Heavy electric trucks cheaper than diesel goods trucks
chalmers.se
chalmers.se
That's vacuously true for just about everything.
The E16 experiment looked really promising and would rely on all existing tech (contactors on power lines, like the old trolley buses of old) and hybrid power plant for last mile: https://www.iea.org/policies/7162-electric-highway-demonstra...
Can’t find any reported results of this, but seems small in scale (100km). The concept solves the range problem. Imagine for example in California to have these along the 5? Now you can move things from Los Angeles to Seattle without needing to recharge. Add to it some driver assists and you have a much safer and more efficient transportation system which is as clean as the electric grid. Then you can provide financial incentives to travel in off peak demand times, etc.
But we can’t even electrify our rail routes. I doubt we would electrify I5. Although, trucks aren’t trains where diesel turbine electricity generation makes sense.
In US, I suspect rail crosses large swaths that might be harder to electrify, but the sub 1% electrification is really disappointing compared to say EU: https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/transport...
Contrary-wise in real world examples FedEX in the US first trialed onboard diesel turbine generated electric trucks back in 2014 and they've been a staple of the Australian (and other) mining industry for a good number of years now; that's on the order of a billion tonne per annum for a decade moved via means you imply only makes sense for trains.
You'll even find instances of hybrid onboard diesal off board trolly pantograph for gradient assist climbing in heavy haul trucks [1] from 2007 - although I admit that was an unexpected quirky find.
[1] https://www.australianmining.com.au/diesel-electric-haul-tru...
30 minutes seems slow until you realize that you hardly ever need to charge the car away from home. I do not miss going to the gas station!
I’d guess the mechanisms needed to swap the battery would be more maintenance than they are worth.
I guess for delivery vans, which drive during peak solar production, doubling the number of batteries so you can charge during the day might make sense.
They even have literal charging vans you can just order to come anywhere you want. You use an app to request one, they drive to your location and charge your car.
Plus they have the manned battery swap stations everyone has seen a video of.
Tesla and the major automakers can't risk their name and reputation on a crap product.
Full Self Driving has entered the chat...
https://fullycharged.show/episodes/this-giant-electric-semi-...
I think we should focus on either:
- charging on the go if those trucks use highways for long-distance, maybe have self-driving trucks drive at night and charge on the way; or better:
- moving that cargo on train lines and using trucks with small batteries for the distance between the nearest train station and the final destination. That opens the possibility of using smaller trucks for many routes, which would really help with road safety, especially in dense areas. Trucks that can pull 15 tons or more are unsafe near children.
Do you happen to have any pointers to more info on this? I don't understand what would prevent the industry from standardizing on a structural battery pack rigid enough for the use case.
Imo rigidity still feels like a semi bullshit gripe though. A lift should be able to rise up under the vehicle and uniformly support the batteries. The vehicle can then let them go. I imagine the batteries more or less suspended underneath the vehicle in this configuration, with a latching mechanism holding them up. Some cross bracing to provide structure.
Making sure the batteries stay attached though, that they don't give flying in a crash, is a significant & obvious problem though, now that I think of it.
My feeling is whether swappable batteries are viable or not is less of a engineering problem than an accounting and logistics one,
Another argument is what Sandy Monroe [0] think is the biggest one: moving connectors. It’s not just high-energy cables, but possibly coolant, etc. Those will be the first thing to fail.
Sandy also mentions the risk of using someone else’s over-worn battery, but that’s more his atrabilar personality than something that could be engineered away: have the platform the battery regularly, even have the car do diagnostic and remove the worst ones from circulation.
Battery swapping might even be a good way to jump start such a system since it could produce a flexible system for curve flattening both by charging in off-peak hours while still supporting fixed-installation vehicle packs.
The downside is that this makes battery systems less flexible, since batteries have to be of some fixed physical dimensions. This may not be practical for certain compact vehicles, but could be implemented more easily with straight trucks.
If you're suggesting the time, energy, and safety and compromises required to design vehicles around modular batteries might not be offset by the cost delta of recycling I think that's a reasonable concern. Combining this with swappable packs might change the variables.
