7 ms·

> These trucks are more expensive, require infrastructure that doesn’t exist, charge slower, and don’t go anywhere near as far as diesel trucks. And no fleets i

by oxplot 4y ago

> These trucks are more expensive, require infrastructure that doesn’t exist, charge slower, and don’t go anywhere near as far as diesel trucks. And no fleets in North America are ready to figure out converting a 2000 mile long haul over the road route into 5 400 mile EV relays. I see this all or nothing argument when discussing new stuff. Same thing was said about passenger cars and quoted as one of the main reasons EVs would never catch on. It looks like a chicken and egg problem until you look at it less idealistically and more pragmatically. If you watch the presentation (and I hope everyone commenting here did that first), it's most likely that the charging infra is part of the package fleet operators buy. They showed battery+solar backed Megachargers that the fleet operators are likely to be using for the near term. With this in mind, those companies that are currently buying these trucks in high numbers, are also definitely buying the charging infra with it. So with this context in mind, charging infra isn't a problem right now. And just like Superchargers for passenger cars, they will only ever increase in numbers. Slow charging is only a temporary problem and as evolution of Superchargers has made quote evident to date. From my understanding of US laws and human biology, no one can drive 2000 miles non-stop without taking multiple breaks in tens of minutes each. In fact, Tesla Semi's range is 500 miles because it's right at the edge of how long a driver can safely drive non-stop and right before they are legally required to take a break, during which time they can charge the truck.

