Are the 2+ hours they are working are free? What if they have to wait for 3 days for a load back home, like I did in Spokane before being dead-headed back to Seattle to pick up a load?
The trucks would maintain and recharge on rotation to keep cargo moving and drivers would simply be assigned a route with a truck and cargo ready to go and wait for the next truck at that location to drive back home.
And, what happens if there is no freight going back to the driver's home?
And, the biggest flaw in your post: Picking up and dropping off the loads, aka the first and last 1-400 miles. I drove a tractor trailer to deliver to stores in Wyoming: multiple stops hours away from each other. I have picked up loads that were 4 hours away from the interstate because country roads, let alone a "depot". I picked up a load from 3 different companies all going to the same end point. What is your solution for that?
What h
Real World (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen some horsepower calculations where an yuge portion of the engine's power is required simply to combat wind resistance.
And these modern EPA-compliant diesel engines run so damned hot that a significant amount of the engine's power is also required just to keep the fan cooling the engine. [But I have no idea earthly how "hot" an electric engine & its batteries/alternators/inverters/whatever get when stressed.]
rigs that take 8+ hours to 'refuel'
Some owner/operators can afford to take it easy and be merely day drivers, but most trucking companies will want 24x7 movement of inventory [with one fellow driving & two fellows sleeping].
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And these modern EPA-compliant diesel engines run so damned hot that a significant amount of the engine's power is also required just to keep the fan cooling the engine.
That sounds... odd. The only way they'd put out more heat per HP is if they were less efficient. Are they much less efficient?
Russian Stove (Score:2)
The EPA wants everything now to function as a "Russian Stove" - a confined conflagration so hot that it burns its own exhaust:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You visit any long haul trucking forum [since about calendar year 2000], and everything is overheat, overheat, overheat, overheat, overheat... MELTDOWN!!!
Re:Orders have poured in, (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's the idea that nobody wants an electric truck. Well, this is the very nonsense that was being spewed by folks about electric cars right up until Tesla dethroned the Germans, now there's mass panic in the auto industry.
Oh, and the electric semis that Elon has been sending to prospective customers for them to test out charges in 20-30 minutes, not 8 hours.
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"If an electric truck moves goods at a cheaper price."
For local routes of less than 500 miles/day, maybe.
For long-haul OTR (Over The Road)? Not a chance in hell.
A rig with 300 gallons of tank will have a single fill range of 1800-2400 miles,
An OTR driver on an 14 hour shift with a maximum consecutive drive time of 11 hours. This works out to 715 miles of range.
These electric trucks have a maximum range of 500 miles before complete depletion, followed by an 8 hour recharge cycle. Thus, wasting 3.5 hours o
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Why? Logistics. Just think about how many extra batteries you would need keep on hand, charging, just to able to swap them into a vehicle that comes along.
It's not workable. It's not going to happen.
Re:Orders have poured in, (Score:4, Interesting)
Swapping out batteries is an idea that won't go away, even though it has been looking into, attempted, and killed already. Why? Logistics. Just think about how many extra batteries you would need keep on hand, charging, just to able to swap them into a vehicle that comes along. It's not workable. It's not going to happen.
What might work for semis is batteries in the trailers, which would be charged primarily while the trailers are parked for loading and unloading. So, dropping off one trailer and picking up another would effectively be a battery swap.
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I expect it is also an issue of consistent quality.
If you swap out your batteries and get a brand new set. You may get 600 miles, but then you swap it out and get and older set you may only get 300 miles.
Also if there is a battery failure or fire. Then it goes down to who is responsible.
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For trucks it still might make sense. Especially if the trucks are a fleet owned by a company with depots. ... or have an extra trailer which only contains batteries, then you just change that one.
just to able to swap them into a vehicle that comes along.
It's not workable.
Why? You do the same with freight. Have the batteries in the trailers
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"Have batteries in the trailers"...
So, to swap, you have to COMPLETELY UNLOAD A TRAILER INTO ANOTHER TRAILER?
Who does that? Not the driver!
"Extra trailer".
Please understand that there are length, weight and axle distance rules for driving a rig. And they differ from state to state.
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"If an electric truck moves goods at a cheaper price."
For local routes of less than 500 miles/day, maybe.
For long-haul OTR (Over The Road)? Not a chance in hell.