A system by which packs are routinely switched out and frequently tested could easily lead to a robust circular economy and could provide a better alternative to Vehicle To Grid solutions for load shifting.
Trailers come in many form factors: container, flat bet, end-dump. Heck, sometimes you just want to tow another tractor. Those different form factors have different constraints in terms of battery size and shape.
You'd still need big batteries in some tractor units so that they could drop off trailers. All tractor units would need small batteries so they could go short distances without a trailer.
- Your vehicle design will be less efficient and more expensive than one without the constraint of an easily-removable battery.
- Just like with phones, removable batteries mean that you have more ingresses for water and dirt, hurting reliability.
- You have to standardize on battery sizes and interfaces. If some new battery technology comes along, or you want to change the chassis (to improve crash safety, for example) you'll have to create a new standard.
- In modern EVs, batteries have liquid coolant pumped through them. This lets the vehicle keep the battery at optimal temperatures for charging, discharging, and avoiding degradation in hot climates. Swapping batteries means coming up with another solution for controlling battery temperatures.
- In addition to specially-designed cars and batteries, you also need specially designed swapping stations. Again if you ever change the standards, you'll have to upgrade these stations.
All of these issues mean that battery swapping drastically increases cost and complexity for little benefit. A swap will take five minutes, while charging to 80% can take as little as 15 minutes. There's also the issue that batteries are valuable, and the owner of the vehicle probably wants their original battery back (or at least one without more wear & tear). Then you get into issues of compensating or charging people thousands of dollars depending on their new battery's degradation level. It's much simpler to give up on swapping and focus on improving charging speeds, which is exactly what Tesla did.
It's much less of a concern for trucking companies, many of which already have multiple depos across their routes and thus are already in a position to swap batteries from one truck they own to another truck they own.
Better to just swap the whole tractor unit out if fast charging is not available for some reason. After all, it’s really just a battery (+motor and cab) on wheels.
Nio is doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWL1hZQmD0
Gogoro is doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ddtHj_N2E
Janus Trucks is doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eYLtPSf7PY
Paying attention to what's going on in the real world is more useful than internet theorizing.
> - Your vehicle design will be less efficient and more expensive than one without the constraint of an easily-removable battery.
Commercial trucks sold as a cab-and-chassis configuration, i.e. all the ones that you see the same basic truck under hundreds of different bodies, are already substantially standardized behind the cabin. They are less efficient and more expensive than integrated designs, but as a tradeoff they get the option to use any of those addon bodies that happens to fit length-wise.
This same compatible frame design benefits swappable batteries in that they can be built to go under a standard frame width.
> - Just like with phones, removable batteries mean that you have more ingresses for water and dirt, hurting reliability.
Reliable self-cleaning connectors are already a thing in industry, it's a factor that needs to be considered but it's not a real roadblock.
> - You have to standardize on battery sizes and interfaces. If some new battery technology comes along, or you want to change the chassis (to improve crash safety, for example) you'll have to create a new standard.
This class of trucks has been heavily standardized for decades, CAN still works great for the data link, there's no reason to believe substantial changes will be needed in ways that would be relevant.
> - In modern EVs, batteries have liquid coolant pumped through them. This lets the vehicle keep the battery at optimal temperatures for charging, discharging, and avoiding degradation in hot climates. Swapping batteries means coming up with another solution for controlling battery temperatures.
No it doesn't, plug-and-play dry break connections are already well known. This is a solved problem.
> - In addition to specially-designed cars and batteries, you also need specially designed swapping stations. Again if you ever change the standards, you'll have to upgrade these stations.
Most heavy truck swappable battery designs I've seen either go under or in the front, either way a forklift can do it.
----
Again, for passenger cars I 100% agree, Tesla's one station that changed a dozen batteries was nothing but a mechanism to capture a tax benefit, it was never going to work in the big picture because passenger cars are so different. Commercial trucks are intentionally incredibly similar, so it's a different world.
