Ha! Today I Learned.
I don’t much like cars (long story, involves too many funerals), don’t drive much, and haven’t bought a new-ish car in over a decade. I wasn’t aware of the vanishing spare tires.
2 Likes
Don’t blame ya.
1 Like
It’s ironic that in the last thread I made a comment about the fact that “batteries” (packs or modules) need to be standardized to some degree and got the usual push back of stagnating progress and creativity. Basically that Tesla uses a standard off the shelf 18650 cell, while the special sauce is all in how they build their modules / packs. So obviously we can’t regulate that at all or it would be unfair or something…
1 Like
Seems like that’s a better fit for the technology for sure. Any lightly used trail with lots of sunlight. Less wear and tear overall I would think.
1 Like
Am I the only one who would love an electric truck, but have no need for the extra cab? I loved my old s10 or small toyota I had back in the day and would love a truck of that size again.
Edit: looks like the Canoo or the alpha wolf may suit my needs.
6 Likes
Battery swap stations have been tried here and there, including one big effort in Israel and some current efforts in San Fransisco and China, but I’m personally doubtful that it will ever come to anything for privately owned passenger cars for the reasons outlined in this article:
If standardized battery packs make sense anywhere, it’s probably for long-haul electric big rig trucks. Currently they don’t exist but that provides the potential for manufacturers working on designs to agree on a common form factor. But cars are just too varied in their designs (in many cases even different models by the same manufacturer) and we’re only moving further in the direction of having battery packs integrated into the rest of the car’s structure for stiffness and reduced weight.
3 Likes
The Allpha Wolf looks like a Hot Wheels creation.
And the Canoo looks like an anime creation. Both excellent selling points for me 
1 Like
I think I’d like to be able to tow as well, and I’m looking pretty hard at the Ford F150 Lightning for just this reason. Your post on it swayed me in that direction:
3 Likes
Possibly like this prototype from the German caravan manufacturer Dethleffs?
Apparently the motors reduce the towing load enough that the camper doesn’t appreciably reduce the towing vehicle’s range. Of course, this is at much lower speeds- in much of Europe you’re not allowed to exceed 90 km/h while towing.
4 Likes
I’m honestly surprised you would get pushback on this forum about regulation or anything that goes against Tesla. We have a very well frequented (and justified) Fuck Elon Musk thread after all…
2 Likes
One potential solution might be to power the trailer, too. I’m thinking along the lines of the way that old trains were dragged by the engine, but modern trains deliver power to the bogeys of each individual carriage.
Electric motors can be small and easily installed, used for acceleration and braking, and the bed of the trailer could sandwich a fair amount of batteries. Electrical hookup for the lights can also be used to give the driver control of the trailer’s motors (heck, the connection for the brakelights themselves can tell the trailer when to brake).
I’m not suggesting someone jerry-rig this, but it seems like an obvious companion product for the new wave of EV trucks. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if a battery-assist trailer would be beneficial for ICE truck drivers, as well.
[edit] I posted this before I saw others had already suggested the same thing.
2 Likes
Your whatifs about battery technology are unfounded - better tech is already here, and it’s just a case of commercial uptake. Car manufacturers are also already working on (or in some cases, have already integrated) means to upgrade a vehicles batteries as new standards become available.
1 Like
I find your points intriguing, as it leads to thinking about how maybe, just maybe, we can differentiate between “hot-swappable” and “cold-swappable” batteries. In other words, a vehicle has two types of batteries: one that is standardised and can be easily swapped out via a port in just a few minutes, the others less standardised and distributed around the frame of the vehicle. Swapping those out is doable only by a mechanic, and takes a few hours.
I also think you are on the same track as I, with swappable batteries making sense on long-haul vehicles. I would even go one step further and think something like trailers standardised upon the shipping container, a frame with the container above, the battery below, and independent motors on each wheel. The tractor is then reduced to more of a cabin for the driver and doesn’t need to be such a monster, horsepower-wise.
I could also see hot-swappable batteries coming into play in agriculture, with tractors and harvesters drawing power from Gonks: external battery packs that have their own wheels, and can be programmed to follow at the proper distance to avoid too much cable slack.
1 Like
For truck+trailer combinations above a certain weight, that stops helping much, because the amount of batteries you need to add ends up adding enough of their own weight to counteract much of the range benefit. Will the limits improve with time? Sure. But I don’t know whether it will ever be feasible to get a good range for a battery electric truck towing a trailer. For large commercial trucks, battery electric is unlikely to ever make sense for any battery chemistry - that’s one of the main reasons to expect fuel cells to still have a substantial future in transportation (Which is still a path towards clean transportation, even if we start out with using blue hydrogen and only gradually switch over to renewable-powered electrolysis or whatever). And if we end up having to build out the infrastructure for that anyway it’s probably going to make sense for many people to have that option for their non-commercial trucks.
