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Comment by YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 | Hacker News Reader

>There's no fundamental reason why trucks are less likely to electrify than other vehicles. In fact, the greater fuel savings makes it seem even more likely.

Energy requirements between commuter and heavy-duty commercial vehicles differ substantially, and batteries are of course the biggest hurdle against full electrification.

Light trucks could probably mirror SUV development, at least for part of the market. If they won't, it's probably due to demand side of the equation.

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That's backwards. The large energy requirements are exactly why trucks will electrify earlier: as far as useful energy goes, electricity is usually MUCH cheaper than diesel. The more energy that is used, the greater the benefit of electrification.

The power usage are wildly different. Your standard full-ton pickup gets about 10-12 MPG towing a reasonably sized trailer.

GGE for #2 diesel is 37.5kWh @ 50% efficient(which is better than gas) gets you 1.875kW per mile or 562kWh battery pack if you want 300 mile range before charging.

Current Model S packs are 1,300lb per 100kW so you'd be adding over 7,000 lbs just for a battery pack of that size.

For short-haul commercial stuff that's something you can plan for but I don't see a consumer who infrequently tows to variable locations making that work.

For reference your average 30MPG commuter needs only 0.33kWh per mile(and is almost exactly what our Model S does).

The weight still has to go somewhere but this makes me wonder if trailers could have battery packs too, maybe even drive wheels? With electric power trains we could rethink the whole arrangement.

Does it? 7k is close to the max towing capacity of most half-ton pickups so you'd basically be towing a trailer to match the capacity of an empty truck.

I mean add battery capacity to the trailer which extends your range when you need it. Whatever capacity you carry on the trailer would be that much less on the vehicle. 7k is the total battery size to be equivalent to a modern gas tank, the majority of the battery would remain on the truck but the trailer could be used to carry extra in a way that petroleum fuels don't really offer.

Just as an aside: the (optimistic) 50% efficiency figure is lhv, which doesn't take into account all the chemical energy available. 46% if you use HHV.

Electricity is cheap, when plugged in. Mobile storage is the hard (costly and heavy) part.

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