Also, you’re forgetting something important: most countries have laws limiting driver hours / mandating driver rest. As a practical matter, with appropriately spaced charging stations, a tractor like the one Tesla built effectively imposes no cost in terms of charging time. That’s because the mandatory driver rest periods are sufficient to charge the battery using today’s battery & charging technology. And on that topic, if you try swapping a battery with a forklift, you’ve already lost (in terms of time). You need a dedicated battery swap machine for the “time economics” of battery swap to make any sense.
So why bother with all kinds of expensive connectors, and the rest when you don’t need it anyway? That’s what you’re up against.
TRAINS!
sulks back out of the room
In what world can 2 metal tracks plus some small foundations be cheaper than 20m width of concrete, asphalt and much bigger foundations?
The economics of rail versus roads don't make any sense to me.
The only way they do, I imagine, is if roads are crazily subsidized.
Highways are cheaper and easier because they're usually less investment and planning at once. They have their own downsides, don't get me wrong, but no. Rail is long term, lots of property seizure, usually a single track across a vast distance, etc.
Rail makes sense for a lot of places, but for a country as large as America, it's hard to see the benefits as fast as highways and we need logistics to switch to electric quickly.
That said, to make highways more efficient more places should take a page off of the 407 in Ontario, Canada. The fluctuating pricing keeps the roads in high usage most of the time and it stops tragedy of the commons issues with sinks (the cities that highways dump their vehicles to) and keeps highway economic pricing honest against things like rail and sea.
The problem is those are feeder lines; the main lines can be at capacity even if they’re a relatively small percentage of the total rail.
This is fairly short-sighted, isn't it? Make no mistake, highways are also long-term and involve lots of property seizure. We could build out railways with more than a single track, but rail is private and roads are public.
That is very much reality.
You can't just make an unicorn hockey stick curve train company, it's basic infrastructure like electricity and water.
I am envious of the European and Asian train systems and wish we had the like in the US, but alas, we sunk trillions of dollars into our interstate system of highways. I don't think we should give up on trains in the US, and would dearly love to see some high-speed rail corridor investment toot suite, but it would be irresponsible to let our current investment go to ruin, even if we decided today to put all our chips on trains.'
I mean, we started with trains, right? And look what happened after we stopped investing in them. Just updating our current train system might be too heavy a burden for the US to bear these days.
What we really need is to prioritize investing in the US at every level, and finding better ways than borrowing against the future to pay for it. After all, it's not that the money isn't out there. Maybe we do need to make it investments rather than taxes. My personal politics are pretty far left, but in the US at least, leftist policies really struggle for traction. I'd rather see us making a better world, even if it doesn't follow my personal plan for getting there.
https://crosscut.com/environment/2023/05/when-it-comes-clima...
(lightly edited)
My Sci fi dream is carrier trains, where a car is disaggregated into a pod and a skateboard. But one can drive their vehicle to a train & the pod comes off & mounts onto the train with standard mounting & then gets dropped back onto a rental skateboard at the destination.
Or maybe if we had right sized e-transit with ebikes & small e-cars, we could just ride on/off regular trains, quickly & efficiently.
We're talking about trains, and to me, the occasional trip is not the active question: it's what we do day by day. This ain't it.
In my country the minimum train-train spacing is five minutes, because any less and a train won't be able to stop if the preceding one has an accident. A substantial part of the network is already being limited by this, and we are seeing more and more quad-track sections.
Your "carrier train" already exists, to an extent. It is called "intermodal shipping containers".
Great option for long distance, terrible option for short distance, probably too much of a hassle for medium distance.
As I know people in the transport business I'm just gonna shut up and wait for them to switch for economic reasons. Until then it's just words.
Diesel truck pm2.5 emissions are harmful. Carbon emissions are harmful. Adapt or die. PepsiCo and Frito-Lay are already running Tesla Semis in production. The learning curve is bending up. To get better at this, we’ll have to first suck at it, in the aggregate.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/28/california-bans-the-sale...
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/barcu/regact/2022...
https://electrek.co/2023/04/12/tesla-delivers-fleet-tesla-se...
