Daimler has new electric trucks and a buyer for them | Hacker News Reader

Daimler has new electric trucks and a buyer for them

arstechnica.com

39 pointsjseliger49 comments

DHL is already successfully producing its own electric trucks for the last mile, albeit with a lower load capacity.

https://www.streetscooter.eu/

And they do so because German car manufactures weren't interested in building an electric delivery truck for them...

Which shows that Tesla is not the only new player in town.

Given that much of the value chain isn't provided by OEMs anyway, commercial vehicles (where comfort and optics aren't as important) can be produced without the help of an OEM.

Which also goes to show how ridiculously easy an electric vehicle is to produce, considering there isn't much to the engine nor transmission (the two most complex items) necessary.

Once electric vehicles become more prevalent than gas-powered vehicles, imagine the affect on the city and its noise levels. A place like NYC where these trucks will be tested seems to be defined by the "hustle-and-bustle" and the noise/sound of vehicular movement is part of that. I wonder what the overall affect on noise of the city will be: you can hear more birds than you thought existed in the city? You no longer are begrudgingly awoken by the garbage truck in the early morning. What are the positive and negative results of reduced vehicle noise?

The City of London is exceptionally busy (not far off half a million people traveling to a square mile of land and back out again every day, and going in and out of offices throughout the day), but doesn't have that much vehicle noise in many parts. There's a congestion charging scheme for all private vehicles, almost all the roads have a 20 mph speed limit, many are access-only, or pedestrianized. The central junction at Bank is bus and bicycle only to reduce congestion. Most people come in by the Tube, or walking from mainline stations, or by bus. Obviously you have construction going on, fairly frequent jackhammers, and some busy streets. Electric vehicles will definitely make a big difference (particularly electric buses), but you can get a feel for that sort of world.

It's pleasant, you can't say too much more than that. Better to limit the stress to occur only in the offices, not so much on the streets as well!

The only downside I can think of is for cyclists, and to a lesser extent pedestrians, to be able to hear vehicles. Hopefully lower levels of noise in general will mean being able to hear the tire noise. Will be interesting to see whether we have to tackle that, and if so, how. I actually walked past a diesel vehicle yesterday which was announcing "this vehicle is turning left", hope that doesn't become too normal. But if we did have to generate sound for safety, maybe we could even improve safety from the current situation, by having sound standards which somehow had an intuitive way of indicating vehicle size, speed, or turning intent.

Some "road noise" is caused by tires making contact with the road surface. This might not apply in stop-and-go traffic, but certainly has an effect on highways which pass through many cities. Also, honking.

"tyre/road noise dominates over power unit noise for all speeds and gears except when driving on the first gear"

PDF: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:673693/FULLTEXT01...

Note on reading the graphs - look for the black line labeled "coast by". This is the line with no engine (power unit) noise, which is control for the other colored lines with engine noise.

To add on to that:

Just cruising down the highway in an wouldn't be appreciably quieter if EVs weren't chock full of things to mitigate NVH because low NVH is a selling point that the manufacturers of EVs need to reinforce/live up to.

The fan on most cars is louder than the engine at idle. An EV still needs a fan to draw air over an A/C condenser at idle.

Only where it's hot. I've driven several EVs in Europe and not noticed a fan noise at all. But you only use the A/C ~5-10% of the time here.

Tyre noise is different, on motorways EVs are not much quieter (for cars, not for trucks). In cities the difference is huge.

NVH = Noise, Vibration, Harshness.

If I save one person a 10 second google search this will have been worth it.

> I wonder what the overall affect on noise of the city will be: you can hear more birds than you thought existed in the city?

More audio spectrum for AC units and the screeching of garbage truck loading mechanisms. I would not expect too much difference.

I actually noticed a staggering difference between American and European cities - American cities were so much quieter than what I am used to, because cars and trucks there are usually petrol(gas) powered - and don't have rumbly diesel engines. A garbage truck over here in UK is extremely loud in the morning because all you can hear is the rumbling of the huge diesel going POM POM POM POM POM like a tractor - in America I noticed that while there were some diesel vehicles, they were very rare, and the trucks were just quiet without their usual(for me) diesel rattle.

