They should really move all long-haul trucking to electric as well, at least for the main trunk lines, and for city-wide delivery. Remote rural routes will likely be the hardest to electrify.
In shipping and logistics, time is money. Fuel can be dispensed in the US at a maximum of 10 gal/minute. Factor that against the largest charger you can find and see why the single cost difference doesn't matter yet.
> They should really move all long-haul trucking to electric as well
Reduced capacity from doing this requires additional vehicle time to haul the same amount of material. This isn't a single factor equation. Plus, over the road drivers sleep in their vehicles, and not always at truck stops. They're only allowed to drive for 10 hours, so it's not always as convenient as you might expect.
Consider the weight of 600 gallons of fuel vs. the reduced hauling capacity from using an electric truck and see why we're a ways away from this yet. Have no fear; though, the moment this is logistically favorable, they will switch.
Fortunately, for local deliveries like the post office, constant stop-and-go means that regen braking can really stretch the range of electric batteries.
The reassuring thing to me is that in just over 100 years we made the ICE so efficient. It’s a fundamentally wasteful design and we have taken it very, very far. With another 100 years of battery and electric motor development we will have equally impressive capabilities with the added trick of energy source agnosticism.
They don't need 0-60 in 4 seconds, so a single axle motor is probably all you need.
You don't need NMC chemistry for the range, you can just use LFP or sodium ion when it reaches mass production later this year hopefully.
You can even use a range extender ICE for the rural models like the BMW i3.
If the time wasted charging/refueling is super valuable you can fix this by provisioning a few more vehicles than there are drivers, or having hot swappable pre-charged batteries and provisioning a few more of those than there are vehicles. Then your recharging/refueling time drops down to a couple of minutes max because you're either swapping batteries out or hopping in a different truck.
If the basic running costs of these are really 25% of ICE vehicles then there's a lot of wiggle room for some extra "capital penalty" while still saving a tonne of money.
For in town trucks the math works out very well, and very quickly. Which explains why there are already multiple entrants into that market niche.
(That's assuming the infrastructure in the area can accommodate it. I expect any heavily-used truck charging stations are going to be located where the utility hookups are comparatively cheap and easy.)
Plenty of time to recharge vehicles.
If anything, local delivery vehicles are the best thing for EVs as they're inherently daytime use only.
I also wonder whether semis on certain well-defined long-haul routes (I-80 etc) could be partially automated, such that the driver could sleep in the back of the cab much of the time. Not sure if the technology is really there yet, though.
Sure, it's called a train.
You charge the mail trucks overnight, when they aren't being driven. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a postman out in the evening or nighttime. I also don't know about you, but I don't stand next to my car when I charge it at a rapid charger. (I stop where I can run an errand or use the bathroom.)
In comparison, it takes time to get gas. You have to go out of your way to get to the gas station, go up to the pump, pay for it, and then get back on your way. It always takes me 5-10 minutes to get gas.
So, time being money, what makes the most sense is to install a charger at every parking space that a mail truck occupies overnight, and getting rid of the trips to the gas station. The time it takes to plug the car in is negligible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road
An EV semi with a relatively modest 100 mile range battery easily solves the last mile problem off highways while weighing the same as a traditional ICE engine + fuel.
No it is not.
We were doing this 100 years ago for inner city trolly’s. Trains travel 3x the speed of highway trucks, vastly higher power draw, and we solved that decades ago. There’s even been successful demos of actual highway trucks and power delivery. With modern battery technology we don’t even need a continuous system just enough to keep trucks topped off on highways so maintenance is easy and existing automated toll lanes even cover billing.
So, yes it really is trivial as shown by how cheap existing demo’s have been.
And to convert road vehicles to conduct off that highway? The words I would use to describe/implement that is "Absolute Taxpayer Aversion". Billions and billions in R&D with no guarantee of adoption and likely greater operating costs for 10s of reasons.(Maintenance, contract costs, accidents, teething.
Many counties, even liberal ones, in the US still have dirt roads. In western ireland it's about half the roads are dirt that I saw. If we can't figue out laying concrete at scale, how can we accomplish this "trivially"?
We had electric trollies 140 years ago and modern trains have surfaces in contact at 3x the speeds and much higher power draws. Trucks in comparison don’t need constant power, so you can maintain the line without interfering with traffic.
But you don’t need to trust me it’s a proven technology with the obvious revenue stream of charging for electricity.
PS: America has dirt roads because dirt roads work well when you have low traffic. Their old, cheap, and therefore proven technology just like electrified roads.
But point still stands, if state govt's struggle to repave arterial roads every few years to the standards of our taxes, do we think any national gov't would shoulder paying 10,0000 times that cost yearly to maintain bleeding edge technology across 100k highway miles?
In the 19th-20th century rail/trolley was used in the same way municipal buses are now. Great for absolutely defined schedules across short distances for local residents. Do you see that scaling up to highways though? Even if we used old school powered rail and cable technology to charge up highways for big rigs only, that would be such an unfathomable, enormous cost to implement and maintain. We can't maintain the rail network in this country, which is dwarfed in size by highways.
