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Transportation Power

Electric Trucks Could Make a 'Significant Dent' In Carbon Emissions (axios.com) 118

Posted by BeauHD from the environmentally-friendly dept.
Electric trucks have the potential to displace enough oil to make a "significant dent" in transportation sector CO2 emissions, per a Rhodium Group analysis. Axios reports: There's lots of buzz -- and a lot of money -- around electric trucks these days. It estimates the long-term effects of a recent 15-state nonbinding pact (PDF) to bolster the use of zero-emissions heavy trucks and other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. California, one of the states, also recently approved mandatory regulations on greatly increasing zero-emissions truck sales between 2024 and 2045. The study also explores the impact if these state efforts were transformed into a nationwide mandate, which would mean more than half the U.S. medium- and heavy-duty fleet would be electric by 2045.

"If the [15-state] MOU were expanded nationally, the impact would increase six-fold. By 2035, cumulative oil demand would fall by 806 to 843 million barrels, expanding to 4.6 to 4.9 billion barrels by 2045," Rhodium finds. "The long-term effect of expanding California's approach nationally would reduce oil consumption in 2045 by 16 to 17%," the Aug. 13 analysis notes.
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Electric Trucks Could Make a 'Significant Dent' In Carbon Emissions More

Electric Trucks Could Make a 'Significant Dent' In Carbon Emissions

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  • Between trucks and planes going electric, a huge dent would be made in emissions. Progress on this field is inevitable as it's just so much better all around, once you get past storage density issues (more a problem for planes than trucks).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fly Swatter ( 30498 )
      I always thought the energy wasted flying all these planes around was silly. Not many people need to fly. Turns out life can go on without them, and for a brief few weeks the skies in my area were finally quiet.

      I wouldn't miss the planes at all and see no reason to prop up such an energy waste with taxpayer money.

      As for trucks, the conversion can't come quick enough.

      • I always thought the energy wasted flying all these planes around was silly. Not many people need to fly. Turns out life can go on without them, and for a brief few weeks the skies in my area were finally quiet.

        You may not need to fly, but I have no desire to take a ship across the Atlantic to see my relatives in the UK. Please don't tell me I should just use Zoom.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AnilJ ( 1342025 )
          You should use Zoom if you really care for environment. But then when did entitled Brits ever cared for anybody else but for the old Blighty, old chap?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      Electric planes is a bit of a no-go, due the density of batteries being very bad if compared to liquid fuel.
      But planes can be improved, the fuel can be improved, airlines can replace old planes with more efficient ones that already exist...
      Also we could replace a lot of planes with electric railways.

      • Electric planes is a bit of a no-go, due the density of batteries being very bad if compared to liquid fuel.

        Small, short-hop planes can be electric right now. A friend of mine owns an electric plane. Planes are least efficient while gaining altitude, so there's substantial improvements to be made there alone.

  • Local (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Papaspud ( 2562773 ) on Friday August 21, 2020 @05:29PM (#60428117)
    For all the trucks that are local delivery, I think an electric would probably be great.

    • even more so for the garbage trucks

      • A lot of garbage trucks run on natural gas. It's not as clean as electric (especially if leaks occur), but it's better than gasoline or diesel.

        • The idea behind electric garbage trucks is that they are purely stop and go. Recuperation makes a lot of sense for them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )
      And long-distance freight could be hauled around on electric freight trains [wikipedia.org].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      We actually had electric local delivery trucks for decades already. They are called Milk Floats.

      In some countries, e.g. the UK, you can get fresh milk delivered regularly to your door. When the service started combustion engines were extremely noisy and disturbed people in the early hours of the morning when deliveries were made, so they used lead acid batteries instead.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • I'm surprised US mail trucks aren't electric for the same reason, at least suburban ones.

          The USPS has a plan to electrify, but has delayed it. Democrats have a plan to fund USPS electrification, but Moscow Mitch... you know.

  • Trucks have a much larger storage capacity than cars, so have room for 500 mile long power chords!!!
  • Knowing full-well that flow batteries do not have the energy density of Li+ batteries, but thinking in terms of 'refueling' efficiency, and realizing that trucks are massive to start with, would a flow battery work in this application?

