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> center-seating makes visibility, toll booths and logbook checks a chore. side mirrors are static and too high.

What was the upside of this design decision? Why did they decide to be different here?

Presumably the same reason all Teslas have weird door handles: "Oooh, different!" Despite the fact that they're kind of miserable to use and less reliable than a standard handle.

Serial Chesterson's Fence violators due to arrogance and ego.

The door handles probably shave a percent or two battery life due to aerodynamics; most EVs have recessed door handles of some sort now.

From what I've read, since door handles generally are placed in the path of turbulent air that has beed disturbed by the mirrors, it doesn't really make much of a difference.

Most door handles are considerably lower than the mirrors. Door handles are normally several inches down from the window line while mirrors are usually at or above that line.

The Mach E's front door handle things are practically at the window line to take advantage of being in the mirror turbulence area, a handle several inches down probably wouldn't be in it very much.

I've read this trope many times but honestly I don't buy it. At highway speeds conventional door handles, which are absolutely tiny in frontal area and have fairly low drag shape to begin with, are behind the side mirror turbulence anyway. I wish some high budget Youtuber would test this in a wind tunnel so we can put it to rest.

Do you have a source for this claim? Many EVs I see on the road, especially performance ones, do not have recessed doorhandles.

Approaching this from a US perspective:

Pretty much all Teslas have recessed doorhandles.

The Mach E has buttons to open the doors. The Lightning has regular door handles.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5/6 have recessed door handles.

The Mercedes EQS has recessed door handles.

The Polestar 1 and 3 have recessed, but the Polestar 2 does not.

The Volvo XC40 has recessed handles. The XC30 and XC90 have regular handles.

VW's EVs tend to have regular door handles.

Seeing as how Teslas make up the majority of EVs on the roads in the US, and they all have recessed handles, by definition in the US the majority of EVs have recessed handles. By number of models, its kind of mixed but it seems there are more models with recessed handles than regular handles.

The claim was for the aerodynamics, not what models have which.

a narrower aerodynamic entry was my reaction to seeing it

> Why did they decide to be different here?

Hubris.

Sounds like Musk thought it was cool and told the engineers to do it this way and practicality and commonality be darned

What sounds like that?

The decision to put the driver's seat in the center of the cab

Yeah, that's the topic, but where did you hear the story told that way?

"Sounds like" doesn't mean that.

I imagine it improves aerodynamics a fair bit. Also it means they don't need separate LHD/RHD designs.

His all time favorite car (except teslas now i guess) was the MacLaren F1, which also has center-seating. Not saying this is the actual reason, but i thought i'd mention the coincidence.

His all time favorite car (except teslas now i guess) was the MacLaren F1, which also has center-seating. Not saying this is the actual reason, but knowing him it doesn't seem far fetched.

Maybe. Though that had that layout to be like an F1 race car which is kind of a different use case, hence roughly zero other road cars copying that.

techbros thinking they can solve all of the world's problems that they actually have zero experience dealing with?

> Why did they decide to be different here?

A lack of anyone to stop them from doing otherwise.

And to think, people demonize standardization and regulation...

Tech convinced itself that a disruption is something positive no matter what.

Form over function.

Model X doors would be my response.

coming from industry, ive really wondered the same thing. Eagle tugs (the little trucks that push your airplane at the airport) zamboni machines, you name it...anything industrial designed to move a load or require a professional driver just doesnt do this. the only stuff that seems content with center seating is some models of steam roller and front-end loaders. mining trucks are all offset seating, and garbage trucks have offset seating on both the left and right side (or as a slidable steering wheel pedal combo.) F1 racecars have a center seat, because its the only passenger.

center seat tesla trucks mean i cannot take an apprentice. Center seat tesla trucks also mean i cant test in a tesla truck for my license or any inspections. it means the entire truck has to be tested on a closed track to get your license, just like construction equipment.

Farm tractors are all center seating. John Deere sort of things.

> If you want to see something I think the actual trucking industry is getting excited about, check out Edison motors. They're running a hybrid diesel/electric design that would work wonderfully for things like clean-air city driving

Serial hybrid seems like a great solution for trucking, since you don't need to oversize the engine in order to cover high torque needs (the electric motors would handle that), and during flat highway drives the generator could top off the battery using a narrower RPM range.