At scale this isn’t the kind of thing state or federal government needs to pay for out of pocket, it’s a revenue generating opportunity like total roads and can be financed as such.
It’s a classic chicken and egg problem where you need enough miles of electrified highways to convince people to buy new or modify old trucks. Realistically if hot swapping batteries or hydrogen was the cheaper alternative that’s the correct infrastructure to build.
Passenger rail largely failed because of the last mile problem, but here batteries solves the issue. A mile of electric highway can easily let you drive several miles of non electric roads.
Wow. Gas stations are everywhere, conveniently located, and always on route to some place or another.
The mental gymnastics employed, to try to make this seem arduous, does not make for a compelling argument.
So it's now actually more practical to have an EV in those places.
Having an electric vehicle is not useful if the only "fast" charging available to you as a consumer is a 240v hookup at your home (and you need to drive long distances regularly).
Gas stations also have large flat roofs that some are putting solar panels on top of.
Compared to maybe 10 seconds to plug in my car when I get to my garage.
I spend way more time recharging my ICE car than I do my EV.
For example, when I have to get off of a freeway in order to get gas, I usually have to navigate an intersection and might have to sit through a traffic light.
In places I used to live, getting gas meant turning left instead of going right on red. Then leaving the gas station meant sitting through another stop light or two.
You might not have to put up with this if you live somewhere rural, where you're not dealing with divided highways and traffic lights.
Otherwise, getting gas is a chore.
I just went out to buy gas for my snowblower and generator. The gas station was a mile away. It was 17 minutes round trip.
Granted, some of that time was taken up by opening up the gas can and adding stabilizer, but the point stands that getting gas is a chore.
Almost everybody consuming a "your local post office" volume of fuel has a tank and pump to dispense with on site.
That said, consumer shipping has enough regularity that it lends itself well to electrification and electrifying any given class of vehicle in that industry should pencil out a little sooner than the equivalent vehicle in general.
I think the thing that makes this logistically favorable is electrification of major highways. What I worry about is that this requires coordination between government agencies and car and truck manufacturers and it requires political will to make it happen and find the funding. We could start building it right now, or we could sit on our thumbs for the next twenty years.
(There are several different ways to electrify highways. My preference would be to use something like the system they're testing out in Sweden that uses power rails in slots embedded in the road surface. Cars/trucks have a device that swings down and makes contact. Overhead lines are cheaper, but aren't practical for cars to use. Induction charging is another option but it's much more expensive and power delivery isn't great if there's no physical connection.)
Recent price fluctuations due to the rise in oil prices have hit that sector really hard.
How many truckers will answer the question "would you like to save more in fuel cost per day than you currently earn per day?" with a "no?. Time loss for charging is maybe inconvenient but the price tag isn't that high for everyone.
Anyway, this stops being optional pretty soon after electrical trucks start undercutting transport prices because they simply have lower cost of course. But while there is still a choice, there are going to be smart truckers and broke truckers. They'll pay the difference out of their own pocket.
In any case, if the vehicle charges at night and has enough charge for the route, there is no time loss.
We're talking mail delivery here not trucking. They are not doing hundreds of miles per day. More like tens. With lots of drive a little, idle, drive a little, etc. driving. This has very poor fuel economy with an ice vehicle. An EV essentially has no energy cost when it is idling. At best you lose some energy to keep the AC and the radio going. Which isn't free with an ice vehicle either.
Mail and package deliveries are an ideal use case for EVs. Most commercial delivery companies have largely completed their move to EVs for this reason and are rolling out EVs as fast as they can get their hands on them. That debate is over and there never was much of a debate beyond "Would you like to cut cost? Yes!". Ancient history, the industry has moved on and the answer was conclusive. If you want to compete in that sector, EV is the only way. There's no case left for ice vehicles in that sector.
Trucking will follow.
Meanwhile California is paying other states to take electricity because they generate so much excess power during the duck curve (while simultaneously having rolling blackouts)
Solar will become vastly more valuable once enough electrical storage capacity goes online.
It’s also very likely California’s excess generation and storage will entirely flatten the generation curve for neighboring states.
I agree with the GP, we are on the precipice of an energy revolution. I look forward to see what we do with it!
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/10/9/20906839/map-pge-blackout-po...
Rural grid connection and maintenance costs are heavily subsidized by urban electricity users already. These subsidies should be applied for rather than being hidden so it's clear to everyone they exist.
And prices have been falling. Most plans around here are paying $0.10496. I'm on a time schedule and do most of my charging at $0.07688.
The price per kWh has been consistently falling. I think the GP is right, energy is changing.
https://cleanpoweralliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Cl...
That's why they don't "realize it", because so far it has had ZERO positive impact on them.
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183700/us-average-retail...
2. https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/blogs/p/2022/03/06/when-wil...
75% of electricity costs in California come from the grid, not generation. Grid costs recently are up due to wildfire mitigation for power to rural communities.
Pumped hydro storage is another option. As is relying not so much on storage but rather expanding grid interconnection. Day/night solar cycles are less of a problem if you can buy and sell power across many time zones.