I'm curious how this will affect trucking productivity. Drivers need to be in their vehicle to be making money. Most trucks, I imagine, have a range of about 300 miles. A 60 mile range is very short. Since recharging could take hours(??) what is the remedy? Can these batteries be swapped? Does the maintenance cost outweigh the productivity cost?

Just from the figures provided, if you're using close to the range each day, it's €3500 a year in savings, one daily recharge cycle up to €7000 a year, two recharge cycles up to €10500 a year. And then perhaps reduced maintenance on top. It does seem quite significant if the capital and battery replacement costs aren't too high.

I also wonder whether logistics companies can fit charging into their existing operations; delivery vehicles have to come back to a depot once they are empty, and there must be a period of downtime while the van is being filled.

These companies also know the distances each van has to travel to deliver it's combination of packages, in effect you have the information to eliminate range anxiety. You could have a percentage of your fleet electric, and put them on routes which were high density and near the depot. You could then be confident that they will return to depot with charge to spare, and recharge them at the loading bays while waiting in the normal course of operations.

This truck can charge fully in an hour, so assuming a half hour turnaround time for reloading, there would be no downtime on a route thirty miles or less. As the range and the speed of charging increase, the percentage of the fleet which you could switch to electric would increase.

Do you mean 3500€ by "E3500" ?

If it's hard to put the euro symbol with your keyboard, try maybe to write 3500 euros, I had to stop to understand what you meant.

I'll copy and paste your Euro symbol, thanks!

For local delivery, 60 miles is good enough. DHL (see other comment) is providing 80 miles range on his truck and it is widely used by the German Post which has depot inside the cities.

It is of course not adapted if your depot is outside of the city and you need first to drive 20 miles to reach the city and deliver and drive back. This is the current state for parcel delivery with relatively large parcel hubs a bit outside of the cities. But just doubling the range to 140/150 miles should be good enough.

There are two charging options regular DC and quick charge which takes about an hour.

Also this is only the beginning of production. "Daimler said it's only planning on producing 500 trucks in the next year, but it intends to start mass-producing the trucks in 2019".

“The company will expand its electric truck production as lower cost, longer-range batteries become available within two to three years,”

These trucks would probably be used for last mile deliveries in urban areas.

Semi-Trucks can go over 1000 miles between fill ups. Current technology might work for local deliveries, but will be hard pressed to replace long haul trucks.

Pollution is a big problem in many cities and ecommerce has massively increased the number of delivery vehicles. Replacing short-haul trucks with electric vehicles can already go a long way in reducing emissions.

For long-haul semis, batteries would likely have to be swapped. That way you can exchange batteries during mandatory breaks so that you only need 4hrs capacity. Batteries can then be charged when prices are lowest and used as storage.

I'm just not sure where breakeven would be in that case. Assuming you need several battery packs per truck, initial costs would be too high for most logistics companies. Could maybe work if batteries are owned by utilities and only rented out for the duration of a trip. That would ensure they're used properly while not driven.

These trucks could have been built with a 1000 mile range at higher costs. They have a 60 mile range because they drive less than 40 miles every day and just recharge over night.

Also, recharging for 30 minutes while loading/unloading can make a large difference to these kinds of trucks.

PS: 227$/kwh * 200 kwh = 45,400$ which is a major reason battery packs tend to 1/3 to 1/2 that. However, prices a dropping rapidly and the savings over gas is rather large so expect very long range electric trucks eventually.

I imagine the post office is largely running an experiment to see how they fit into their system

3 trucks is basically 0 trucks.

60 miles is practical when both warehouse and delivery locations are within city limits.

Is it? It takes 5-10 minutes to refuel a diesel. What is the equivalent downtime between types of trucks?

Most delivery vehicles work 8am-6pm. Supermarket deliveries work with other schedules but also just for a few hours per day. That gives 14 hours charging window with (at least partly) low energy costs.

For trucks that are not used a lot, this solution could end up cheaper because the battery can be used profitably while the truck is waiting.

As long as your battery lasts the work day it's not a problem. Think of it like an electric fork lift.