Long distance trucking is also a place where I think green hydrogen fed fuel cell trucks could work, since range would a non-issue, and also the hinterlands, which long distance trucks travel through, is where most of the renewables are.

If the renewables can be fed to an electrolyzer nearby, which supplies a hydrogen fueling station nearby, then you don't need to build much transmission/transportation to get the hydrogen to the trucks.

This requires electrolyzer cost to drop a lot (and FC Semis to be available), but all the technology components of the system exist in some form.

It's the model that trains have been using for a long time now.

AFAIK, diesel hybrid locomotives don't have traction batteries though.

Many actually have big radiators to dissipate energy regenerated while going downhill by their electric traction motors.

Hopefully, as batteries get less expensive this changes.

There is always a counter example, and the counter example to trains not charging batteries is the infinity train:

The article is paywalled and Googling infinity train gets me a cartoon show. Care to summarize?

Paywalled? Apologies. I wouldn't have posted it if it was paywalled for me. I'm not a subscriber.

Here is one (I hope) that isn't paywalled: https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-starts-work-on-world-f... Failing that try googling "infinity train battery". It was a popular story at the time. As the story says, at least two companies are doing it in Australia.

The amount of destruction these things can cause when they lose control of all that energy is impressive: https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2... and https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2... They can not be stopped in a controlled fashion once they get going. The latter one cost BHP $800M from memory.

Some 3rd electric rail based transit systems have regenerative braking that feeds power back into the electric rail [1], which is used by other trains that are drawing power at that moment. I don't know if they use batteries to store excess, however.

1. https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2016/news20160826

If you want electric trucks it seems like the no-brainer is (in addition to lot tenders) local delivery vans. I already see electric Amazon vans everywhere. You go out, make the day's deliveries, then come back and charge while docked. It's an obvious fit.

Long haul trucking is the worst fit for today's EV tech.

Building more freight rail and electrifying it is another option for (some) long haul transport that isn't discussed enough.

> Building more freight rail and electrifying it is another option for (some) long haul transport that isn't discussed enough.

Most are, it's just that the electric part is generated by a diesel engine. That being said, they're already several times more efficient per ton than a semi is.

>it's just that the electric part is generated by a diesel engine

while technically correct, not a useful observation

What’s the proposition to “electrify” trains? Batteries or a live wire everywhere there’s train tracks?

Both seem really inefficient to me with our current technology.

Yes, around the world electric freight locomotives are powered by overhead lines, and more occasionally by a third rail. It is a mature technology and the US is an exception among industrialized countries (China, all of Europe, Russia, Australia, Japan, etc) in that they use only diesel for freight.

>professional drivers can not lose 30 minutes every 400 miles on these routes to charge, they will miss all their drop times.

Except, that isn't how it would have to work. It would make sense for the company to pay the driver for charging time. In BC a 400 mile drive would cost C$514 in diesel ($2/l, 40l/100km), or $112 in electricity (at 1.25kwhr/km and $0.14/kwhr), so presumably the driver could be paid $100 for the 30 min charging stop, and the company will still save $300 for each 400 mile leg.

Does this interfere with (a) regulation on max time a driver can work, and (b) just in time delivery times etc?

Not a lorry driver so just asking.

And some of the stops would have had to occur anyway because of bladders, drive time regulations, etc.

You bring up a good point that fuel savings may be sufficient to compensate drivers for extra time with plenty left over.

The jugs of yellow fluid discarded along highways tell a different story.

The real center-seating advantage

10h on, 8h off. A 400 mile trip does not require off-time or stops unless somehow you get so snarled in traffic that you're averaging less than 40mph. Drivers are really good at avoiding needing to stop the rig for bathroom stops.

I love how your reply uses real numbers and calculations , and is still down voted, because people don’t like the reality those numbers represent.

I’m always scared when seemingly intelligent people disagree with math and facts.

It's not about pay, it's about delivery windows. The driver gets paid nothing relative to the cost of late delivery. Companies also aren't going to hire the trucker that quotes an extra day because of charging.