Makes sense when your cargo is air.
> PepsiCo and Frito-Lay
Which I would assume that the PepsiCo product is about as heavy and dense as you could expect in normal freight scenarios, being liquids.
No one cares if the dakotas don’t ban them if no one will build them for just their market.
Think in systems. Find lynch pins and apply maximum force. It’s either a climate emergency or it’s not, and if it is, treat it like an emergency.
If the poor cannot afford the transition, fix this with policy. We have the aggregate system wealth. Allocate accordingly.
Edit (throttled, replying here): Growing your own food for self sufficiency is an unreasonable ask and challenging at best for your average citizen. Check out how many acres and the work involved for a family of four’s annually nutritional needs. It simply doesn’t scale (no pun intended), although it can work for those with ample land and no time commitments.
Individual action isn't the solution to a systemic problem, because there's more incentive to cause the problem than to fix it. Individual action requires time, money and effort on behalf of the individual, whereas the ones causing the problem have financial incentive to continue causing it, in greater amounts.
Plenty of single family dwellings with grass yards.
And time commitments/work involved? I guess they aren't serious about climate change. This just reinforces my original point. Screeching about climate change but unwilling to do any of the work or make any _real_ sacrifices.
It only takes a few hours a week to operate a backyard garden that produces more than even a large family can consume.
You're taking an extreme, untenable, position as an alternative to an incremental solution that generally fits everyone's needs at a slightly higher cost.
Electrification is inevitable.
What's the point in running a diesel semi when it can't be used to make deliveries to key states in the country? That will force a "relay" model in the freight industry which kills point-to-point delivery, where diesels deliver to a border state and an EV semis runs the last leg. Once that happens, then it becomes economical to run more EV semis between diesel relays, or add rail depots to the relays for ultra-low cost transport over long distances, then EVs for the last leg.
The diesel truck industry is going to die slowly, then all at once.
New producers of diesel vehicles would show up to cater to those markets. Econ 101.
>Think in systems. Find lynch pins and apply maximum force. It’s either a climate emergency or it’s not, and if it is, treat it like an emergency.
Very emotionally charged rhetoric there. That kind of action would result in bifurcation of the market. Balkanization. Separate economies. That sort of thing.
So I think what will happen is that a few existing car manufacturers decide they're OK with being a larger share of a smaller market. Or else a new/adjacent player buys out legacy IP and operations while the original manufacturer focuses on EVs. Or there's a bunch of remanufacturing going on to keep hydrocarbon vehicles running.
Either way, there'll be quite... boutique prices.
> they don’t want their citizens to be poorer
If this was true, we would have walkable and bike able cities...
I feel like there is a lot of misinformation when it comes to bans. No one is coming to your house to take away your existing cars and trucks as far as I know. We are talking about disincentivizing new sales after a certain date.
Primary evidence is their profitability.
Every couple of years, some politician gets some press for initiating an investigation into price gouging. If a hearing actually happens, no one ever makes the mistake of saying anything concrete.
Nothing ever changes.
And now we have analysis which shows that 50% (?) of recent consumer price inflation is just Big Oil charging more.
And nothing will change.
Silver lining is that price gouging will hasten switch to EVs, so yay for small victories.
(FWIW, my uncle works in a refinery making diesel. He couldn't explain pricing. So what hope do noobs like me have of lifting the veil?)
My guess is that things won't change as much as diesel fuel becomes more niche in terms of distribution, but the pressure will be against future price rises, especially if that hastens the move to EVs. The Saudis have to sell their oil before there is no demand for it.
I meant to read up on govt's allegations of price gouging (profiteering), to maybe understand what's going on, but got distracted.
So many outrages, so little time.
Cheers.
1. The consequences of global warming
You could ask people how much they’d pay to keep chocolate or coffee, bananas, pineapples, or mangoes. Most of Florida’s coastline, about half of California. There are things that specialists disagree about, but all have no doubt that all those crops will not be cultivated (outside) if we stay the course. Florida and California are now seeing insurance companies bailing out, so we are moving from scientific certainty to economic reality.
