That’s fair. I was thinking more about the 80-100 mile range of the Rivian when towing and maybe 50 mile spacing between fueling stations in many parts of the country, which wouldn’t really work. That said, I still think without battery swapping or really serious electric grid upgrades you can’t recharge a commercial truck fast or often enough to be useful outside of local deliveries or use within large facilities (which is a real need electric big trucks can fill!). Even with battery swapping, you’re not going to be able to use more than about 80% of that range, since you have to find a place to stop with some leeway, so that means stopping every ~3 hrs if you stop with 50 miles remaining. That Freightliner takes 90 minutes for an 80% recharge, which means on the road it’ll be charging about an hour for every 2 hours of drive time. Plus, I didn’t see in any of the articles I found if that 250 mile range is empty or under full load?
I’m aware of the infrastructure challenges for hydrogen and the inefficiencies of current ways of producing and using same. And about the fact that yes, making and consuming hydrogen will always waste energy relative to a battery. But the renewables for hydrolysis angle applies to the electricity used to charge a battery, too, so I am ignoring that, as it’s something we have to fix regardless.
My main point, though, was about the battery weight. That Freightliner has a 475 kWh battery, which depending on the exact battery they use probably weighs on the order of 6 tons. That means even fully loaded you’re eating about 10%-15% of your charge driving the battery around. And that percentage grows quickly as you try to add more batteries to increase the range. Also, you’d hit weight limits when hauling less cargo, though I don’t know how important that is in practice.