A rig with 300 gallons of tank will have a single fill range of 1800-2400 miles,
An OTR driver on an 14 hour shift with a maximum consecutive drive time of 11 hours. This works out to 715 miles of range.
These electric trucks have a maximum range of 500 miles before complete depletion, followed by an 8 hour recharge cycle. Thus, wasting 3.5 hours of every OTR shift.
It also destroys any benefit from team driving, where one driver takes over from another.
And don't talk to me about "quick stops" to manually swap out high power battery packs.
Notice how many interchangeable electric car sleds we have...
OTR is going to go the route of autonomous trains anyway. You'll have 1 driver in the lead rig followed by several autonomous driving rigs slaved to the lead rig (yes, I know, slight contradiction between "autonomous" and "slaved"). Also, the last mile/local routes are where all the inefficiency comes into play (traffic, multiple stops, etc) and is precisely where electric trucks can do the most good. So you'll have single driver, multi rig trains going to a warehouse on the outskirts of a major city and
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No. Sorry, none of the states are going to reasonably allow a 40 ton battering ram to be autonomously or remotely piloted. Not on public roads.
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This makes no sense to me. People are expensive. Stuff being moved by road 1000+ miles is not that time critical or it would be air-freighted. While I'm sure there are some setups that are as you describe, I'm sure there's a heckuva lot more rigs that have a single driver, not a team. And a very real trade-off between opex costs and depot-to-drop hours.
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Running team drivers OTR isn't about speeding up freight times. Or not primarily.
It's about keeping the truck almost constantly in motion. It makes the drivers (and the company) more money.
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If an electric truck moves goods at a cheaper price
If you are in the trucking industry, then you know that is a huge "if". Aside from initial cost, infrastructure needs, maintenance, etc., there is the simple fact that the range is half that a driver can cover in a single day.
I was a solo driver for a company that had their trucks speed limited to 65 miles per hour. I could drive 10 hours a day. Simple math says I could cover 650 miles on a good day and regularly covered 500-600 miles a day, and that was without split-shifting. Split-shifting would have all
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That truck almost never stops moving. They can literally get 2300 miles a day.
I'm no mathematician, but doesn't that mean that truck is averaging over 95 mph going down the road? I've seen a lot of truckers driving fast, but not that fast.
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You are right cost is king. There have been analysis do on the viability of electric semi's. The weight of the batteries means less cargo can be carried, the claimed operational cost benefits can not offset the loss of cargo being shipped per trailer. There are very specific circumstances where an electric semi makes sense but the technology still needs to mature to make it cost effective on a wider set of applications.
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Well, how about with Model Y deliveries? Promised for late 2020 to early 2021, and happening right now.
Not taking any stance on semi / trucking because I have no center of knowledge there. But you asked when he under-promised and over-delivered, and that's an example. It also appears to be the outlier, as most of his dates are ridiculously short and almost never achieved.
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innovative... (Score:5, Informative)
your right none of the mom and pop's or big international firms who don't care about being innovative or managing risk will do this
manage your risk
the risk is quite simply those companies are going to be undercut and die because their competitors saw an advantage (less servicing) and allowed them to be cheaper or faster.
amazon who I would say employs quite a few people to do deliveries is moving to electric and I would say they are really interested in efficiency.
because of the size maybe you will see fuel cells like bus's do
Re:Orders have poured in, (Score:5, Informative)
I've been in the transportation (int'l and domestic) for 30 years,
In that case you know that truckers can only drive for 11 hours per day, it's the law:
https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/site... [dot.gov]
nor having rigs that take 8+ hours to 'refuel'.
By law, truckers have to be off duty for 10 consecutive hours so as soon as the range of a truck becomes "as far as you can legally drive in a day" then those 8+ hours recharge become a non-issue.
Tesla's "500 mile range" number sounds like it's in the ballpark for that.
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What percentage of trucks do that?
If it's not 100% then... there's a market for this.
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What percentage of trucks do that?
A huge majority of them. Unless they are introverts like me, most drivers prefer to be part of a team. Here is why:
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Then the whole point of "it only takes 8+ hours to recharge and you can sleep during that time!" is moot.
How is it moot? Do regional trucks run 24/7 or do those drivers only drive during certain hours? For example for traffic reasons running trucks at night. Drivers can sleep during the day.
