Volvo Trucks To Launch Full Range of Electric Trucks In Europe In 2021 (reuters.com) 48
Volvo Trucks, Sweden's AB Volvo's main truck brand, will sell a complete range of electric, heavy-duty trucks in Europe starting in 2021, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Reuters reports: Volvo said it was currently running tests of the electric heavy-duty Volvo FH, Volvo FM and Volvo FMX trucks, to be used for regional transport and urban construction operations in Europe. The trucks will have a gross combination weight of up to 44 tons, and, depending on the battery configuration, the range could be up to 300 kilometers, Volvo said. Sales will begin in 2021 and volume production will start in 2022.
The actual press release (Score:5, Informative)
Instead of the reuters story, this is the original press release:
https://www.volvotrucks.com/en... [volvotrucks.com]
Basically it looks like they're progressing from their lighter city trucks in something like 15 tonne range with "up to 200km" range claims that were already available in electric configuration to heavy duty city vehicles. The idea is that for city work, you probably don't need range that much, so you can get away with batteries. Real life endurance is probably going to be a lot less than "up to" number, since city trucks do a lot of stops, operating their onboard machinery and so on. Is that enough for city work? Volvo Trucks has a lot of expertise in this field, so they probably can justify the number to potential buyers.
Viability remains to be determined, though at least some public utilities and companies doing larger municipal contracts will probably buy some to greenwash their fleets a bit if the price isn't exorbitantly high.
Re:The actual press release (Score:5, Interesting)
The largest energy losses are from using trucks in stop-and-go traffic in cities. Huge amounts of fuel get turned into brake dust just to stop trucks at red lights. So replacing ICE trucks in cities with electric trucks is the lowest hanging fruit (most bang for the least buck), and makes the most sense.
Trucks hauling cargo along long highway routes operate very close to peak engine efficiency, which for diesel trucks is around 50%. That actually exceeds the efficiency of electric trucks if your electricity is coming mostly from fossil fuels (about 40% efficiency for coal plants, 60% for gas plants), and you factor in battery charging losses (about 80%-85% efficient according to Tesla owners who've measured it) and discharge losses. So until we manage to transform our electricity generation to where it's mostly nuclear and renewables, it actually makes sense to keep diesel trucks for highway transport. (Although rail makes even more sense.)
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Very much depends on what truck is actually doing. For garbage trucks for example, the compactor eats a lot of power. Remember, these are city trucks, which means that they often haul machinery that does things rather than (just) cargo. Pumps, compressors, compactors, concrete mixers, elevators, etc.
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The vast majority of city trucks are not fancy special purpose trucks but rather short haul delivery vehicles, and the fanciest thing on a few of them is a hydraulic lift.
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Very much city and country dependent. In an industrial city, most are going to be about servicing that specific industry.
Another reminder that US is very unique in the way it arranges its cities and relative lack of highly specialized industrial cities.
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Again not really. Even the most industrial of cities the majority of service is actually the transfer of goods. The US is unique but in the opposite way, specifically the sheer amount of small logistics that happen compared to much of the world. There's a reason Amazon has 1million employees.
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"US us extremely consumerist, therefore entire world is like that".
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On the other hand, garbace collectors spend most of their time doing stop and go and a direct electrical compactor is far more efficient than a compactor driven by power take-off.
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Aren't pretty much all modern truck mounted compactors electrically driven?
Re: The actual press release (Score:2)
I haven't followed the garbage truck topic for about a decade since I have switched to writing software for fuel trucks, but back then only hybrids had that.
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Could also be a country-based issue. ETA-area trucks are under completely different regulatory conditions from NAFTA/USMCA area ones, which is why they look so different both for long haul and short range ones.
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I am European.
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Which country? Here in Nordics, electric drives for onboard hardware have been a norm for a while.
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What really counts, can the battery packs be replaced in minutes. Drop a discharged battery, pop in a fully charged one and away you go in minutes.
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For city trucks? They'll be primarily in use during a standard working day, so just charge overnight.
The binmen don't come at 2am.
Park maintenance isn't going on at midnight.
Street cleaning happens at 7am in the city centre and during the day in the suburbs.
Those are viable options for this sort of tech.
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Not actually that important. A 500 km battery would be enough. The maximum a truck driver in the EU can drive in 1 go is 4.5 hours, after which a 45 minute break is required. Batteries can be recharged in those 45 minutes.
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Trucks hauling cargo along long highway routes operate very close to peak engine efficiency, which for diesel trucks is around 50%.
I think that's a little high: the giant marine two-stroke crossheads can hit the fifties (I think Man AG took the crown from Wartsila IIRC), but I don't recall ever reading of an automotive engine achieving over 45.
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Also removes dirty diesel engines from cities and moves any emissions well away from where people live. Combined with electric busses it should have a decent effect on city air quality.