unityByFreedom 4y ago
> I see this all or nothing argument when discussing new stuff. When did it become popular to start selling beta products? Did it begin when we all bought into social media? Apple produced a computer, music player and phone that were a polished step up from what was happening before: build-your-own computer, music with insufficient storage and crap interfaces, and blackberries that only targeted business people. Underpromise and overimpress me. Enough with this overpromising-because-have-to as if that's the only way to innovate or get investment. It isn't the only way and I wish investors would do a little more due diligence to get behind innovators who know what they are doing, not just throwing money at cool things saying they'll be ready by the end of the year over an 8 year period.
- AYBABTME 4y ago
  People want EV transportation because the world population is at risk. So they cut some slack to Tesla. Tesla makes compelling vehicles even if flawed. It's ok because it's a step in the right direction. Nothing wrong with that, or is it wrong to have ideals?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    People want point of care testing, and everyone is at risk of dying of cancer. Theranos makes compelling equipment even if it is a little rough around the edges. It's ok because it's a step in the right direction. Nothing wrong with that, or is it wrong to have ideals? Oh wait...
    - oxplot 4y ago
      What a disingenuous analogy to make, between Tesla that has delivered time and time again and surpassed expectations, led the market for the past 10 years and continues to outsell all of its century old competitors, with Theranos which burnt investor money and never produced a working machine, ever.
      - Planktonne 4y ago
        > Tesla that has delivered time and time again and surpassed expectations Tesla has consistently failed to meet the expectations set by its own management.
        oxplot 4y ago
        It's called aiming high!
        dmitriid 4y ago
        "We want FSD some day and are working on it" is aiming high. Calling it's driver assist Autopilot, calling its software FSD, repeatedly saying "FSD is coming next year" is overpromising, misleading marketing and lying
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> From my understanding of US laws and human biology, no one can drive 2000 miles non-stop without taking multiple breaks in tens of minutes each. In fact, Tesla Semi's range is 500 miles because it's right at the edge of how long a driver can safely drive non-stop and right before they are legally required to take a break, during which time they can charge the truck. IIRC the same was the case back when Model S was rolled out - the range was intentionally developed to be a little above the legal limit of non-stop driving, which to me provided a pretty solid argument against range anxiety: there's hardly a way to run out of charge on a trip and be a safe and responsible driver.
- bagels 4y ago
  There is no legal limit for non commercial drivers in the US though? Certainly it's a bad idea and impractical to drive for, say, 24 hours without stopping, but not illegal?
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Most, probably 40-something, states regulate it either explicitly or implicitly. As we know from many other subjects, anything short of federal regulation is roughly equivalent to “unregulated” for the purpose of internet hand wringing.
    - bagels 4y ago
      Do you have an example of it being regulated at all?
      - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        Virginia, Colorado and Nebraska prohibit more than 13hr, 12hr and 12hr (in respective order) in a 24hr period. I can keep going...
        bombcar 4y ago
        https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/chapter8/section46.2-812/ https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/chapter8/secti... I’ve never heard tell of this, but there it is. I wonder if it ever gets enforced.
jojobas 4y ago
For an owner-operator it is indeed all or nothing, and these are more than 50% of all semis. Stake his livelihood on a dubious technology or stick to the proven one? Only a handful of companies run thousands of trucks and could afford a small scale experiment. Package delivery is a different beast, the vans are guaranteed to spend the night at the base every night.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It’s hard to find exact numbers but it is likely that OTR trucking accounts for more than 50% of all miles but less than 50% of all trucks. Many smaller companies have a small fleet of trucks for local deliveries to their branches, and some will be willing to take a look (even if just for the publicity, etc).
- _ph_ 4y ago
  It will take a long time to make enough Semis to replace a large fraction of ICE trucks. So this will be a smooth transition where they are deployed first for duties which make it a nobrainer, like scheduled routes which are driven every day. As the market share raises, the usage scenarios will expand.
thinkmcfly 4y ago
By "All or nothing" under the 'all' category, I'm assuming you mean huge government handouts for ev companies while poor people get to continue to live constrained to the market of a dwindling supply of used efficient and once cheap petrol engine vehicles. Inequality has only become worse under the old regime of subsidized private technology and manufacturing.
- oxplot 4y ago
  Sounds like a case of needing to read up on history of innovation and how you don't get overnight mass adoption. I suggest picking up a book on advent of internal combustion engine and the five decades that followed.
  - thinkmcfly 4y ago
    Do you have any book recommendations?
  - thinkmcfly 4y ago
    Do you have any good book recommendations about this that you've read
cowsandmilk 4y ago
> it's most likely that the charging infra is part of the package fleet operators buy That inherently means short haul trucking which parent says is feasible. With long haul trucking, I’m almost never at a location owned by the fleet operator. Pepsi and Anheuser Busch may have long haul routes that are exceptions, but you can see from the other trucks they are buying they are doing a lot of short haul trucking. They’ve both also bought BYD trucks for the same locations that have a range of 125 miles, so they don’t need the 500 mile range for their activities.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Short-haul EV trucking in an area eventually leads to building enough charging stations that longer-haul becomes feasible on some routes, because charging infrastructure is several areas overlaps, or almost overlaps. This fuels (heh) further expansion.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Who has the financial incentive to build charging stations? Both out and back and point to point operators will build charging infrastructure at their own hubs/terminals and use them for themselves. You might see truck stops adding "public" chargers after that EV trucks become commonplace (in the same way that truck stops have fuel discount programs for member fleets) but how will EV trucks going to become commonplace if private operators using their own infrastructure are 99.99% of users? Truck stops are thin margin. I don't see them making the investment without a need. Maybe if a big player (e.g. Swift, Walmart, etc) wants to convert to EV and kicks in a bunch of money to have their fuel partner make the capital investment. But I don't think that's going to happen until EVs are so good that it's a "profitably without nearly any doubt" type investment. You'll probably need to see a decade or two of short haul EV trucks and the accompanying refinement before that happens.
    - oxplot 4y ago
      > Who has the financial incentive to build charging stations? Both out and back and point to point operators will build charging infrastructure at their own hubs/terminals and use them for themselves. Don't forget that Tesla will probably end up building the most number of chargers over time. Charging is its own business with its own margins (e.g. Supercharger network). In other words, it's a source of net income for Tesla so as they build more trucks, they'll build more chargers as they've done to date with passenger cars and Superchargers.
neilfrndes 4y ago
