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Comment by jnsie | Hacker News Reader

I guess my two main questions are:

* What is the economic impact of trucks needing to stop to charge for X number of hours versus traditional refueling?

* Who - the truck driver or the company they work for - is typically responsible for the capex in purchasing the truck?

Trucks, at least in Europe, are already required to stop every X number of hours for regulated rest. If they time it, so that they charge at the same time - there'll be no economic impact.

Also as I understand it, the Semis aren't really a long haul type of truck, so that won't happen as much. (feel free to correct me, HN)

Rest hours are also required in the US. However, trucks will stop almost anywhere - rest areas, off the the side of highway on-ramps, Walmart, etc. Now the trucks will have to find charging stations to rest, which will certainly impact the routes.

That particular problem is pretty much solved historically: at specific distances between critical logistic locations sleeping spot, chargers, food, mechanic shops etc. will pop up due to an obvious and predictable market pressure. There are whole small cities that exist because they are right distance between actually important places.

Yes, on average every 8 hours, so battery capacity needs to be at least that (probably by a bit of a good margin). And then just the rest stops need to be retrofitted with 100s of charging points that charge this capacity in time (and all at the same time). Semis in Europe are used for long haul.

This will probably replace the last mile delivery for the foreseeable future, baring some drastic shift of cargo to rail.

There are trials of overhead lines (similar to trains) for trucks on highways. That would greatly decrease the need for energy storage and high speed charging.

Yeah, a (relatively) weird mesh of train and trucking technology - for sure will have it's uses, but I would guess for most of the long freight trains are then a better option?

How difficult would it be to use interchangeable/hot-swappable batteries? Stations could just be constantly charging banks of batteries. Would make refueling much faster. Also could make repairs easier as you could take batteries out of service without need to take the truck off the road.

I’m assuming we are talking supercharging stations

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