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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

I'm not following, how would it reduce costs over different trucks?

The cost per mile will be radically lower IF (big if) customers can actually achieve the wholesale electric rates that Tesla estimates are possible. Like, dramatically lower. The cost of diesel over 1 million miles is going to be north of $600k easily. At Elon's "guaranteed" 7¢/kwh the cost to run a Tesla Semi over the same mileage is about 1/3rd.

This truck is designed to be an efficient workhorse for short routes with owned fleets.

Electricity cost is much higher in the US and almost 10 times more expensive in Europe.

Also, a diesel engine can easily run millions of miles, I don't believe a battery's efficiency would hold even few hundred thousands. Teslas don't at least and degrade around 10% every 100k miles, with most dying before hitting 400k.

Like everything those calculations seem always based on best case scenarios and ignore that batteries are super expensive and degrade at each cycle.

Hence the big "IF".

Still, some companies will be able to realize the gains. They can invest in solar on site. The people purchasing these often have warehouses with 1,000,000 sq ft of roof space.

My residential retail electricity is 0.098 per kw-h. Midwest prices are generally decent, but the town is buying from ~1 large utility to get that rate, with a few solar panels perhaps lowering costs some of the time. Seems like there is room to do better just going to market, and there is certainly room to do better by buying directly from new solar installed in the next few years.

Diesel Engines are rarely getting more than 6 or 700k without a 30k+ rebuild. You make it like they are all going millions of miles, that's not accurate.

> Elon's "guaranteed" 7¢/kwh

Can somebody say more about this? I'm struggling with finding more info on it.

Further up, folk were talking about this being useful near LA in and in CA ... but the price of electricity is well above that here.

You may be thinking of residential rates which are many times higher

I just checked in the commercial rates are slightly over 7 cents today

It’s on one of the slides in his presentation. In fact, I think it’s been in multiple presentations. May not be the easiest thing to find because I remember it being skipped over and in small print somewhere but he does speak to it.

It's likely being guaranteed because he knows the cost of installing solar and battery banks and he (and his customers) doesn't have to buy directly from local power companies.

Cost-per-mile is cheaper from electricity than from diesel, and it's expected to have lower maintenance costs too (fewer moving parts, no oil changes, etc)

> Cost-per-mile is cheaper from electricity than from diesel

Depends where.

> and it's expected to have lower maintenance costs too

That's theory. Compare maintenance costs of a Tesla and any hybrid Toyota.

It's been almost four years for me, and I've had to spend exactly $0 in maintenance on my Model 3. We'll see what the future holds, but not bad so far.

It has been 3 years with my Toyota and all I have paid for is new windscreen-wipers (winter ruins them). I don't see how that matters though. What matters are actual numbers from a trusted source: ADAC (German motor organization) says it costs $0,51 per kilometer to drive a Tesla Model 3. My Toyota costs $0,31. Nothing exceptional about the price on Tesla maintenance.

How did you skip oil changes?

My PHEV has a two year oil change interval, I'd imagine a Toyota hybrid does too. So in 3 years of driving, there's one oil change, but they only said they didn't pay for anything other than wipers. First service paid for is a pretty common incentive with a car (may be factory included)

You didn't link your reference, so I don't know how those numbers were calculated. However, they are so large they are clearly not maintenance costs, but probably all in costs. That's apples to oranges (Tesla vs Toyota are two different segments). It's also not the topic of conversation (Tesla maintenance costs).

If its been 3 years you should really get an oil change.

ADAC's measure includes the cost of the vehicle itself so that number is completely inappropriate for the actual operating costs. Also ADAC has been called out as wrong and having biased testing many times: https://insideevs.com/news/456957/bjorn-nyland-charging-loss...

> how would it reduce costs

https://youtu.be/BiJ45_hXJe0?t=69

Doesn't that work out to like 2¢ per ton-mile??? Don't confuse yourself by only looking at the numerator. It probably costs close to $100k to refuel a train.

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