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Comment by dchuk | Hacker News Reader

I work in the telematics/trucking software space. Many many many trucks travel less than 2-300 miles a day (Intermodal, dray, etc).

Not every truck driver is crushing miles every day, many operations are just between different modes of transportation or operating in same counties, etc.

What will be interesting is seeing how reduced "fuel" costs (electricity) will balance out with faster turn arounds (a truck can fill up in a few minutes, charging will take a long time). I could see fleets valuing either side depending on how they operate. Fleets reroute based on saving a few cents per gallon, so this could be great for the fleets that can afford to recharge overnight.

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Tesla has demonstrated physically swapping battery packs in cars at least once before. For their demonstration (performance, really), they managed to do it in faster than a gas fill up.

I'd bet they'd work to actually get that production ready for these trucks. Seems like an easier and more useful place to get it working.

Many of these trucks are servicing facilities already equipped with overhead cranes in the loading bay. An overhead crane could be used for battery-swapping in addition to loading/unloading cargo.

truck with engine is usually detachable from trailer/payload. instead of swapping batteries or loading/unloading cargo, you can simply attach the trailer to the fully recharged truck waiting for you

How does that work if you own the truck?

If you own the truck you can charge it at night when you're not driving it. The kind of operation described above seems to imply fungibility of trucks.

isn't the idea that trucks will be self-driven? in that case one company will own multiple trucks. in the meantime, if you are independent driver who own's the truck, you could be switching trailers with different cargos. you deliver the trailer to some point, unplug it, recharge, plug in different trailer and continue to its destination.

or are you asking me if I own a track and how the mechanics of truck/trailer works?

no i don't own the track and this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Co...

Or make the trailer itself have a large battery in it that the truck just hooks into, then the truck only needs a small capacity battery to handle moving from trailer to trailer. Then the trailers can charge while they are empty or during loading/unloading.

Trailers are vastly cheaper than the truck. I think it is insolveable to depend on battery loaded trailers. You lose so much flexibility with such a setup. Much better to keep the battery in the truck.

yeah, you are probably right. I guess in the future if you don't need a cab (no human driver), and you don't need heavy fuel tanks (plus full fuel weight), you can use much of that space to put quite a bit of battery.

Or make a portion of the battery an autonomous vehicle of its own, and have them disconnect to go recharge while a new one takes over the task.

That... What? If you need to use your customers overhead crane to make a delivery, you will be going out of business fast.

I'm thinking of businesses where you have integrated trucking service, not seperate owner/operators. Specialized fields like steel where there's a limited number of players and the relationship between the carriers and the warehouses are very tight.

> I work in the telematics/trucking software space

Which company, if you don't mind me asking? (I work in the travel center data science space, and we're trying to understand truck traffic patterns.)

I technically can't say. But, my twitter handle is in my profile if you want to reach out privately.

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