    • It won't help because the trucks have to do hills. It's a better match for trains. They could switch cars in and out in order to refuel.

    • Stick the main batteries on the trailer and let it charge while it as being unloaded or sitting.
      • That's not a bad idea really, except that you'd have to replace all the old trailers, or retrofit them, and you'd have to have some mucking big cables connecting the battery to the truck itself.

  • Patently obvious to the engineers, it is true. (Score:5, Informative)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday August 21, 2020 @05:54PM (#60428177) Journal
    Simple physics. In a non-electric vehicle there is no practical way to slow it down other than using friction brakes and convert all the kinetic energy of motion into heat and dissipate it into the atmosphere. Even if you improve the ICE engine thermal efficiency from 20 to 25% to 85 to 90%, this part of it is true.

    In an electric truck, the motors would go into regen mode and convert most of kinetic energy into electric energy and store back in the battery. The regen efficiency is 90%. Power electronics have improved so much regen system can accept surges of 120 kW (160 HP) or more. Tesla, Taycan, Lucid all boast charge rates of 250 kW, 350 kW in L3 chargers. They are talking about steady state charge at these incredible power levels for sustained times of 15 minutes or 20 minutes. The regen surge power is momentary lasting a few seconds. Thus the amount of energy wasted in braking will go down by a factor of 5 due to regen braking.

    The ICE thermal efficiency is only 20%. Even the non renewable electricity from coal is made with 45% or 50% thermal efficiency, allowing for transmission losses, and battery charging losses, we still save in electric vehicles even where there is no renewable power generation. But every joule of renewable power is bonus. Further vehicles can be charged when there is wind blowing or sun shining and thus have renewable power generation, reducing carbon emissions further.

    So saying electric trucks/cars can reduce carbon emissions, or even adding the qualifier, significantly, is kind of obvious.

    The sticky point is the cost of electric trucks, and how many hours a day they are available for operation. Battery prices are falling between 15% and 20% a year, and the real economy of scale and mass production has not even begun. The Giga factory will be seen as a mere scratch in retrospect when we have factories turning out Terawatt-hours of battery capacity ...

    • I wonder if regenerative braking axles or even driveshafts could be retro-fitted to an existing fleet, like garbage trucks and in-town passenger buses. The battery might even fit on the axle or on a sleeve around the driveshaft, it only need absorb and re-play the energy recovered from braking.

      • not 20%..

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Car engines about 35%.

        Today, electricity comes from coal.

        Tomorrow might be a different story. But tomorrow batteries will be cheaper.

        Transmission and battery losses are significant.

        And trucks trundling down a freeway do not brake very often.

        So if you are going to spend umpteen billion dollars on reducing carbon, spend it on generating clean electricity rather than wasting it on feel good electric trucks.

        • Re:Diesel engines are about 45% efficient (Score:5, Informative)

          by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday August 21, 2020 @07:39PM (#60428403)
          Actually it has been 15 years since coal no longer generated the majority of electricity in the US, and for the last 5 years it's not even the leading source any more:

          https://energi.media/usa/natur... [energi.media]

        • Average transmission losses are only 5% [eia.gov]. Battery losses are also around 5% [batterytestcentre.com.au] (3% to 11% depending on chemistry). Any regeneration only improved this. The advantages are very real [sciencedirect.com].

          And if you're factoring in generation and distribution losses, perhaps you should do the same for oil drilling, diesel refining, and distribution? It only makes BEVs look better [sciencedirect.com].

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            Average transmission losses are only 5%.

            EV transmission losses are even lower - most transmissions for EVs are single speed fixed ratio gearboxes, which are made and tuned to be extremely efficient (it's easy when the ratio is fixed ).

            A lot of transmission losses come from needing multiple gear ratios - the switch forks and clutches and all the other business needed to switch incur heavy losses, plus the need for a reverse gear. EVs simply spin the motor backwards (which is less efficient since they are de

        • That 45% figure is the peak efficiency. Which means it is not realized during 99% of the time.

          City traffic deliver trucks have the maximum benefit switching to electricity. Brake wear and energy efficiency due to regen.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 )
          I am not going to advocate spending tax payer money on promoting electric trucks. Electric trucks will have lower TCO in a year or two. Then the free market will force all the diesel trucks off the road, no need to do anything from the government or legislation side.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kanweg ( 771128 )

            This fallacy comes up in many forms.