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Paying trillions of war costs to get to the oil, then buy it, ship it with dirty tanker and transport it to every fucking gas station on the planet with trucks, ain't exactly efficient either.
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Your clueless on how things actually work. Very little oil from the middle east gets shipped to the Americas. It gets shipped to the EU, Africa and Asia. Almost all oil for the Americas comes from the Americas. It doesn't generally make a lot of economic sense for an oil tanker to cross the ocean when there's already crude oil over there to begin with.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/p... [eia.gov]
To put some context on things, the entire Middle East put together only supplies around 10% of the oil the US uses. A country
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that just means volvo does not know how far these over sized golf carts will go on a single charge
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"volvo is using metric units to measure."
Like 96% of the planet.
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but it sounds like you have your finger on the pulse of planet earth.
explain a trump supporter
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Companies can buy whatever battery size they need, up to 300km range. No point paying for range you don't need.
Hopefully that 300km loaded, the EV world needs to be a bit clearer about battery capacity and range. WLTP and EPA range numbers are okay but some cars can't really reach them in the real world, and most manufacturers state the gross battery capacity rather than the usable capacity.
Props to Kia and Hyundai for stating the usable capacity and realistic, achievable range figures.
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There are no 300km batteries. There are "up to 300km" batteries. Those two are not even in the same ballpark. Take any decent starter marketing course to learn more.
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Sure there are. You can get any range you want guaranteed with maximum load uphill, you just need to size the battery correctly.
Many deliveries are on known routes so it's not at all difficult to size batteries for them, plus some margin.
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I knew you're pretty much the dullest tool in the shed from your ridiculous past posts. I just never realised how amazingly stupid you are to actually believe that marketing and real life value are the same thing.
Btw, I have stock in bridge on the Moon to sell you. I got it from a Nigerian prince, so it's bound to be good value. Estimated value is at up to nine thousand trillion USD. I'll sell it to you for just nine thousand and one dollars. Great price!
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Real life endurance is probably going to be a lot less than "up to" number, since city trucks do a lot of stops...
Que? Stop and go is an EV's sweet spot for endurance. It *improves* range, doesn't reduce it.
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Perpetual motion engine isn't real. Laws of conservation of energy are.
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Oh FFS. I don't mean it actually adds mies of range that didn't previously exist. I mean it ekes out the range that you can get from a battery as compared to steady state driving at speed. Because four things materially affect range in an EV: cold, wind resistance, heavy acceleration and driving at speed.
Seriously, what was the point of pretending I was making a stupid fuckwit straw man point and responding to that? Why not just acknowledge that you had mis-spoken or misunderstood what happens to EVs when d
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I merely answered a strawman with a strawman. Almost all modern city trucks have been going the way of the hybrid drive train for a while, specifically to gain advantages of regenerative braking.
That annoyance you feel? That's the same annoyance I felt when you did your spin. Golden rule.
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What straw man did I posit?
*You* claimed EVs' endurance was hurt by stop and go traffic. I simply responded to that claim, which you have now admitted was a straw man. I didn't say anything about how this compares to non-EV trucks.
I'm entirely comfortable -- indeed I'm thrilled -- that many (but by no means most) modern city trucks use regen braking to some degree, because that cuts both exhaust and brake dust pollution, as well as noise levels. I hope that this happens across all fleets, as soon as possibl
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>*You* claimed EVs' endurance was hurt by stop and go traffic.
Did I?
>Seriously, you need to spend more time responding to the things people actually say, and not the stuff you'd have liked them to have said.
Agreed. The narrative makes sense now. You're simply projecting your faults onto me.
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Not just cool, it is epic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Wtf? I'm not clicking a youtube link shared on Slashdot.
Except.. I did. And it was worth it. That was.. actually quite impressive.
44 tons (Score:2)
And probably 3-5 tons of that will be batteries. If you think I'm exaggerating remember the battery in a 2.5 ton Tesla car is half a ton.
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"And probably 3-5 tons of that will be batteries. If you think I'm exaggerating remember the battery in a 2.5 ton Tesla car is half a ton."
Since it will weigh about 45 tons to drive, this doesn't matter.
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It does matter. The heavier the vehicle the less load it can carry by weight and less load = less profit.
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You misunderstand, 44 tons is the gross weight. Matter of fact, most EU members actually only allow 40 tons, 44 tons requires either special permit or at least 5 axles. A typical empty European heavy truck weighs 7-8 metric tons.
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Yes, thanks for the heads up, I know that , I have a Class 1 HGV license FWIW. But any extra weight in the tractor means less load can be carried and load = money.
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European truck driver here.... (Score:2)
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The 300km thing seemed weird to me, too. But this isn't HGVs, if you look at the press release, or at least not at first. It's things like bin lorries ("garbage trucks") and other urban vehicles. 300km is good enough for them.