>it's right at the edge of how long a driver can safely drive non-stop and right before they are legally required to take a break Yup, in the US, truck drivers have to take a 30 min break after 8 hours of continuous driving [0]. [0] https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-hours-service-regulations https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-...
- supportlocal4h 4y ago
  Which is one reason for team driving. One person drives while the other person sleeps. E-semis might not have cracked that nut yet. But they don't have to solve every challenge at once. D-semis have been around forever and still haven't displaced trains. Obviously, they still have value. Where e-semis make sense, people will use them. Same for e-vans and e-bikes and e-tugboats. And yes, people will still use d-semis and d-vans and gas scooters and horses. And clever people will keep finding ways to get the job done, whatever that job may be.
w0m 4y ago
This. I purchased an EV for the daily commute ~3 years ago. A family member got angry and railed about how it was already a failed technology as they likely couldn't replace their f350 towing 4-wheelers deep into the woods. Infrastructure takes time; and you don't have to solve every use case at once.
- me_me_me 4y ago
  Sure, but you should stop selling your product like it can do all of those things and more. Its outright lying. Tesla semi was production ready in 2020 - as far as i remember. and was more efficient than train. And whatever other lies musk said back then. Musk is prolific deceiver, I dont trust a single thing coming out of his mouth nor his websites. Also car is often an expense - bigger or smaller - its not a tool that needs to make money. A tool that can make or break a business. Tesla cars are notorious for its expensive repairs. Its a huge cost and risk switching to it.
  - w0m 4y ago
    > Sure, but you should stop selling your product like it can do all of those things and more. Its outright lying. This is the response I hate. Detractors say that to argue against any adoption. It's not a claim any sane proponent (Musk is not sane and no one should listen to him) will make. Will it work eventually for (most) use cases? Yea! But likely not everywhere. Just like there are edge cases Gas or Diesel still don't work well. That doesn't mean to ignore potential where it makes sense. I bought a commuter car. That's it. When I bought; was more of a novelty as I didn't know anyone else with anything similar. I repeatedly got angrily shouted at while driving (in a relatively major city), coal-rolled; and heckled by strangers and family members around the dinner table about how poor of a decision I made. 3 years later; I have a nice/fun/convenient commuter car that hasn't needed any maintenance and the trade in is higher than I paid for it. Is it for everyone? No. But that doesn't mean there is a void in value.
    - saxonww 4y ago
      I'd never heard of 'rolling coal' before. It's where you modify a diesel vehicle to dump fuel and emit a lot of smoke from the exhaust. As you might expect, people who do this to their trucks are very proud of it; it's usually a 'statement' against environmentalism. It purposefully wastes diesel which is already much more expensive than gas. It's dangerous for a variety of reasons. It's illegal in the US and parts of Canada, though apparently not well policed. It's stupid.
djexjms 4y ago
If anyone is interested in the opinion of an actual CDL holder, I think the technology has amazing promise and will eventually be adopted for many kind of CDL driving. I used to work for a public utility company (water/waster water), and we had a fleet of about a dozen or so dump trucks then we used whenever we had to dig something up. These were big machines, full size tractors with a dump bed instead of a fifth wheel (the mechanism that semi tractors normally have installed to tow trailers). They also served to tow flatbed trailers loaded with a backhoe, out to the dig site. Now these machines never left our service area. They were always parked in the same lot every night. Putting in charging infrastructure in that lot would be trivial, and would almost certainly cost less than maintaining our own diesel storage and pumping infrastructure (which we did do because it saved us so much of our working day to be able to fuel everything up in the morning instead of having to drive to a truck stop before starting the work day). A lot of trucking is local or regional. Those will be the markets that EV makes the most sense for. Where the trucks normally go back to the same lot every night, and the owners can cheaply put in slow charge infrastructure. Could we get EV trucking working for long-haul (a kind of trucking I've also done in the past)? Sure. It will require fast charge infrastructure though. 500 miles is a lot of range, but in long haul trucking, very often you operate in two driver teams, and your truck is always moving. Fast charging could solve that too, but perhaps the solution is to reduce the number of miles that freight spends on the road. Multi-modal shipping could be expanded. Use trains to cover large distance, and try to keep road transportation of freight to the regional level and local level. This is already an option that exists. Multi-modal is already a sub-industry in trucking. This seems like the most logical option to me, but I'm not an expert. Just somebody who has lived the industry for a few years.
- rtkwe 4y ago
  Even slow overnight charging will have to be pretty beefy for these trucks and their batteries though. They're going to expend significantly more energy than your commuter car so they'll have to suck down a lot of juice overnight.
  - reportingsjr 4y ago
    In the areas that companies build their truck lots with diesel depot's there is typically significant power available. The US electrical grid has expanded at a fairly steady rate. I don't see why it wouldn't be able to handle a continued growth rate via electric trucks. Just to put some numbers out there, the semi battery pack is probably around 850kWh-1MWh. Imagine if this gets drained every day and a company has 10 trucks, the trucks have roughly 10-12 hours to charge (~6pm to 6am). So you'd need 1MW of electrical capacity. This is equivalent to about 20 modern US homes (200A*240VAC) and not that crazy in the scheme of things. A medium sized factory in the US probably has a grid connection around this size depending on what they do.
itsoktocry 4y ago
>I see this all or nothing argument when discussing new stuff. That's one way to look at it. The other is that you can't pretend that real, tangible, identifiable problems don't exist. And Tesla has a habit of ignoring those. >Slow charging is only a temporary problem and as evolution of Superchargers has made quote evident to date. What have the Superchargers proven? That under increased load the locations can become completely overwhelmed? Even with EVs having a single-digit market share? I haven't met a single person in my neck of the woods that thinks waiting 30 minutes to "fuel up" is remotely reasonable. And that's state-of-the-art. We have a ways to go. >In fact, Tesla Semi's range is 500 miles because it's right at the edge of how long a driver can safely drive non-stop and right before they are legally required to take a break, during which time they can charge the truck. Let's wait for some real-world testing before making claims to Telsa Semi's range.
- paulmendoza 4y ago
  Most people charge at home
- oxplot 4y ago
  > And Tesla has a habit of ignoring those. Tesla definitely has a habit of ignoring problems, but in all cases I'm aware of, they're non fundamental issues that can be addressed along the way. They see the bigger picture and aren't focusing on non-crucial details. > What have the Superchargers proven? That under increased load the locations can become completely overwhelmed? Even with EVs having a single-digit market share? I'm referring to speed of Superchargers increasing over time. Newer superchargers don't have the drop in charging speed problem when two adjacent stalls are used at the same time. > I haven't met a single person in my neck of the woods that thinks waiting 30 minutes to "fuel up" is remotely reasonable. And that's state-of-the-art. We have a ways to go. Well your neck of the wood aren't the current intended audience. Thanks to everyone else who's buying the cars at their current state. They are enabling a future where your neck of the wood can have cars that charge in a few minutes. Oh, and I'm one of them. You're welcome. > Let's wait for some real-world testing before making claims to Telsa Semi's range. OK.
  - 4y ago