What I'm saying is that it can be factored in. In this particular instance (PepsiCo and the other companies mentioned) we're not talking about truckers buying electric trucks or quoting for jobs. We're talking about companies like PepsiCo buying electric trucks and hiring drivers to drive them.

And 30 mins of charging every 8 hours is unlikely to significantly change the delivery time anyway.

About 50% of truckers in the US are owner operators, meaning about half of all truckers on the road own their truck and as such buy (electric) trucks and quote for jobs.

Companies are in the business of making money, if a private contractor is cheaper (and faster) than their in-house logistics who do you think is going to be axed?

For instance, in the Netherlands a driver can only drive for 4.5hr before having a 45min mandatory break.

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/werktijden/vraag-en...

I'm not sure OTR long haul was really ever part of Tesla's plan at least for this generation of trucks. The trucks are not designed as sleeper cabs, so regional was the only reasonable target.

The only solution to the charging time lag is swappable batteries: truck pulls in, drained battery lifted out with automated crane, charged battery swapped in. It would take some logistics and coordination, as well as a universal standard for heavy truck batteries, but that's what's making it work in China, although also as you note, long-haul trucking is the hardest sector.

> "The second storyline is that battery swapping is also helping electrifying China truck sales. BNEF analyst Siyi Mi recently compiled data on all the battery-swappable vehicles sold in the country and found that while swapping remains a niche technology for passenger vehicles, almost half of all heavy battery electric trucks sold last year in China had swappable batteries. That’s up from 34% in 2021. Many of these trucks are operating in industrial sites, port warehouses, mines and steelmaking factories. Lighter commercial vehicles with swappable batteries also are being used in urban deliveries, an area where BNEF expects to see more growth as better economics and tightened emission requirements draw more attention to electric models. Long-haul trucking will be the last, and most difficult, segment to tackle."

https://about.bnef.com/blog/chinas-clean-truck-surprise-defi...

Instead of swappable batteries, would swappable trucks work? A relay of short-range, easily swappable trucks?

It's actually the same problem, ownership.

Who owns these batteries? Who owns these trucks? Who eats the cost on battery/truck degradation?

If I pull in with a battery that has 70% of it's original max capacity and get a brand new battery with 99% of it's capacity how do you fairly assess that value add to the truck?

Not seriously suggesting it, but what if the cab was easily swappable & the underlying truck was semi-standard? Still similar issues of ownership but at least truckers can bring their home with them, which seems to be important.

Silly yes. The 90's vision of the skateboard platform has stuck with me a lot. I'd imagined rolling lounges & other passenger vehicles cabins being a way to start decoupling the car, reducing the number of batteries motors and wheels that a town or city had to own in net. The usage cycle of trucks is a lot higher, and the swappability just for sale of switching batteries seems silly, but I couldn't help but see at least one of the core problems of swappability being solved by disaggregation the compartment from the rest here.

Seems like that might have the impact of doubling the money outlay for trucks, though it would work.

The benefit to swappable batteries in a commercial fleet is that you own all of them.

For private use, it is far more difficult. The battery is the single most expensive part of the car- who wants to drive off the lot, then two hours later trade that expensive part for one that is heavily used?

Unless the dealer or manufacturer runs all of the swapping stations, and the purchase of the car doesn't include the battery, the economics are terrible.

OTOH, if the consumer isn't paying the full price to own the battery, then the economics of swapping goes way down unless the consumer pays a hefty deposit on the battery.

Then, private sales become harder as you probably want to be able to authenticate that battery is what it is supposed to be, and not some third party knockoff.

But if you can't swap to a third party battery, the vehicle becomes worthless once those batteries are phased out.

Swapping vehicle batteries has been tried before and abandoned (I think in Israel maybe? I forget) because unless you are operating a commercial fleet where you are willing to invest in buying the extra batteries and owning them yourself (or signing a big fat contact with a manufacturer) it just doesn't make sense.