Naturally, there’s more: most people think that Cajou nuts, açai berries, passion fruits, agave, prickly pears, should be on this list (because of temperature) but if we start looking at that, then people think pollinator collapse or opportunist infection are going to be there first… So I tried to make a conservative list.
Typically the answer to the question “What would you pay to keep those (chocolate, coffee, etc.)?” is that whatever cost to save those things is worth it. You can try to find numbers, but the US famously started wars to end democracies in several countries to grow just bananas (that gave us “Banana Republic”), so we are closer to amounts where it’s less money measured in many billions and more state-sponsored violence.
All that long rant to say: whatever is the cost of not destroying those, that is the “true” cost.
2. The cost of CO2 extraction and storage
With current rock-bottom electricity prices in Iceland, ClimateWorks research facility can extract CO2 for a bit more than $3,000 per ton (depending on accounting for research costs; that number is just OpEx IIRC).
To convert that to the cost of transporting goods, you can apply a ratio of 50 grams of CO2 per tonne-kilometer [1]. A 40-ton truck will have to pay $600 to compensate for every 100 km.
That sounds like a lot, even without considering the cost of storage.
ClimateWorks hope to lower the price by an order of magnitude [0], which specialists think is unlikely. In truth, much cheaper electricity makes electric trucks that much more appealing. You will never save any money by burning fuel and then spending energy trying to re-capture that CO2 at low concentrations. It’s engineering nonsense. A better idea would be to have trucks carry a balloon with their emissions and that’s obviously a clownish idea. All that, again, before we even have a scalable solution for storage. A cousin works on that project for Statoil. Sure it might work (with the right salt cave) but it’s nowhere ready to scale to handle emissions from trucks all over the world.
So we will never be even close to making ICE trucks a sound idea if we consider the environmental impact.
[0] https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/carbon-capture-and-storag...
[1] https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021...
The problem may be that "both aren't perfectly great" and maybe the best solution, despite Capitalism, is to use less as one of the only ways to well: save ourselves from destroying the Planet.
"Coal is used to power electric vehicles," is an argument that is more noise than signal.
Yes, pollution is bad. Diesel trucks are a highly visible form. However, there are too many unknowns for these sweeping statements about 'true' costs to be taken seriously. It is another example of the economic calculation problem.
Try as they might, researchers can't sit in a bureau and come up with figures to plan an economy with.
Anyway, I saw an electric ford van on a delivery run yesterday.
Perhaps these limitations aren't as rigid as people swear they are, or maybe shipping modalities change in order to play to the strengths of EVs. For example, there's nothing stopping shipping from becoming a relay-based, rather than point-to-point. Or maybe it becomes financially feasible to have drivers swap trucks. Yeah, that kills the "owner operator" long-haul trucker, but that model is pretty untenable anyway.
Even industry experts can call an idea patently absurd, then have it become dominant over the next 20-30 years. Cable television is a good example of this, it's crazy to attach physical cables to every house in the USA in order to deliver TV, which can be sent over-the-air at a fraction of the cost. But we did just that. The benefits out-weighed the (tremendous) costs.
Or maybe their plans is to get the first mover advantage and see what pans out ? Or get the whole market à la Uber by spending a lot of VC money and then figure out how to recoup ? See farming tech.
Uber makes a gross profit of over $12 billion on a revenue of nearly $32 billion. They lose money on paper because they keep reinvesting profits and further investments back into the business. They've almost doubled revenue YoY.
So even the most ludicrous SV startup you can think of pulled this off.
I am not following. I didn't mean to make fun of you, I honestly thanked you for correcting my warped vision of Uber's VC situation. Sorry if it sounded ironic or aggressive.
It's also not true to say that Uber's loss is due solely to R&D, since R&D only represents $1 billion in expenses, per Uber's 2022 annual report and their Q1 financials. Uber would still be unprofitable even if it did no R&D, since it has very large G&A, marketing costs, and CORS (cost of revenue).
