Why don’t we just put overhead electric lines on highways for semis to pull electricity from, rather than lose weight on big batteries?
Snark aside, we have those, it's called railways. Trucks should mostly be used for "last mile" style transportation, hence the upfront infrastructure costs might not be worth it
However, you then need to have multiple tractor units with drivers in multiple cities + also the train engine, all coordinating for the handovers.
I'm definitely not saying EV trucks with batteries + trolleys are better, but there is some simplicity that's not replicated with the rail solutions.
And I have read sofixa's (somewhat mocking) comment as if they are saying that rail is simpler.
Here's a picture :
https://www.eurotransport.de/artikel/kombinierter-verkehr-ro...
I'm making assumptions here. But lets' say loading the trucks and the wait until the train leaves takes 90 minutes. Unloading them at destination takes another 30 minutes (again, I don't know the real figures, but this feels somewhat realistic).
So, there will be a certain not insignificant amount of time being lost before the train moves. Time, which is valuable in the transportation business.
Another reason may be that it's really geared for specific topological environments.
There are few routes through the alps and they universally require tunnels (there are mountain pass routes, but those are closed in winter and partially inaccessible for trucks). Such a situation invites such logistical solutions.
Add to this that Switzerland is one of the main transit countries through the alps and that - with very few exceptions - trucks are not permitted to drive at night (after 10pm) or on Sundays. So, loading your truck onto a train and blitz from Freiburg (Germany) straight to Genoa by train may make a lot of sense.
The situation is not quite as ideal as described here. While it's definitely a goal to move transit onto train infrastructure, especially on the Italian side, still leaves much to be desired.
Germany has a small-scale test of overhead lines for trucks: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/business/electric-trucks-...
And the accompanying ridicule for recreating a railroad, just with less efficiency because tires consume a good chunk of the truck's energy in deformation and because you need way more drivers than if you would just put the damn bunch of trucks onto flatbed rail carriages.
The entire project was nothing more than a smokescreen by the automotive industry.
“Numerous studies have come to the conclusion that overhead cable trucks, despite the high infrastructure costs, are the most cost-effective option,” the ministry said.
In railroading we have long ago learned that long terms power delivery via overhead lines is by far the cheapest and best solution.
I have no way to determine if their cherry picked example is something that's relevant or some weird edge case that makes their graphs look good.
But we will see over time, based on adoption.
And regardless of what they do, I hope they don't lobby against mass transit (of goods and people). But they probably will, making things worse for all us.
C'est la vie, I guess.
People in general are not fond of the experience of mass transit. They only do it because it's either (or all):
- cheap (no parking fees, car purchase/maintenance)
- less hassle (no need to find parking in busy areas and no need to have all attention to driving)
If personal transport can be made cheaper, less hassle and hands-free (all of which is possible by autonomous vehicles), then people will vote with their pennies and no lobbying will be required by Tesla.
How will this be worse?
Do you know how carmakers literally paid to have tram lined ripped out of cities, in order to discourage public transport usage and get people to buy their cars?
This is not some weird thing and it's a literal, documented, conspiracy with actual indictments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
> If personal transport can be made cheaper, less hassle and hands-free (all of which is possible by autonomous vehicles), then people will vote with their pennies and no lobbying will be required by Tesla.
Secondly, physics and economics: you can never make personal transport as cheap as public transport, because personal transport will always carry fewer passengers per ride.
And personal transport, if you look at it, is going in the wrong direction for efficiency.
https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/classic-cars/a1860276/car-...
A 4.4m long Chevrolet Sonic 2017 weighs 1.3 tons, almost as much as the 5m long Chevrolet Chevelle 1967.
The most lightweight Tesla Model 3 weighs 1.8 tons, that's 50% more, on top of the existing ICE weight gain over the last 50+ years.
Adding more safety and comfort features will only make things <<heavier>>.
And people really want to ride in nice, clean, custom cars, plus they really don't want to ride with other people most of the time.
I guess we'll just keep burning the planet down, pumping out particulate matter, destroying wildlife, etc.
