California approves rule phasing out big diesel trucks and buses in 2036 | Hacker News Reader

California approves rule phasing out big diesel trucks and buses in 2036

abcnews.go.com

21 pointsturtlegrids21 comments

Diesel engines play a huge role in our current life (food, goods, trash, you name it) and the current electric offerings are essentially a joke compared to what a diesel engine can do… but here’s hoping that by 2036 things are different.

Could trains replace diesel trucks? Would require building and maintaining a large amount of railroad, but solves the energy supply issue.

Though it would probably would not help for delivering goods to smaller cities which cannot justify their own railroad.

Lot of last mile stuff done by diesel trucks, so probably not.

There used to be trains running across just about every mile of the US. Certainly enough to make last mile delivery practical with electric trucks, or even more efficient vehicles like cargo bikes.

The very first warehouse building that Amazon leased [1] in Seattle (549 South Dawson) was built in 1972 with a rail line running directly into it, this can be seen on satellite maps--the building is U shaped, for access to both sides of the rail siding. Amazon never used this siding and it's fallen into even further disuse since they moved out (not sure the tracks are even visible anymore or covered up) but it's interesting to consider what Amazon's logistics footprint would look like today if a twist of fate had instead inspired them to take the route of primarily direct rail links instead of over-the-road trucking.

https://corporate.findlaw.com/contracts/land/549-south-dawso...

Diesel won't be completely eliminated in USA for a long time but I think this 2036 California policy has huge implications to reduce the 'last mile' share of such trucks dramatically via rail. With the initially high cost of EVs there will be even more economic incentive to take goods from California ports and put them directly onto rail for say, a journey to rural Indiana via Indianapolis. Or really just anywhere outside CA, but the further the better once you're on rail because the miles are so cheap, thus minimizing the last mile share for trucks. The primary disincentive for intermodal is, well, the cost to switch modes.

There is also a nationwide growing popularity of 'inland ports' where goods are brought by rail from the coastal ports to a specific transfer point operated by the port authority relatively nearby. This avoids fewer over the road truck miles but an advantage is that the port authority can use dedicated rail shuttle service with high frequency which means very high throughput. The east coast has a few that help goods dodge the highly trafficked I-95 corridor and reduce coastal port congestion.

If the economics of electric semi trucks work out, they could potentially be more cost-effective than rail. I'm not sure about energy efficiency, though I think it would be at least close.

Natural gas can replace diesel for most trucks and buses. The particulate emissions are much lower. Many buses already run on that fuel. This will require new engines, or in some cases whole new vehicles.

Good point. Natural gas engine would be a great practical step forward, especially since the big diesel engineering shops already develop and manufacture natural gas engines.

How is making a huge financial and CO2 investment into a tech that is still fossil fuel and has to be replaced again a step forward?

Fracking for all it's bad press has been immensely helpful in reducing greenhouse emissions.

If it weren't for natural gas we would still have massive coal fired power plants.

If you look at UK emissions which have been declining steadily since the 1990s, this has been in no small part due to the move to natural gas.

While it would be great to move to carbon neutral immediately, we can't do that without driving up energy prices massively and causing widespread poverty and disruption, so there is definitely room for some middle ground compromises.

On the one hand, a ton of people have giant diesel trucks for no reason other than anatomy comparisons, on the other: diesels are more fuel efficient, and have greater torque than petrol. If you compare to EVs you have to consider the working scenario for a truck that does benefit from diesel: You have a fixed amount of time under load, after which you have significant charging downtime, in the order of hours if its in typical rural areas which don't have superchargers everywhere.

You know people who own big rigs to show off? I haven't really seen people driving those as personal vehicles before, the closest I've seen are F550 based RVs since smaller truck chassis wouldn't be legal or able to carry that much weight.

I do know of it, but that isn't super relevant. In true commenter form I had not read the article :D

I had assumed they were using "truck" in the US sense (e.g. a ute or pickup) rather than big rigs, because wtf would you want to force trucks to use bigger and less efficient engines, instead of oversized utes which are the bigger environmental hazard.

I think as battery (and charging) technology improves the downtime will become a non-issue pretty quickly.

That should lead to a great deal of weight loss in California

Worked for Venezuela

So did San Francisco's ex-DA, Chesa Boudin.

> starting in 2036

WAAAAAAY too late. Even if it were "by 2036", that would STILL be too late.

Unless you've got a magic plan to snap your fingers and get vital infrastructure built overnight, I'd say they're going to be lucky if they can even hit this.

I'm glad to see things forcing the issue, but I suspect this is going to lead to very awkward/stupid/worse workarounds rather than serious adoption. If we're lucky the tech will continue to progress at a pace that makes this feasible, but if they don't support this with massive rail infrastructure (which, spoiler, they won't) then there's going to be serious logistics issues.

I think "starting in 2036" and "by 2036" mean the same thing here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com