Aren't a lot of countries basically forcing companies to do this early before the support infrastructure is in place?
I'm still curious how people living in the mountain of condo buildings in most major cities are going to charge their consumer cars, without having to line up for hours at gas-station style charging stations, considering most condo parking garages I've seen only have 3-4 charging spots.
Solving it for trucks delivering to various locations across non-urban areas seems a bit easier, given it's less of a real estate problem, but still a huge investment.
I'm guessing loading docks at warehouses will need to set up individual plugs while it loads/unloads and pre-planned trucks stops all along the highways? Any time they eat/rest will be designed around charging.
Maybe it's different where you live, but Superchargers are all over here. Most of the grocery stores around me have them, and they have lots of spots available even at peak hours (some have EA and Superchargers next to each other). Chargefinder.com shows tons of public charging options around.
Even the lowest range Model 3 has more "range" than my petrol car, and I still only fill up at the grocery store gas station most weeks.
The infrastructure is already there and it's growing quickly. But unless you have an EV, you probably don't even notice it's happening.
Easy: condos will place more chargers.
Currently the paradigm is to place a few high-power chargers and have people occupy the charger as little as possible. Once electric cars hit a certain threshold everyone will want a charger, so it'll become more viable to just equip every single parking space with a low-power charger, and have everyone slow charge overnight.
All of them?
I guess there will be either be rapid improvements to charging time where the real estate burden for charging won’t be too bad or the private landlords will have to pay for it (or get subsidized to). There’s a ton of buildings in each city which aren’t exactly in a rush to do investments in old properties.
The battery life issue is mostly offset by lower operating costs: electricity is a lot cheaper than diesel / 100km and electric motors are pretty much maintenance free
very volatile costs of fuel (diesel is nosebleed higher than gasoline in California this year, a disaster for businesses and tradesmen)
Effective, efficient, fast refueling networks
Complexity of fleet equipment, speed to repair
Tires - an 18 wheeler gets through a lot of tires in its lifetime in service. EVs are very heavy unloaded
Fleet trucking is a brutal business where every penny counts and owner/operators are whipsawed by fuel prices, demand waxing a waining and endless politicla meddling.
Once we have nuclear, a credible supply grid and have overcome the battery capacity and fire issues EV will be viable to businesses. Until then it is the unrealistic slow motion disaster being forced through in California.
https://www.freightwaves.com/ is a good site to track developments
I'm not wrong right? That's all this generation's Moon Shot in scope.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energ...
Fuel with subsidies and unmet externalities is already a slow-motion disaster...
That's volatility
A lot of energy prices are linked together, by the way, because many countries use one to produce the other (burn coal or oil to produce electricity, for instance)
Despite attempts to artificially stabilize oil prices, volatility there does not spark quite the same joy. Marie Kondo would trash it in an instant.
You understand that not all people lives in denmark Here, in France, we have 12 times more people than denmark, the highest point is a bit higher than 171 meters and there is a lot of land not really close to the sea
Point is : good for you, but your country' situation is an exception
Our environment-focused market-regulating taxes are also not altitude dependent.
Fun fact, nuclear power has the lowest direct and indirect (e.g., cancer, pollution) death rate per Wh of any supply source - despite high-profile disasters - beating even wind power which while entirely harmless has a considerably higher deaths from accidents during construction and maintenance. The only negative aspect is high up-front construction cost, but that is a low price for the many human lives saved by reduced oil or coal pollution from the plants that were replaced where wind or solar is not an option.
There's a clear seasonal pattern and steady increase over time, but isn't particularly spiky otherwise.
And here's diesel, with a nice wall of an increase (~50%) in March last year due to a certain geopolitical event. https://ycharts.com/indicators/california_no_2_diesel_retail...
Electricity went up at the same time from about 21¢ to 24¢, less than half the relative increase in diesel prices.
And this is pretty typical: geopolitical events cause price spikes (or sometimes dips, when the producers happen to try to undercut one another), and then slowly normalize.