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I think the poster's world view is that only long haul trucks exist, and long haulers are the only real truckers. Never mind that far more semis on the road go from a railroad depot to a warehouse, or a warehouse to the end destination than drive long haul. Most shippers prefer rail or ship for as much of the trip as possible, since it's so much cheaper. About the only thing being carried across country by truck now are time-limited products like produce or meat, the conversion of logistics from an art t
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You might be surprised to learn that when a company buys a capital asset like one of these trucks, they want it in use absolutely as much as possible. Especially since they pay the operator by the mile driven, so having two people in the vehicle instead of one allows you to double the miles driven in a day with the only cost being the added weight of the second driver.
Re:Orders have poured in, (Score:5, Informative)
Which happens extremely rarely in the industry these days.
There is currently a huge shortage of drivers out there. Even with all the trucking companies going bankrupt, there are still more trucks with loads than drivers.
Unless there is a special reason for a truck to be moving constantly (secure load, perhaps), no company is going to put two truckers in one truck to move a single load that much faster. They already quoted a time and distance, and using two trucks means you can get two loads done and charge both than a single load done in half the time. Especially since the two trucks can go in separate directions.
Hell, even mega carriers who put two inexperienced guys together don't want to do it for more than they have to - they'd rather have the new guy doing one load and the monitor doing another load.
Then there's also the two people in a small space argument - you can't just put any two people in a truck cab and expect them to be compatible. It works for the airlines, but only because you can have an air of professionalism and even if you hate your copilot, at least everything is laid out as SOPs and thus you know what to expect. (And then you tell the dispatcher to never pair you two together every again).
About the few times it happens is when an O-O brings their spouse along who can also drive a truck.
Most trucks park at night and there's only the driver by himself, maybe a pet dog, and the radio. Many have dash cams that look both ways - into the cab and out on the road.
Anyhow, there are tons of trucks out there that park at night as well - the local deliveries that go from ports to railway terminals, the ones that go from ports and railways to distribution warehouse, the warehouse to retailer delivery trucks, etc. Many local carriers are already testing electric vehicles. UPS has a fleet of EVs and more on order to do last mile delivery.
And for those wondering, even OTR trucks are different from the ones that run about within a metropolitan area - even the ones with sleeper cabs. They're all slightly different and optimized for their purpose. You could take an OTR truck and run it within a city (because OTR truckers do that to deliver to the warehouse anyways, so it's all there), but it's far more efficient to have a smaller truck that's a bit more nimble do that work. So even buy a big rig is not one size fits all.
Driver shortage and diesel pollution. (Score:2)
Much of the driver shortage is due to poor pay and working conditions. Those jobs are dull and dangerous so they should be reduced as much as practical by automation. Automated systems are less affected by meatbag fatigue and more easily managed.
Get rid of the polluting diesel drivetrains where practical, get rid of the drivers where practical, get rid of both where practical.
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Autopilot mode.
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EVERYTHING about trucking is about weight capacity and range. In a 40t rig, roughly 20t is payload, the rest is tractor and trailer (or chassis). There is no way they are even faintly going to be interested in trading in any of the 20t for batteries, nor having rigs that take 8+ hours to 'refuel'.
Oh, and gas is projected to drop possibly below $1/gal again. Good luck with the electric trucks you guys.
Not every truck is a long-haul truck that needs to pull 40 tons for thousands of miles.
You don't even need to click through to the article to see that:
The electrification of trucking is rolling out in three distinct phases, starting with medium-duty box trucks and vans, followed by heavy-duty semis used for regional hauling, like the ones Volvo, Kenworth and Daimler are testing at Southern California's ports. "With battery vehicles, it comes down to range, because batteries cost money and they add weight," said Jim Mele, an analyst with Wards Intelligence. "Long haul will probably be the last to see electrification because they'll probably need fuel cells to get the range they need, and those are still in development."
Fuel may be cheap today, but after demand picks up and Russia stops its price war, prices will be back up where they were -- maybe higher since some energy companies will have gone out of business.
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Even there for the vast majority of cases fuel was better for CO2 emissions than electric AND cheaper.
