Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> 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.

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.

No one is claiming electrification isn't practical for mail delivery vans. The grandparent comments are discussing long-haul trucking.

This a post about USPS delivering? Grandparent comments are off topic

USPS also does long haul.

USPS generally contracts out long-haul.

The 9,250 vehicles the article discusses are for local delivery.

Long haul trucking is solved by electrifying US highways. Trains can charge from overhead lines at 200+MPH doing the same for trucks at highway speeds is relatively trivial and allows for on trip charging.

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.

>this is relatively trivial

No it is not.

Why do you assume that?

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.

e.g., the system deployed in Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3P_S7pL7Yg&t=193s

C'mon guys. "Relatively trivial" is not the two words I would use to describe electrifying highway grids.

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"?

There is zero need to electrify dirt roads, just specific loans on ~1% all us roads due to that 100 mile range battery I just mentioned.

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.

Agreed, my point on dirt roads doesn't make much sense.

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.

You seem to think this is expensive, but these systems are cheap enough to save money when used infrequently by electric trains. Highways see a lot more truck traffic.

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.

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.

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.

Many rural areas have no gas stations nearby, but they do have electricity.

So it's now actually more practical to have an EV in those places.

Only if you don't need to travel further than your available range in a single day. While gas stations might be less common, there are still way more of them than high powered electric chargers.

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).

USPS trucks that deliver mail aren't driving more than 100 miles (rarely) a day. I'm pretty sure these trucks can be on a 2-3 day recharge cycle and still have plenty of juice left even if they don't hit those recharge cycles.

Conveniently, gas stations also have small commercial electric, and in some localities are partnering with utilities to provide high speed charging. (solves the street parking and no high amp service issues)

Gas stations also have large flat roofs that some are putting solar panels on top of.

Those high-amp chargers are very expensive. You would need a few of them at every station. Solar panels are not going to be sufficient to power them. To power all these charging stations, you need massive power generation. The USA can't even seem to complete a new nuclear facility in Georgia right now.

Getting gas about every week and a half means about 35 stops a year. If a stop takes me a little over 5 minutes that means about 3 hours a year.

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.

Seriously, take a moment to calculate how much stopping at a gas station takes out of a trip.

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.

Yes, I’m sure there will be usps charging stations on every block in the near future.

It doesn't need to be USPS specific, but that is an interesting thought. Many new neighborhoods have spots for postal workers to park and distribute the mail on foot. This is typically faster in my experience. I don't think it's a big leap to also have those dedicated spots have chargers.

FWIW:

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.

>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.

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 know it's been talked about a lot and never really implemented, but if you've got a fleet of identical vehicles, then doing battery swaps should be possible and practical.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com