            They will (may) be cheaper in two years only because they are produced in the mean time. You can’t skip those years. A stimulus can get us there quicker, saving lots of emissions in the mean time. That is where it pays off.

            If you want to know more about how this works. It is Wright’s law.

        • Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Urban driving, 13% of the energy from the fuel drives the wheels. Highway driving you get 20%

        • Diesel engines are about 45% efficient

          Whut?

          Engines in large diesel trucks, buses, and newer diesel cars can achieve peak efficiencies around 45%.

          That only occurs in the "sweet spot", which is an RPM range about 10% higher than the point of peak torque output, and only in a certain window of load. It's not relevant in the real world most of the time. My 1982 300SD (ancient technology, yep) reaches its sweet spot at about 80 MPH, cruising with 1 or 2 people on flat ground. Our 1999 Blue Bird Q-Bus (also ancient tech by modern standards) does it

      • There are mechanical regenerative systems. Mostly flywheel based. They are far more simple and have excellent surge power capacity. Battery, motor, power electronics are all very expensive, compared to the flywheel system

        Thia "mechanical battery" is basically a rotor, that spins to very high rpm, like 400,000 rpm or more, The capacity goes up quadratically with rpm (double the rpm, quadruple the capacity). Clutch system will connect it with gearing ratio to either absorb/deliver energy from/to the vehicle.

        • It's not just flywheel-based.

          Hydraulic Launch Assist [wikipedia.org] provides regenerative braking without needing to go electric. UPS and FedEx have been looking into using vehicles with this. Use a small, ICE to propel the vehicle for cruising purposes and use this to handle stopping / starting. The engine shuts off when not needed and runs closer to peak efficiency when it's in use.

          Trash trucks are also using this, seeing as how they have lots of low-speed movement and lots of stop / start, along with heavy use of h

          • It makes sense on trash trucks because they already have a big hydraulic system, and they are already very heavy even unladen. It makes no real sense on most other types of vehicle, because they don't and aren't.

            What makes actual sense is a "mild hybrid" system where the starter and alternator are replaced by a belt-driven motor/generator, and the existing lead-acid batteries are replaced with lithium. This involves no more weight or volume than the existing system. But in order to really capitalize on it y

      • So a hybrid retrofit? Not a bad idea but it would not be simple. I have seen some interesting designs that incorporate an electric motor / generator into the transmission. Modifications to the axle or driveshaft would be difficult due to the amount of movement they are exposed to while taking into account the suspension. Probably easiest / most cost effective to just make a new truck considering all the other benefits that a newer design would bring.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Thelasko ( 1196535 )

      The ICE thermal efficiency is only 20%.

      This information is several decades out of date. Current heavy duty diesel engines have an efficiency of 43-46%. [sae.org] Current U.S. Department of Energy research is targeting 55% brake thermal efficiency. I sit next to a guy working on it.

      • Re:Patently obvious to the engineers, it is true. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday August 21, 2020 @10:02PM (#60428665) Journal
        That is the peak efficiency. That is at a fortunate combination of load and rpm, that efficiency can be achieved.

        Such engines sacrifice cost, service life, or torque etc and smallest thing like not so fresh air filter can affect the efficiency.

        In any case, even if there is no benefit in powerplant burning carbon and car burning carbon, consolidating all the burning to one place makes it possible to do pollution control better. It is far easier to control pollution from a few hundred power plants than a tens of millions cars with varying levels of maintenance.

        • As I stated elsewhere, the purpose of a transmission is to keep the engine running as close to optimum efficiency as possible. The paper I linked referenced current production engines, which have government requirements for service life. The trade-off is exclusively cost and complexity.

          I agree, electric vehicles are eventually the way to go. However, it's important to realize that diesel technology isn't standing still. Many of the statistics on diesel are out of date and there is a lot more regulatio

      • Re:Patently obvious to the engineers, it is true. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday August 22, 2020 @05:33AM (#60429117)

        Then ask the guy about the difference between a truck that is speeding up, slowing down, moving the engine at variable loads through a wide range of gearing, and the work he's doing.