Can someone point me to studies that model the effect of replacing all fuel-based vehicles with electric counterparts on availability of things like rare earth metals? I'm all for electric cars and such but have been wondering about the consequences on earth resources since current battery tech is not exactly environmentally-friendly either afaik.

Batteries don't need rare earth metals and neither do newer electric motors.

True, but they do require metals like lithium and cobalt. Here's an interesting article on the lithium rush in Nevada. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-29/the-great...

Do any currently-non-rare metals suddenly become rare when you increase worldwide electric vehicle production 100x though?

No. Rare earths actually aren't "rare", they just require a lot of processing because they are pretty diluted where they are found. So using those other metals more doesn't make them magically rare, since they are mined differently.

TIL, thanks

We had fleets of electric trucks in the UK back in the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float

That is good news. Trucks are congesting Europe's streets and long-distance cargo should be transported preferably via train.

This is also interesting and should be applied on a wider scale: http://www.cargobeamer.eu/

Some day, somebody is going to figure out how to do JIT train shipments and make a lot of money here.

Having said that, trains have last-mile weakness. Trucks are congesting Europe's highways mostly. Wait until you see a train arrive to a terminal not far from city center, dozens of smaller trucks rush to get their cargo. At least trucks can arrive to their own depots located on the outskirts, while anybody who wants to ship by rail has to come to the same common terminal.

It's far from a silver bullet.

> Some day, somebody is going to figure out how to do JIT train shipments and make a lot of money here.

> Having said that, trains have last-mile weakness.

That LAST-Mile weakness will be fixed by 2030 when we have Autonomous Trucks doing hand holding of "Standard size container boxes" TO and FROM a TRAIN in an automated way .

> Having said that, trains have last-mile weakness.

This is exactly where an electric truck might come in handy.

>At least trucks can arrive to their own depots located on the outskirts

All cargolifter terminals will be far outside of a major city. An exception might be harbors.

"will be far outside of a major city"

Then you have the problem of last mile again and see a lot of trucks on street.

We need small cross section tube transport for last mile delivery. Fully automated, so we can call it "Internet for transporting physical objects". Or even "Hyperloop for parcels", whatever.

Once you have ""Hyperloop for parcels", same Hyperloop can be used to transport people as CAR Pools by Fleet companies such as Uber and Google Waymo .

Building that Tunnels is expensive, that is what Elon Musk BORING company is experimenting with .

The big car companies often produce EV announcements like this but when you look the small print its always years away from mass production. They are literally just trying to get press attention away from Tesla instead of putting the effort into properly competing with Tesla. They are making 500 of these trucks and the range is 60 miles. Its very meh.

And this will keep happening because in the core of it, the big car companies are too big to pivot to electric. Even Nissan and BMW who have divisions that have put in some good effort will likely be foiled by their own dealer networks and inertia.

The Chevrolet Bolt looked brilliant but they're not bothering to build or sell many and it looks like they might not even make a Right Hand Drive version.

> its always years away from mass production

Mass prodcution in 2019 sounds pretty good to me. But yeah, it's still technically years. :)

Lets meet back here in 2019 and see if they actually bother.

Yup, I wouldn't bet on them. But it still sounds a bit better than these "50 % of cars will be electric by 2050 (so we do nothing now)" statements.

You're currently downvoted, but you're totally correct. The existing ICE companies are currently on a Nokia/Blackberry trajectory. It would appear they spend more time figuring out how to get mileage from weak PR fodder than they do on making better EVs.

As someone else noted, the German post office asked for electric delivery trucks and all the big manufacturers turned them down. Now they make them themselves. A short term victory for the incumbents turned into a long term liability.

I've seen a lot more Chevy Bolts then Tesla Model 3, in fact, there are two on my small street right now.

Not a surprise, given that one has been shipping for 10 months, and the other is in pre-production.

http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

The Bolt outsold the Volt (a plug-in hybrid) for the past 2 months -- but it's still a little disappointing that the Bolt has only scaled from 1k/month to 2k/month.

Oh man such ugly vehicles. Daimler, you should be ashamed of your selves.

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