by oxplot 4y ago

unityByFreedom 4y ago

> I see this all or nothing argument when discussing new stuff. When did it become popular to start selling beta products? Did it begin when we all bought into social media? Apple produced a computer, music player and phone that were a polished step up from what was happening before: build-your-own computer, music with insufficient storage and crap interfaces, and blackberries that only targeted business people. Underpromise and overimpress me. Enough with this overpromising-because-have-to as if that's the only way to innovate or get investment. It isn't the only way and I wish investors would do a little more due diligence to get behind innovators who know what they are doing, not just throwing money at cool things saying they'll be ready by the end of the year over an 8 year period.

AYBABTME 4y ago
People want EV transportation because the world population is at risk. So they cut some slack to Tesla. Tesla makes compelling vehicles even if flawed. It's ok because it's a step in the right direction. Nothing wrong with that, or is it wrong to have ideals?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  People want point of care testing, and everyone is at risk of dying of cancer. Theranos makes compelling equipment even if it is a little rough around the edges. It's ok because it's a step in the right direction. Nothing wrong with that, or is it wrong to have ideals? Oh wait...
  - oxplot 4y ago
    What a disingenuous analogy to make, between Tesla that has delivered time and time again and surpassed expectations, led the market for the past 10 years and continues to outsell all of its century old competitors, with Theranos which burnt investor money and never produced a working machine, ever.
    - Planktonne 4y ago
      > Tesla that has delivered time and time again and surpassed expectations Tesla has consistently failed to meet the expectations set by its own management.
      - oxplot 4y ago
        It's called aiming high!
        dmitriid 4y ago
        "We want FSD some day and are working on it" is aiming high. Calling it's driver assist Autopilot, calling its software FSD, repeatedly saying "FSD is coming next year" is overpromising, misleading marketing and lying