Electricity, by contrast, is lots of sources rolled together, spread all over the planet. Shocks in one source will certainly show up, but are stacked by other sources.
Diesel engines typically run (inefficiently) to warm themselves up and be efficient, but that is a larger energy cost, mainly because that process captures a fraction of the heat from the combustion.
An inefficient Diesel engine driving the dynamo.
Gas engines have a significantly less steep drop in performance than do electric engines, since gas engines generate lots of heat, and electric engines do not.
A gas engine might lose 10% range at 0 degrees F with most of that related to getting the engine up to proper operating temperature, but once up to temperature a gas engine can maintain that temperature with a small hit to performance efficiency. In contrast, an EV will lose over 20%+ range at the same temperature (and can lose as much as 40% of their range at sub-zero temperatures.)
Gas price volatility is an argument, but one that they ignored and that will never be in the interest of gas engines. Gas can’t be much cheaper than it is: carbon pricing, restriction on new wells, and instability in the Middle East will only make it more expensive.
Electric engines are measurably simpler. Every estimation I’ve seen is that maintenance for cars is at least an order of magnitude cheaper. I wouldn’t be surprised if e-trucks were more expensive to maintain than e-cars, but all the things that make trucks more tedious than cars (oil, brakes, clutch) are what makes EVs much better. Every specialist who has used an electric truck is very bullish on maintenance.
I definitely agree that the real issue with trucks is their size: current eighteen-wheelers are to big. It’s unsafe; their tires are expensive and need to be changed often. Brakes too, but that’s something EVs fix. The biggest issue is how fast they damage the road.
Lighter trucks would be the best idea. The solution for me is something that Sweden, California already do, but not enough; something that every modern country should do a lot more: carry goods on (electric) freight trains, and use smaller trucks for the last mile.
> Once we have nuclear,
Nuclear energy is part of the grid mix in Sweden, California, continental Europe… Not sure what you mean by this.
2. Refueling of long-distance trucks over here are usually done in few, large highway locations that include sleeping areas to comply with driving time limits, and not city gas stations. Fewer locations to equip, making it easier to upgrade for fast charging.
3. Our 18-wheelers are usually smaller and lighter, and while road trains are used in e.g. Sweden, those are only for long-haul with the associated lower tire wear of driving at a constant speed and angle. Short-haul is usually just a light 3-axle box euro truck. But yes, there will be an increased tire-wear which offsets the fuel savings a bit.
Diesel at the pump in California costs about 10% more than regular gas, and contains 20% more energy (volumetrically) so it's ~10% cheaper than gas. At the peak of last year's fuel price spike, diesel in California was $7.011 and regular gas was $6.438, a 9% difference, still in favor of diesel.
The rest of your collection of sentence fragments is also a bunch of nonsense, but this is the easiest factual point to rebut.
People who need to drive 100's of miles daily in diesel vehicles are having to pass on their increased energy costs to the customers ...which then equals fewer customers.
I cited California because it 'leads the way' in idiotic legislation by out of touch bureaucrats and to some degree influences European environmentalists who are eager to leverage the conceptual idea this is going well. i do know a long distance trucker in Sweden who regularly drives Skorna>Stockholm. I'd be interested to know battery performance on an EV Heavy truck in winter there, at least it's relatively flat.
Gasoline and diesel in California was around $3 3 years ago which has a huge supply chain impact on the overall economy. your suggestion that heavy vehicles going through a lot of tires is 'a bunch of nonsense' demonstrates a lack of real world experiences. Truck tire pollution is a very real problem and heavier EV battery powered vehicles are exacerbating this problem, particularly due to the different torque characteristics of EVs which are similar to diesel engines.
https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/pollution-tyre-wear-...
That's just an exercise in cherry-picking a starting date. 15 years ago the price of diesel fuel in California was $5. And California is hardly distinguished by its change in nominal fuel price from 2020 to 2023. Gulf coast states for example saw an increase from $2.18 to $3.58.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E...
It is loosely correct to say that on-road diesel prices have been about the same in inflation-adjusted dollars for the last 20 years.