Oh, and fully autonomous driving could be 50 years into the future, banking on it is a very risky move. We're still at the basic research phase, our tech isn't good enough.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh man, another "never" statement. An autonomous car that doesn't have a driver, doesn't need to take breaks to eat or sleep, that doesn't need to be parked, can in fact become cheaper than public transport. I invite you to do some research on that.
> And people really want to ride in nice, clean, custom cars, plus they really don't want to ride with other people most of the time.
That's exactly my point, and why in presence of a price competitive option such as a self driving taxi, no one would want to catch a bus or a train with many people and dirty seats.
> autonomous driving could be 50 years into the future
Not if you're in the know. It's far closer, but I'm not arguing for that. Wait and see.
How does an autonomous car not need to be parked?
As in, they don't need to be parked after every ride in the current personal transport model.
> The vision that seems more realistic to me is that lucrative areas would have traffic jams full of empty self-driving taxis circling around waiting for fares.
They will be run as part of a coordinated fleet of robo taxis. Why would they be circling around waiting for customers in an area where there is no demand? Answer is they won't. They'll be directed to where people want rides much like Uber, but considerably more efficient, because they don't have constraints of a human driver they have to accommodate.
I love how you sideskipped my phsyics argument like it was nothing.
You're still moving 1.5 tons (and constantly increasing!) of metal everywhere, to move 1 human being weighing 80kg.
The physics just don't work.
> That's exactly my point, and why in presence of a price competitive option such as a self driving taxi, no one would want to catch a bus or a train with many people and dirty seats.
Price competitive how? It's impossible. The only way this works is by offloading a ton of externalities on everyone else, including people without cars. Roads, parking lots, highways, high capacity bridges, tunnels, charging infrastructure/gas stations, exhaust pollution, tire wear pollution, road degradation pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, manufacturing and construction pollution, ...
By what logic can't you clean a bus for 100 people but you can thoroughly clean a taxi for 1, AND make the taxi cost competitive?
My bad.
> You're still moving 1.5 tons (and constantly increasing!) of metal everywhere, to move 1 human being weighing 80kg.
True.
> Price competitive how? It's impossible.
OK, you can transport at least a factor of 10x more people with the existing number of cars on the road. People who drive to work and back use their cars for a fraction of time in a day. If those cars were out moving people around the clock, they would add a huge capacity to the taxi fleet.
Now, who pays for the car? The owner. They have paid for it whether it's sitting in the car park or driving people around. The only difference is running cost of the car: electricity and mostly tire wear. That becomes the cost of transporting people with margin added for Tesla and the car owner. That's it!
Now I just realized that perhaps in your hometown, cost of public transport may be so dirt cheap. But where I live, it cost $40 AUD a week to travel 2 stations back and fourth once a day. The same trips over the same period with my car costs me $2.40 AUD in electricity and about $2.80 AUD in tyre wear (assuming $2000 AUD per 25000km which is way too aggressive). That's a total of $5.20 vs $40. Even if you double the cost to account for margin, it's still 4 times less expensive than public transport.
EDIT: even if it's exactly the same as public transport, it'll still be the preferably mode of transport, because it's door to door and you don't have to deal with anyone. Imagine someone who's happy to share with one other person, now you have bonker economics.
That's not the way to approach claims that a new tech/product is disruptive. General rules may not (and usually do not) apply.
I won't do it for obvious reasons (life), but my money's on them lying (through any of the ways listed here, I don't really care which one they use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Types_and_associated_terms).
Electrification of existing train lines is a huge initiative, and one with major benefits, but it’s still only slowly gaining traction. In fact, one of Boston’s train lines that is not electrified is opting for battery powered trains to avoid the costs of overhead wires!
That and shifting more to electric rail as well.
But sadly the world doesn't really think logically and systematically about these issues.
Along with not building car depend cities and suburbia that makes delivering things way more costly and worse for the environment.
All of these things are wrapped up in many layers of cultural and historic issues.