TeMPOraL 4y ago

> From my understanding of US laws and human biology, no one can drive 2000 miles non-stop without taking multiple breaks in tens of minutes each. In fact, Tesla Semi's range is 500 miles because it's right at the edge of how long a driver can safely drive non-stop and right before they are legally required to take a break, during which time they can charge the truck. IIRC the same was the case back when Model S was rolled out - the range was intentionally developed to be a little above the legal limit of non-stop driving, which to me provided a pretty solid argument against range anxiety: there's hardly a way to run out of charge on a trip and be a safe and responsible driver.

bagels 4y ago
There is no legal limit for non commercial drivers in the US though? Certainly it's a bad idea and impractical to drive for, say, 24 hours without stopping, but not illegal?
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Most, probably 40-something, states regulate it either explicitly or implicitly. As we know from many other subjects, anything short of federal regulation is roughly equivalent to “unregulated” for the purpose of internet hand wringing.
  - bagels 4y ago
    Do you have an example of it being regulated at all?
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      Virginia, Colorado and Nebraska prohibit more than 13hr, 12hr and 12hr (in respective order) in a 24hr period. I can keep going...
      - bombcar 4y ago
        https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/chapter8/section46.2-812/ https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/chapter8/secti... I’ve never heard tell of this, but there it is. I wonder if it ever gets enforced.

jojobas 4y ago

For an owner-operator it is indeed all or nothing, and these are more than 50% of all semis. Stake his livelihood on a dubious technology or stick to the proven one? Only a handful of companies run thousands of trucks and could afford a small scale experiment. Package delivery is a different beast, the vans are guaranteed to spend the night at the base every night.

bombcar 4y ago
It’s hard to find exact numbers but it is likely that OTR trucking accounts for more than 50% of all miles but less than 50% of all trucks. Many smaller companies have a small fleet of trucks for local deliveries to their branches, and some will be willing to take a look (even if just for the publicity, etc).
_ph_ 4y ago
It will take a long time to make enough Semis to replace a large fraction of ICE trucks. So this will be a smooth transition where they are deployed first for duties which make it a nobrainer, like scheduled routes which are driven every day. As the market share raises, the usage scenarios will expand.

thinkmcfly 4y ago

By "All or nothing" under the 'all' category, I'm assuming you mean huge government handouts for ev companies while poor people get to continue to live constrained to the market of a dwindling supply of used efficient and once cheap petrol engine vehicles. Inequality has only become worse under the old regime of subsidized private technology and manufacturing.

oxplot 4y ago
Sounds like a case of needing to read up on history of innovation and how you don't get overnight mass adoption. I suggest picking up a book on advent of internal combustion engine and the five decades that followed.
- thinkmcfly 4y ago
  Do you have any book recommendations?
- thinkmcfly 4y ago
  Do you have any good book recommendations about this that you've read

cowsandmilk 4y ago

> it's most likely that the charging infra is part of the package fleet operators buy That inherently means short haul trucking which parent says is feasible. With long haul trucking, I’m almost never at a location owned by the fleet operator. Pepsi and Anheuser Busch may have long haul routes that are exceptions, but you can see from the other trucks they are buying they are doing a lot of short haul trucking. They’ve both also bought BYD trucks for the same locations that have a range of 125 miles, so they don’t need the 500 mile range for their activities.