A diesel truck on the highway is fairly efficient (much more so than a gasoline car), and a huge portion of the electricity for the truck would need to be from renewables to make an electric truck quicker. Then there was the charge time and the infrastructure costs.
The EU basically recommended at this point in time to focus on renewables for the grid to meet grid dema
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How old is that study and are those numbers still accurate after all of the diesel scandals?
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Got a link?
Using what, the same Wingnut Calculus that said a Prius pollutes more than a Hummer? Even if an electric vehicle gets all of its charge from a coal powered plant, that plant still operates at a higher efficiency rating than an ICE. And it's cheaper to put a scrubber on a smokestack than scrubbers on tens of thousands of engines.
Re:Orders have poured in, (Score:5, Insightful)
Two words: Bull and Shit.
I've been in the transportation (int'l and domestic) for 30 years, and have made a number of friends over the years who own or are in management for everything from small owner-operator-coordination firms to massive national firms across the own-to-broker spectrum like Schneider or CH Robinson.
None, I repeat None, of them are even faintly interested in electric trucks. So I'm not sure from whom these orders are "pouring" in? Oh they might be academically, but there is little to no information being released on capacity, (real) range, durability, or even prices of these vehicles.
EVERYTHING about trucking is about weight capacity and range. In a 40t rig, roughly 20t is payload, the rest is tractor and trailer (or chassis). There is no way they are even faintly going to be interested in trading in any of the 20t for batteries, nor having rigs that take 8+ hours to 'refuel'.
Oh, and gas is projected to drop possibly below $1/gal again. Good luck with the electric trucks you guys.
The eCascadia can be recharged in about 90 minutes not 8 hours +, the weight of the batteries is not on top of the weight of the basic fossil fuel powered variant since the electric engines are lighter, you have a lightened structure and you get rid of the heavy diesel powertrain and replace it primarily with batteries which boils down to about the same weight. The GCRW for the eCascadia is about 36 metric tons which is about the same as for the fossil fuel engined equivalent New Cascadia truck. About gas prices. Firstly, these trucks at least usually run Detroit DD series engines which drink diesel, not gasoline. In fact most trucks run on diesel so gas prices are kind of irrelevant here, diesel prices are relevant. Secondly, the price fluctuations in fossil fuel prices are usually much more volatile than for electricity and thus more of a headache for haulage firms because there is no electricity OPEC that goes to war over electricity prices causing wild fluctuations. In fact you can even build your own wind generators or solar panels at your company HQ and send your trucks off on haulage runs with their first charge of the journey practically for free. This makes the eCascadia considerably cheaper to run since electricity per km driven is tends to be cheaper than diesel or gasoline. Thirdly, any trucking firm that does not see this as the writing on the wall concerning the future of the trucking industry deserves to go bankrupt because they are being run someone blinded to economic reality by political ideals.
https://media.daimler.com/mars... [daimler.com]
https://media.daimler.com/mars... [daimler.com]
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EVERYTHING about trucking is about weight capacity and range.
Of course it is. Because everyone is selling essentially the same technology, it's simple to differentiate between products.
Technology follows an adoption curve. It starts with early adopters who, critical as they are, are not entirely rational. They want new things because they're new. On the opposite end of the bell curve are the people who are just as irrationally opposed to giving up their old tech. You make your *real* money in the middle of the curve, with the pragmatists who will adopt something
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I really don't understand the hate for electric vehicles on a supposed "news for nerds" site.
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That is because when they coined the slogan, they spelled nitpickers wrong :P
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Geeks don't comprehend that playing video games does not make them nerds.
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So I'm not sure from whom these orders are "pouring" in?
Can't attest for pouring in. However, 3PL that I used to work for is using three (not this model) for yard switching between warehouses. The primary site is mainly for cross dock. The second site is storage and rail transfers. Using the electric trailers to move trailers from yard to yard.
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I expect it is conditional to the type of trucking is done.
Diesel is still best for long range cross country trips.
However Electric can benefit in the local delivery market. Say deliveries within a 200 mile radius, which we have a lot of such shipping being done.
Electric benefits when you are in a lot of Stop and Go type of behavior, because when you stop, you are not wasting close to as much energy then what you do while idling.
For someone so close to the trucking industry I would think you would realize t
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gas is projected to drop possibly below $1/gal again
On what planet? Sure as hell not on Earth, where it hasn't been that price since the 1970s.