Still, I’m very glad to see electric truck options coming out. There are a lot of people who could get everything they need out of something like this.
Edit to add: FWIW, when towing longer distances, even with a gas vehicle, I see 80- 100 miles remaining range as the point where I need to find a place to stop and refuel, because in much of the country it’s not uncommon to be 50 miles from the next gas station (or at least, the next one where I can comfortably maneuver a truck and trailer).
1 Like
Obligatory “Hydrogen is the fuel of the future! (And always will be)” joke…
There are other options for long-haul trucking that may come into fruition ranging from a network of battery swap stations along highways (more practical to come up with a common standard for big rigs than for passenger cars), overhead catenary cables in dedicated truck lanes, 100% renewable biofuels, etc. I don’t think that hydrogen is a sure thing.
1 Like
Of course it’s not a sure thing. I’d be just as happy to see any other sustainably produced biofuel or chemically synthesized fuel scale up. But hydrogen is a more plausible option than batteries for large trucks. Even with battery swapping stations, you’re adding significant extra time to a trip due to frequent stops, likely on the order of every hour, and even if you could switch to lithium-air batteries (sorta the theoretical limit for energy density for a battery, essentially burning metal) it’s still not clear you can get enough energy per unit of battery weight to make it viable. You end up with heavier trucks, which have lower range and are less energy efficient, compared to trucks that can refuel with a chemical fuel. Those heavier trucks, in turn, create much higher wear on roads as well.
I’m also not too positive on plans requiring significant changes to the design of nationwide highway infrastructure, with swapping stations needing to be positioned more frequently along highways (requiring many new ramps and rest areas). The US is terrible at updating infrastructure, we spend way more per mile than the rest of the world on whatever we attempt. Seems way more feasible for Pilot and Flying J and so on to roll out hydrogen or other clean fuel filling stations along major trucking routes and expand from there.
Edit to add: right now we’re in the phase of experimenting with a bunch of options to see what works well, but in the long run the economics works out better if we standardize on a single solution, whatever it turns out to be. I suspect fuel cells are a stronger candidate for that end point. The theoretical efficiency of a fuel cell is way higher than for any fuel that gets burned, you get to decouple the fuel from both the power source used to produce need (no need for specific feedstocks) and (to a large degree) from the design of the vehicle that uses it, and you get to leave your existing infrastructure (and existing ways of handling the logistics of shipping) mostly intact.
And RE: the “always will be” joke, I agree it’s obligatory. But it’s mostly a matter of people ignoring how long it actually, usually, historically takes to bring truly, fundamentally new kinds of technologies to commercial readiness. It took about 80 years to go from the first incandescent light to a commercially viable model, and it’s major competition was the candle. It took about a century to go from the invention of carbon fiber to its commercial use in composites. It took about 90 years to go from the first lab demonstration of silicon carbide electronics to their use in power electronics. We’ve only been working on, say, fusion reactors for about 70 years, and we’ve frankly never spent more than a few billion dollars a year on it, which just plain isn’t enough to succeed.
And any new fuel has to compete with a century of engineering progress in ICEs, so why would we expect to be able to make the switch faster when we’re still investing way more in R&D on ICEs than any of the alternatives?
3 Likes
I’m not especially bullish on battery swap stations either, but what do you mean by “many new ramps”? Freightliner has an electric semi truck available for sale next year that they say can do 250 miles on a charge, fully loaded. It’s pretty rare for a stretch of major road in the US to not have off-ramps or filling stations spaced within a 250 mile range. Still not enough to be practical for all trucking applications but the ranges has only been getting better.
Don’t forget that hydrogen comes with plenty of infrastructure challenges of its own. Virtually none of the hydrogen currently sold for vehicles in the US is even renewable, with nearly all of it on the market being derived from fossil fuels. Yeah, it’s definitely possible to make it with solar powered hydrolysis, but nobody is doing that at any scale yet. And if you’re considering the total energy efficiency starting with the power to do the hydrolysis to generate the hydrogen, fuel cells are nowhere near as efficient as batteries. One study I saw showed that when you look at the total energy from the electric grid that actually gets applied to propulsion of the wheels, battery vehicles are about 70-80% efficient while fuel cell vehicles are 25-35% efficient.
1 Like
For me, this post was useful in my decision making. I own a Tesla, and the main reason I’d want an EV truck is to haul a trailer. This doesn’t make me go “oh wow, EV trucks will never be able to tow well”, it makes me go “Oh wow, EV trucks can’t tow well yet”. That’s a useful distinction: I’m going to wait until the next generation to seriously consider dumping 60k+ on an EV truck.
3 Likes
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.
1 Like