nine_k 4y ago
Short-haul EV trucking in an area eventually leads to building enough charging stations that longer-haul becomes feasible on some routes, because charging infrastructure is several areas overlaps, or almost overlaps. This fuels (heh) further expansion.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Who has the financial incentive to build charging stations? Both out and back and point to point operators will build charging infrastructure at their own hubs/terminals and use them for themselves. You might see truck stops adding "public" chargers after that EV trucks become commonplace (in the same way that truck stops have fuel discount programs for member fleets) but how will EV trucks going to become commonplace if private operators using their own infrastructure are 99.99% of users? Truck stops are thin margin. I don't see them making the investment without a need. Maybe if a big player (e.g. Swift, Walmart, etc) wants to convert to EV and kicks in a bunch of money to have their fuel partner make the capital investment. But I don't think that's going to happen until EVs are so good that it's a "profitably without nearly any doubt" type investment. You'll probably need to see a decade or two of short haul EV trucks and the accompanying refinement before that happens.
  - oxplot 4y ago
    > Who has the financial incentive to build charging stations? Both out and back and point to point operators will build charging infrastructure at their own hubs/terminals and use them for themselves. Don't forget that Tesla will probably end up building the most number of chargers over time. Charging is its own business with its own margins (e.g. Supercharger network). In other words, it's a source of net income for Tesla so as they build more trucks, they'll build more chargers as they've done to date with passenger cars and Superchargers.

neilfrndes 4y ago

>it's right at the edge of how long a driver can safely drive non-stop and right before they are legally required to take a break Yup, in the US, truck drivers have to take a 30 min break after 8 hours of continuous driving [0]. [0] https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-hours-service-regulations https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-...

supportlocal4h 4y ago
Which is one reason for team driving. One person drives while the other person sleeps. E-semis might not have cracked that nut yet. But they don't have to solve every challenge at once. D-semis have been around forever and still haven't displaced trains. Obviously, they still have value. Where e-semis make sense, people will use them. Same for e-vans and e-bikes and e-tugboats. And yes, people will still use d-semis and d-vans and gas scooters and horses. And clever people will keep finding ways to get the job done, whatever that job may be.

w0m 4y ago

This. I purchased an EV for the daily commute ~3 years ago. A family member got angry and railed about how it was already a failed technology as they likely couldn't replace their f350 towing 4-wheelers deep into the woods. Infrastructure takes time; and you don't have to solve every use case at once.

me_me_me 4y ago
Sure, but you should stop selling your product like it can do all of those things and more. Its outright lying. Tesla semi was production ready in 2020 - as far as i remember. and was more efficient than train. And whatever other lies musk said back then. Musk is prolific deceiver, I dont trust a single thing coming out of his mouth nor his websites. Also car is often an expense - bigger or smaller - its not a tool that needs to make money. A tool that can make or break a business. Tesla cars are notorious for its expensive repairs. Its a huge cost and risk switching to it.
- w0m 4y ago
  > Sure, but you should stop selling your product like it can do all of those things and more. Its outright lying. This is the response I hate. Detractors say that to argue against any adoption. It's not a claim any sane proponent (Musk is not sane and no one should listen to him) will make. Will it work eventually for (most) use cases? Yea! But likely not everywhere. Just like there are edge cases Gas or Diesel still don't work well. That doesn't mean to ignore potential where it makes sense. I bought a commuter car. That's it. When I bought; was more of a novelty as I didn't know anyone else with anything similar. I repeatedly got angrily shouted at while driving (in a relatively major city), coal-rolled; and heckled by strangers and family members around the dinner table about how poor of a decision I made. 3 years later; I have a nice/fun/convenient commuter car that hasn't needed any maintenance and the trade in is higher than I paid for it. Is it for everyone? No. But that doesn't mean there is a void in value.
  - saxonww 4y ago
    I'd never heard of 'rolling coal' before. It's where you modify a diesel vehicle to dump fuel and emit a lot of smoke from the exhaust. As you might expect, people who do this to their trucks are very proud of it; it's usually a 'statement' against environmentalism. It purposefully wastes diesel which is already much more expensive than gas. It's dangerous for a variety of reasons. It's illegal in the US and parts of Canada, though apparently not well policed. It's stupid.