        I'm sure he'll tell you that 55% is *peak*, under ideal situations at a single operating point.

        You can make very efficient diesel engines, such as the ones used for water pumps. They just aren't very efficient when you put them in traffic and have them push variable loads along a road.

        • Re:Patently obvious to the engineers, it is true. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Saturday August 22, 2020 @06:44AM (#60429197) Journal
          To achieve efficiency whats the first thing they compromise on? Emissions. Any exhaust control system increases the back pressure and the combustion products are not evacuated freely. That is why they tried that ammonia thing in these diesels.

          Second thing they sacrifice is low end torque. To get low end torque, and efficiency and avoid ammonia, it is impossible. So they cheated in VW. Shows how hard it is to achieve them all at the same time. Then comes cost, fine tolerances and perfectly machined cylinders and correct sealing rings etc cost money.

          They dont even talk about uneven wear and tear of piston engines. The crankshaft pushes the piston sideways along the cylinders. Thus the cyliner and piston wears out to become elliptical in cross section as time goes by.

          The quoted numbers are on a clean fresh engine with fresh airfilters, after ignoring the warm up time and run, at one particular rpm and throttle setting, as has been mentioned before.

          To blindly say ICE can get 45% efficiency is misleading. When electric motor efficiency is quoted to be 90%, it is 90% for almost the entire range of RPM and power and torque setting. There is no compromise needed for low end torque because the electric motor hits max torque at zero rpm.

          These things have been said before, by many people in many places. It is not easy to believe they don't know that. They don't want to accept these facts.

          • Care to quote some sources? I agree, it's extremely difficult to meet emissions without Selective Catalytic Reduction (...the ammonia thing). However, a great deal of progress has already been made with it. [epa.gov]

            The other day I saw a heavy duty truck with soot coming out of the exhaust at every gear change. It was shocking because that is so rare these days! Diesel engines have made tremendous progress, yet the public remains convinced they all spew massive amounts of pollution and consume incredible amoun
            • Thanks for the info about re certification of old diesels. And taking time to add links and citations.

              Wondering why the diesel-electric locomotive example was not followed up in the trucking industry. That technology is from 1950s and 60s. No battery tech needed. Just use a generator+motor to replace the transmission. Then slowly as batteries improved they could have been slowly incorporated into the drive train. Electric trucks will find it difficult to find a foot hold against a well established market

              • They don't require re-certification. They require a pre-production unit to be run to the end of life and certified.

                I used to work on locomotives. I think weight is the primary factor that technology isn't used in trucking. Also, traction is a major concern for locomotives. The coefficient of friction of steel-to-steel is similar to rubber-to-ice. Heavy locomotives driving all of their wheels overcomes this.
          • What you say is not wrong, but:
            • In the use case for long haul transport trucks, their ICE diesel engine is running at optimal RPM 98% of the time. So their overall efficiency will be close to 45%
            • the 90% efficiency for electric motors needs to be tempered with
              • 85% charging efficiency when charging the battery (you can search for Tesla owners who've measured this - they seem to get between 80%-85%).
              • I'm guessing 85% discharge efficiency pulling the power back out of the battery. I haven't seen numbers for

          • To achieve efficiency whats the first thing they compromise on? Emissions. Any exhaust control system increases the back pressure and the combustion products are not evacuated freely. That is why they tried that ammonia thing in these diesels.

            Engines actually produce ammonia while operating, though the precise amounts are not well known [utah.gov]. Anyway, we ended up with uric acid injection (AKA DEF) which works very well to reduce NOx emissions, when the systems are working, although they remain failure-prone despite their lack of complexity (tank, heater, pump, injector... not a lot there honestly.)

            Second thing they sacrifice is low end torque. To get low end torque, and efficiency and avoid ammonia, it is impossible. So they cheated in VW.

            That's why they should be mild hybrids. It solves the low end torque problem.

            They dont even talk about uneven wear and tear of piston engines. The crankshaft pushes the piston sideways along the cylinders. Thus the cyliner and piston wears out to become elliptical in cross section as time goes by.

            They just make them elliptical to begin with, which distributes the wear. On he

        • You do understand the purpose of having so many gears in a truck is to keep the engine operating at that "single operating point" that is most efficient, don't you? Long haul trucks also spend the majority of their life at a single speed on the highway.