I think the swapping model is working for taxi drivers in China, but it's a model where the vehicle owner doesn't own the battery, it's more like a lease model. Thus if you do accidentally get a bad battery in a swap, you don't take any loss (other than inconvenience), you just go back and get another one. Matching demand and supply might be a bit tricky, but it's a steadily growning industry in China:

https://restofworld.org/2024/ev-battery-swapping-china/

I know it is a bit of a trope at this point, but another solution is of course just not to do long-haul trucking. Use trains to get to distribution hubs and then have lot tenders and local delivery that just travels less than one battery worth per day.

We already do that where it makes sense. Maybe we could expand the rail network somewhat but at some point things get too fragmented, there aren't enough rail cars going to one place, and the economics break down.

I think the US is very far from that happening. Even increasing the capacity on the existing long lines would be a nice improvement.

Lot tenders are the obvious place to start, so clearly.

Not into trucking, what is a Lot Tender?

It's those tiny little trucks that move loads around the freight depot. They're like the forklifts of the truck world.

It's interesting with the logging thing that in some applications they may be able to get 100% of the power from the weight of the logs coming down the mountains and regenerative breaking https://www.biv.com/news/retail-manufacturing/move-over-tesl...

By the way 30% or so of London busses are diesel hybrid so it works although they are planning to replace them by zero emissions eventually.

Edison is just as much vaporware as any other of the small EV manufacturers. They built a single prototype. They haven't even begun to really deal with supply chain, labor, or service yet.

I think EV's (or similar, maybe hydrogen fuel cell, or carbon neutral methane/lpg; direct or used to charge a battery drive train) will eventually make sense for long haul trucking. In the worst case, route times will adjust, and 5 hour routes will turn into 5:30 routes.

However, they really should look for low hanging fruit and then try to expand out from there. Trucks that are stuck in stop-and-go traffic all the time are an obvious candidate (low MPG / high pollution per mile with diesel engines, and those applications have low aerodynamic drag and are a huge opportunity for regenerative braking).

I think commuter / local event busses are another obvious fit. I've started to see these around:

https://www.vanhool.com/en/vehicles/public-transport/battery...

Even though these are replacing rear-engine diesels, some of the components will be common with semis. It'll help bootstrap the large vehicle battery + motor supply chain and fleet management logistics at the very least.

One thing to note is that they're using standard form factors. There's no reason to couple the vehicle layout to changes in the power train.

My guess is that Tesla's trying to replay the luxury -> midrange -> economy playbook that they used to bootstrap the EV supply chain. I don't see how that strategy will work a second time, since the supply chain has already been bootstrapped.

> In the worst case, route times will adjust, and 5 hour routes will turn into 5:30 routes.

I think you are very seriously underestimating the complexity and economics behind trucking logistics and what a nightmare this would become.

I, also, do thing diesel generators are way to go for trucking.

What do you think about natural gas generators? They could be cheaper and cleaner.

Lot tenders use a significantly different design facilitating frequent entry/exit, don't they?

Very interesting. People like you make this site what it is. Thanks for posting!

Can you explain lot tender? Can't find any info on google.

It's a truck that never leaves the warehouse or "lot". They're just used to rearrange/move trailers.

a/k/a a "yard dog"

They are often built with a single-person cab with windows on all sides and in some of them the seat, pedals, and steering column can pivot around so you can drive backwards without looking over your shoulder.

https://typestrucks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/13.jpg

Moves trailers around a lot. Useful at distribution centers, factories, etc.

Pretty sure this just means moving around trailers on a parking lot / loading lot etc. Because you don't have to warm up the engine, and you aren't far from a plug, you could use these to just reposition the trailers. Also, you are working in close proximity with humans so being zero-emission is more pleasant environment and better for long-term health too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_tractor

> Musk needs to come back to earth. OTR (over the road, long hauls of 1800 miles) is a non-starter and will never work with current technology. professional drivers can not lose 30 minutes every 400 miles on these routes to charge, they will miss all their drop times.

Would it help if instead of charging, do what you do with a toy car - replace the batteries?

They could then charge and be ready for the next truck.

Keep in mind even the battery in a Model S is half a ton, and integrated into the frame of the car...

I mean, technically you could swap out the entire cab every time it needed to be charged. The goal is to get the trailer to the destination, not the cab.

There are several problems with that, you end up with a lot more idle equipment than just the battery pack, you've got to either be constantly switching drivers or drivers have to be constantly switching cabs, you need facilities to swap trailers and charge cabs, etc etc etc.