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EVERYTHING about trucking is about weight capacity and range.
Not even remotely true. A large part of logistics is also about short haul movement from central collection points to depots. But let me guess that's not "true trucking" because it doesn't wear your favourite coloured kilt?
Bringing such a beast to life was incredible. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not supposed to say which of these projects I worked on, but it was one of the most fun moments of my career, seeing it move for the first time.
After weeks of wiring, adapting plans that were evolving ever so slightly even as we built the truck, bringing up pieces so the software and integration team could do their part, crawling all over every inch of that monster frame, I knew what to expect. I knew it would be nearly silent, just a faint whine from the motor-axle. And I knew it would work, because we'd spun the wheels with the axles jacked in the air, to get all the encoders configured.
But it still took my breath away.
Because, you see, the whole rest of the prototype garage was still full of diesel trucks. They'd roar to life and rattle in and out, doing whatever their research programs were doing. I didn't have much insight into that, but I got accustomed to associating that racket with every moving truck. No matter what acoustic strides get made in passenger-car diesels, heavy-duty trucks never seem to get quieter. And after a few weeks in the garage, I was as used to it as anyone.
So when we finally lowered the jacks and moved the work tables out of the way, and it was time for the truck to move, part of my reflexes just knew that noise would accompany it. Even as I'd just spent hundreds of hours making sure the opposite was true, it nevertheless came as a shock. Seeing something that big just glide across the building with nary a hiss, I couldn't help but feel something serious had just changed.
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Re:Bringing such a beast 60 minutes on self drive (Score:2)
Interesting that this story came up now because there was a segment on 60 minutes just last Sunday about self-driving trucks. As near as I could tell, they were standard trucks retrofitted. A big part of the story is how quiet, if not downright secretive, the companies testing and preparing them were.
Still, it seems like a natural combo, battery or fuel-cell powered, and self-driving.
I just hope.... (Score:2)
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"The trucks don't have a "ludicrous mode" switch."
You obviously haven't ever driven the Garden State Parkway, where if you're traveling in the slow lane at 10 mph over the speed limit you're assured to have a semi not 6 foot off of your bumper. No need for a device "ludicrous mode" the group mentality seems to handle that. It's so bad that part of the highway is designated for cars only.
Seriously, I'm not joking about this. Many a time I've send videos to the owners of the semis titled "Is this how you expe
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The only solution is to take the donuts away from the Highway Patrol. If your State can achieve that, you can improve commercial driving behavior.
"An anonymous reader" (Score:2)
I have a sneaking suspicion I know the username of that anonymous person... is the first letter "R"?
Would be interesting if trailer axles could push (Score:5, Interesting)
With an electric semi, it would be really interesting to get electric power units on all the axles, even the trailers. I drive a B train in Canada, and that's got 7 axles, not including the steering axle. If all that could push and also regeneratively brake, that would be very good. The problem right now is I think the regulations would have to really change as a trailer and truck are considered quite differently as far as registration is concerned. Mostly just a matter of how the law is written.
Had a friend who bought a generator while on vacation. It happened to have little wheels on it so you could pull it around a work site, and when he hauled it across the border, Canada customs claimed he'd have to import it as a motor vehicle since it had a motor and wheels on it. So he removed the wheels so it was no longer a motor vehicle. Silly things like that.
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With an electric semi, it would be really interesting to get electric power units on all the axles, even the trailers.
All axles sure. Trailers would be interesting, but I thought the appeal and success of semi trailers was that they are much cheaper than full trailers. You can haul one, unhook then haul the next one. Making them powered would change that.
Re:Would be interesting if trailer axles could pus (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry I don't follow you. Why would it do that? All the electric motors are controlled together in electric vehicles. That's the beauty of integrated, electric systems. Such a system would allow everything to act as one unit.
Why is range a concern? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is yet another place where Iâ(TM)ve seen range cited as a concern for long haul trucking. I donâ(TM)t get it. At 500 miles of range, even at highway speeds, youâ(TM)re going to get 7.7 hours of driving. Take a 1 hour break, and you can charge to 480 miles of range... Thatâ(TM)s another 7.4 hours of driving. Given that truckers are only allowed to drive for 11 hours (including a 1 hour break), and must then take a 10 hour break, it seems like Teslaâ(TM)s truck more than covers the long haul use case.