        • You can make very efficient diesel engines, such as the ones used for water pumps.

          Or diesel-electric trains.

      • I bet it's best to put a genset on that engine so it can run at peak performance all the time instead of the ideal spike that allows for 46% for just an instant. Transmission losses (5-15%) as well as their inability to regen brakes can't possibly compete with a genset which should be less complex and more durable. (Yes, trains do this.) You would think somebody could build a genset that is about the size/weight of a transmission with only the regen battery being a bit of a problem.

        With a battery or supe

    • It is not just about energy efficiency. What about oxides of nitrogen and particulates being spread about? The lockdown in the UK caused a marked decrease in pollution, due to much reduced road traffic. These pollutants are believed to cause significant ill health. As another comment said, electric trucks are likely to be most desirable for transport within towns, or short distances, and this is where the pollution problem is most acute.

  • Of course it'll be great when we get away from burning hydrocarbons, not to mention the advantages of electric motors, but battery weight and energy density, not to mention charge time, limit applications for now. Not to mention charging infrastructure.
    For some kinds of trucks, in some kinds of situattions, it would work fine. But it definitely wouldn't replace every use case in small to large companies. Plus there's all the capital sunk in the current fleet that you can't just dump overnight.
    It'll happen f

  • They can make a significant dent in things they run into.

  • Of course they would... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Friday August 21, 2020 @11:04PM (#60428749)

    ... which is why fossil fuel companies are against it... bigly.

    If memory serves, one of the reasons behind the ridiculous 75-year pension pre-payment that the USPS was saddled with was to starve the service from having the money on hand when they were discussing the possibility back in the early oughties of converting its fleet to EVs .

  • elephants (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Saturday August 22, 2020 @02:50AM (#60428981) Homepage Journal

    I've never been so happy as I were after companies started to announce electric trucks.

    Trucks are the elephant in the room that most discussions have been ignoring for way too long. They're not just a massive source of carbon, but also the main reason for road damage. Talk to anyone working on infrastructure - they'd rather have a thousand cars driver over their road or bridge than a single loaded truck. One of those guys once said to me that all those cars basically don't matter when compared to all those trucks.

    We are still ignoring cargo ships and cruise ships, which are another massive pollution source. But maybe we'll get there one day.

    • Don't think adding 10 tons to every truck will improve their roadwear.

      • The battery is heavy, may or may not be 10 tons. But the engine, transmission, emission control are not feather light either. All in all, Tesla 85,000 lb truck has the same payload as an diesel truck. Anyway total weight can not exceed 85,000 lb anyway for these trucks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        adding 10 tons would simply be illegal. There's a weight limit to trucks, for road wear reasons.

    • I've never been so happy as I were after companies started to announce electric trucks.
      Trucks are the elephant in the room that most discussions have been ignoring for way too long. They're not just a massive source of carbon, but also the main reason for road damage.

      Electric trucks weigh more, not less.

      If you want to reduce road damage while carrying the same amount of cargo you need to increase the number of vehicles, and/or increase the number of wheels on the vehicles. Double the number of wheels and you cut road damage down to a quarter. But then you increase the number of tires that have to be replaced, and tire wear is only partly caused by load. Of course, doubling the number of vehicles also doubles the number of tires. And tires are, of course, made out of oil

  • I don't care about the CO_2 from trucks. What I do care about is the SO_2 and particulates, that are the ACTUAL toxic emissions from trucks that ACTUALLY DO make people sick. That's why electric trucks would be a good thing, even if net CO_2 emissions increase.

    Of course, with a decent rail system, we could eliminate 99% of long haul trucking. But then we have the problem that rail is mainly diesel as well, because the US is retarded.

    • I'm agreeing with you on rail. Having electrified rail lines for the long-haul stuff with quick intermodal movement to trucks for "last mile" would likely be the cleanest way forward. And you wouldn't need to worry about having hundreds of miles range on the trucks.

      The usual gripe about wind farms is that the wind doesn't always blow. There's truth to that. But if it's NOT blowing here, it's usually blowing somewhere else. Most wind farms have about a 30 - 36% duty cycle; they produce roughly 1/3 of their

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