But tractor trailers already have a convenient modularity built in, is all I'm saying.

Tesla-semi-as-pony-express would be interesting, but isn't really compatible with _selling_ the actual truck as a product; no one wants to swap _their_ truck with someone else's, except the guys with above-average wear on their truck.

The same dynamic limits battery swaps.

What about this? https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event

Or maybe those weren't production cars?

NIO is the only car maker I know of that does battery swapping. Tesla's AFAIK were only a tech demo.

That event was over a decade ago. Those were not production cars, and production at Tesla has moved away from this model and into "structural packs" where the battery pack is major structural component of the frame.

Also, that demo was pretty much there to get some tax subsidies or something. They built the system to comply with the minimum to qualify, and once they got the money they didn't do anything else with it. Those cars weren't really production at all.

That'd work, but then the question is who owns and operates the switch out operation?

Tesla won't want to because they won't want to deal with dead batteries. The trucking companies won't want to because they don't want to deal with dead batteries and the cost to own/operate such specific infra for just their trucks.

By dead batteries do you mean batteries that just need to be recharged, or damaged batteries that can’t be recharged?

The former seems like part of the service, you deal with dead batteries by charging them up and then putting them in the next truck.

The latter is… trickier.

The trickier problem.

Especially since batteries don't (typically) just end up damaged but rather degrade over time. One day the battery can hold 96% of it's original capacity, the next 90%. It's a natural and uneven process for batteries.

True!

A battery that is unusable for trucking could still have a lot of value in a context where the energy density is less important. Infrastructure, for example. But making sure the incentives and ownership are calibrated correctly to make sure they get put into hands where they are useful might be a big problem.

There's also the concern of who owns the batteries and who's responsible for their maintenance. There are lots of states of battery between "good for 100% of rated range" and "dead, doesn't work at all"

A trucking company presumably would not be happy if they stopped at a swap spot and got a battery that's only good for the next 200 mi because of normal battery degradation.

There's also now the problem of who owns the batteries that come off a truck - if the battery swap station is a generic service provider, that suggests that some battery network actually owns the packs themselves - does that mean that the swap station needs to keep that battery around until another participating truck company contracted with the owner of the pack comes around?

That seems very complicated.

Or maybe the swap station is the owner of the packs (think gas station chains) - in which case they can put the battery on any truck that comes next... but that means duplicative swap stations for every battery chain out there. There's only so much land accessible to highways... so even more complicated that way.

The "pull the battery out and charge it" part of the idea is oddly enough the simplest. The logistics and chain of responsibility is far more difficult.

I think the "swap station" idea is pretty close to what we have now and would transition easiest. Fuel deliveries are typically dispatched on a route that will service more than one location (unless it's an emergency drop), so there's already a distributed refueling system in place to be updated.

You're right that it would take multiple swap stations on nearly any given route that doesn't go too far out of an interstate or frequently traveled highway. So smaller towns or out-of-the-way towns will likely be forced to pay higher costs to get the deliveries using a regular fuel-driven truck, at least until they can solve the EV drive distance issue(s).

I think the biggest point of contention over this will be when Mom-n-Pop stores start going under fast due to the barriers of entry to afford so many expensive, large, and very heavy batteries. That's not even considering possible requirements to use specific machines for safety reasons, which I imagine will also jump when Mom-n-Pop try to wing it.

Weigh stations might work. Trucks increasingly roll through on scales that can weigh in motion, but there is a spot to pull off for inspections. This could be a service offered to trucking companies to help make up for loss of fuel taxes.

Some regional routes could work. So long as they are short and involve charging while loading/unloading.

But yeah, long haul was a stupid plan that would have never worked. Not without some massive batteries to kick the range way up to something like 800 miles and infrastructure to allow these trucks to charge overnight.

I just don't think the power density is there currently for trucks.

> Musk needs to come back to earth.

The man doesn't even know where earth IS anymore.

was not aware of existence of "Lot-tenders". I played many hours of euro track simulator so i am pretty legit.

"Lot-tenders" generally refers to services that involve the management and coordination of truck movements within a large parking lot or a distribution center.