djexjms 4y ago

If anyone is interested in the opinion of an actual CDL holder, I think the technology has amazing promise and will eventually be adopted for many kind of CDL driving. I used to work for a public utility company (water/waster water), and we had a fleet of about a dozen or so dump trucks then we used whenever we had to dig something up. These were big machines, full size tractors with a dump bed instead of a fifth wheel (the mechanism that semi tractors normally have installed to tow trailers). They also served to tow flatbed trailers loaded with a backhoe, out to the dig site. Now these machines never left our service area. They were always parked in the same lot every night. Putting in charging infrastructure in that lot would be trivial, and would almost certainly cost less than maintaining our own diesel storage and pumping infrastructure (which we did do because it saved us so much of our working day to be able to fuel everything up in the morning instead of having to drive to a truck stop before starting the work day). A lot of trucking is local or regional. Those will be the markets that EV makes the most sense for. Where the trucks normally go back to the same lot every night, and the owners can cheaply put in slow charge infrastructure. Could we get EV trucking working for long-haul (a kind of trucking I've also done in the past)? Sure. It will require fast charge infrastructure though. 500 miles is a lot of range, but in long haul trucking, very often you operate in two driver teams, and your truck is always moving. Fast charging could solve that too, but perhaps the solution is to reduce the number of miles that freight spends on the road. Multi-modal shipping could be expanded. Use trains to cover large distance, and try to keep road transportation of freight to the regional level and local level. This is already an option that exists. Multi-modal is already a sub-industry in trucking. This seems like the most logical option to me, but I'm not an expert. Just somebody who has lived the industry for a few years.

rtkwe 4y ago
Even slow overnight charging will have to be pretty beefy for these trucks and their batteries though. They're going to expend significantly more energy than your commuter car so they'll have to suck down a lot of juice overnight.
- reportingsjr 4y ago
  In the areas that companies build their truck lots with diesel depot's there is typically significant power available. The US electrical grid has expanded at a fairly steady rate. I don't see why it wouldn't be able to handle a continued growth rate via electric trucks. Just to put some numbers out there, the semi battery pack is probably around 850kWh-1MWh. Imagine if this gets drained every day and a company has 10 trucks, the trucks have roughly 10-12 hours to charge (~6pm to 6am). So you'd need 1MW of electrical capacity. This is equivalent to about 20 modern US homes (200A*240VAC) and not that crazy in the scheme of things. A medium sized factory in the US probably has a grid connection around this size depending on what they do.

itsoktocry 4y ago

>I see this all or nothing argument when discussing new stuff. That's one way to look at it. The other is that you can't pretend that real, tangible, identifiable problems don't exist. And Tesla has a habit of ignoring those. >Slow charging is only a temporary problem and as evolution of Superchargers has made quote evident to date. What have the Superchargers proven? That under increased load the locations can become completely overwhelmed? Even with EVs having a single-digit market share? I haven't met a single person in my neck of the woods that thinks waiting 30 minutes to "fuel up" is remotely reasonable. And that's state-of-the-art. We have a ways to go. >In fact, Tesla Semi's range is 500 miles because it's right at the edge of how long a driver can safely drive non-stop and right before they are legally required to take a break, during which time they can charge the truck. Let's wait for some real-world testing before making claims to Telsa Semi's range.

paulmendoza 4y ago
Most people charge at home
oxplot 4y ago
> And Tesla has a habit of ignoring those. Tesla definitely has a habit of ignoring problems, but in all cases I'm aware of, they're non fundamental issues that can be addressed along the way. They see the bigger picture and aren't focusing on non-crucial details. > What have the Superchargers proven? That under increased load the locations can become completely overwhelmed? Even with EVs having a single-digit market share? I'm referring to speed of Superchargers increasing over time. Newer superchargers don't have the drop in charging speed problem when two adjacent stalls are used at the same time. > I haven't met a single person in my neck of the woods that thinks waiting 30 minutes to "fuel up" is remotely reasonable. And that's state-of-the-art. We have a ways to go. Well your neck of the wood aren't the current intended audience. Thanks to everyone else who's buying the cars at their current state. They are enabling a future where your neck of the wood can have cars that charge in a few minutes. Oh, and I'm one of them. You're welcome. > Let's wait for some real-world testing before making claims to Telsa Semi's range. OK.
- 4y ago