The US is not as densely populated as Europe, so outside coastal areas much less land has a train station even within 200 miles radius.
Here is a map from 189X[0]
Auto supremacy was and still is a choice.
[0]https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/api/...
It's still not not as dense as UK, Germany, or Netherlands, and cannot be, outside areas like North-East. What makes sense around places like NYC, Chicago, or Seattle, may not work equally well in Nebraska. Building a road and running trucks on it is just more affordable.
Also, rail is optimized to have ridiculously high throughput at the expense of latency. Rail is great at hauling grain, huge hunks of steel, wood, etc, but is too slow for time-sensitive stuff like flowers or that birthday present you ordered at a last minute with express delivery.
This is why relatively long-haul trucking exist in the US, despite the presence of a large and busy rail system, to the best of my knowledge.
(Passenger rail vs cars is another kettle of fish entirely.)
Far far fewer than there used to be
> Building a road and running trucks on it is just more affordable.
Only if you discount negative externalities.
And you can't even know that for sure.
The cost of operating rail is easy to calculate. Too many independent agents to accurately price automobile GDP (for lack of a better word).
> is too slow for time-sensitive stuff
Not if you have more trains running more frequently. Its a case of induced demand[0]
0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#:~:text=Induced....
Perishable food and parcels are commonly carried by rail, although there is still a lot by road.
Container trains in Britain can travel at 75mph on such tracks. That's faster than a truck is allowed to drive (60mph).
Checking my numbers, I found this [1] which is interesting:
> There are many other examples where people are utilising rail in new ways. For example - hot slab steel shipped from the furnace to arrive warm enough to be rolled into sheets.
Meanwhile, Europe has so much passenger rail that freight is really tricky to run. For example, there is a really busy freight corridor from Rotterdam to Germany with rail dedicated solely to freight, but the rest of The Netherlands is pretty much 100% passenger. Europe uses a lot more inland shipping instead.
If you look at the share of freight transported by rail as a function of the distance, in the US that curve goes smoothly upwards, as long distances play into the economic benefits of rail, whereas in Europe there's a sharp drop beyond 500-1000km or so. Meaning that international shipments in Europe largely switches to trucks.
Local delivery is a much clearer fit for electric, even in the short term. We see that here.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538030/germany-ehighway-...
Might also be beneficial on hillclimbs where instant battery capacity may be lacking.
If we imagine building EVs that are 1:1 replacements for ICE we see challenging hurdles but with even small changes in the status quo EVs suddenly become feasible on shorter timeframes.
Sounds like Norway or Switzerland would be your pilot project. Certainly Norway is all-in on electric. (They can afford to finance the cutting edge.)
Daimler Truck, one of the world’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, has unveiled its first heavy-duty, battery-electric truck – the Mercedes-Benz eActros LongHaul – with a new e-axle and a range of 500kms.
Electric truck maker Janus has debuted the first battery-powered prime mover in Australia and has plans to set up battery swap stations up and down the eastern seaboard within months. .. a first taste of the company’s plans to electrify long haul truck fleets using only batteries.
500 kms w/out having to stop is a long leg.
Being able to stop and swap out | replace batteries in the same time as a refueling | load | unload is indeed "a long haul technology" as it enables long haul trucking.
The speed limit for this vehicle will be either 80km/h or 100km/h, I'm not sure how they decide, but with some good logistics for a rapid charge part-way through that's not far off.
EVs are great when in used in the right applications, but trying to make them work for everyone and everything is just going to tarnish the platform.
It's all an economic sum, really: when do the higher connection fees and increased demand pricing outweigh battery cost? We are already seeing grid-scale battery storage being used in practice, applying that to a more local use case might not be that unrealistic.
Besides, if the alternative is no charging station, you can probably charge significantly higher fees.
More battery = more minerals. Iron law of batteries.
It is a pipe dream to do it in 30 years. I don't even know what to call it doing so in seven. Dementia is probably the most appropriate word given who is pushing it.
If you think that sounds idiotic, that's politics for you. I wouldn't count on this never happening in the US, a lot of people support "climate action" without caring about the details or understanding anything about any of this on a technical level.
That's not relevant for current commercial delivery use cases.
Btw in many countries there are discounted rates for large electricity purchasers, like corporations. They pay less the more they use. So companies do have an incentive to go electric. There's just a lot more nuance. The charging times the other user mentioned are one thing. Parts of North America also get pretty cold in winter which drastically reduces the range of EVs. That's something many people who've never driven an EV don't know about for example. Will be interesting to see real world results. From the electric bus projects I've seen in some cities, they're far from as cheap in real life as cities thought they would be when they were presented the numbers on paper.
Today I'm paying all of 3c/kWh for electricity. Can't get much cheaper than that.
Also the EV+range thing is mostly negated by pre-heating the car while it's plugged in at home, warm battery = more range. Just like we need to do with ICE cars to make the engines even start in the winter.
As for winter, what you say may be good for people with a house and garage who are driving to work and back (but then range should not be an issue anyway). It doesn't work when you street park and it also doesn't really work when you're driving long distances or with a car that's mostly outside, like a delivery van.