Even if you had no limits on driving, you could keep one of those things on the road continuously for 21 hours a day, and thatâ(TM)s assuming you never hit traffic.
The only limitation is where mega chargers are available, but given that weâ(TM)re talking about logistics companies here, managing to get the necessary infrastructure rolled out to depots shouldnâ(TM)t be a problem.
Re:Why is range a concern? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the EU most drivers do 4.5 hours followed by 45 minute rest and another 4.5 hours before breaking their shift. They are capped at 100 km/h (62mph) so the max they can do in any one of those periods is 450km (~270 miles). So if they do a top up charge in the 45 minute rest there shouldn't be a problem. Ideally if you had charge points at the loading/unloading they would probably save time as it takes30-60 minutes to load/unload a lorry so you have now eliminated fuel stops too.
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I donâ(TM)t get it.
Because you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Electric is great for shorter distances, but this article is specifically talking about "Big Rigs" and that implies the over the road long distance trucks, of which there are shitloads of them crossing enormous distances in the country all the damn time.
Take a 1 hour break, and you can charge to 480 miles of range.
Do you have any idea how much power it would take to fast charge a battery large enough to propel a tractor trailer 500 miles? Imagine the infrastructure needed to run all that power to depot / truc
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Tesla Semi Truck (Score:2)
Instead of putting resources into the Model Y or that thing that looks like a cross between a DeLorean and a Chevy El Camino, they should be putting as many resources as possible into getting the Tesla Semi Truck onto the market as fast as possible and in as high numbers as the factories can make.
lets do some basic math (Score:2)
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Hybrid School Buses? (Score:2)
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Congestion and emissions (Score:2)
Lots of people here seem to be focusing on the (very real) problems of limited range and long recharge time for these trucks, which severely limits their use for long-haul On The Road transport, but they seem to be forgetting that that isn't the only sort of trucking that exists.
Sure you can drive 700 miles in a shift if you are somewhere between the Mississippi and the Rockies, but it's much harder when going up and down the two coasts and even harder if the truck is doing something like regional distribut
Trailers ... (Score:2)
I still don't know why they don't start putting up to 50 horse power motors on trailers. Just seems like an easy way to get some fuel efficiency and distribution to multiple pieces of rubber.
I threw 50 HP out here as a number. It could be use case driven and actually better calculated.
I learned the dark secret of Electric Vhicles (Score:2)
https://electrek.co/2018/03/08/goodyear-tire-electric-cars-reduce-wear-instant-torque/ [electrek.co] Companies are developing new tires (clearly) however, those costs are as of yet to be determined.
Already finding that although electric cars save on maintenance, they end up costing so much more on tires that it can balance out, it is not so clear cut cheaper.
(tires can last 1/3 of the time, so 30k tires are getting replaced at 10k, thus at 30k miles you have
Re:Nobody is trading (Score:5, Interesting)
Not as much as you'd think. There's a reason, after all, that the overwhelming majority of heavy-load equipment (locomotives, heavy equipment, mining trucks, etc.) uses electric traction motors. When it comes to putting power to the ground without slipping, there simply isn't any competition. Semi tractors unfortunately don't have a way to deal with the exhaust so they can't use a turbine as the prime mover, which would let them use number 4, 5 or 6 fuel oil instead of number 2 (conventional diesel fuel).
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The reason diesel-electric is king for large railway locos is that making a mechanical or hydraulic transmission that can deal with the torque involved is impractical. It would just be too heavy, generate too much heat, and waste too much power - it doesn't scale. Note that on lighter rail vehicles (e.g. diesel multiple units aka DMUs), Voith hydraulic transmissions are very popular. Diesel-electric DMUs used to be made before advances in hydraulic transmissions out-competed them. You need to get pretty
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The other advantage of diesels in locomotives is that they put lots of weight on the traction wheels.
Turbine exhaust cooling is practical. (Score:2)
Capstone and others have turbine generators to power hybrid buses, and turbine exhaust can be blended with ambient air to drop temps. (High velocity exhaust streams can use the venturi effect to draw high volumes of ambient air.)
There's no demand for them since there's no pressure to use fuel oil, but there's no technical barrier.
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