I wonder what kind of charging speed these will have. I'm guessing a refuse truck doesn't need to charge very fast as it sleeps in a depot, but a delivery truck might do a few shifts a day so that requires fast charging.
The usage model they're targeting is trucks that return to a depot overnight. Local delivery and drayage routes have ample time to charge.
Honestly one of the bigger issues is upgrading the electrical service at the depots to support the chargers. I worked on a prototype EV truck, and they had to software-limit the charger when first installed, because running flat-out it could draw more power than the entire rest of the prototype facility. They had to get the utility out to drop a new transformer before they could unleash the charger's full power.
The power you buy in a few gallons of diesel fuel is simply staggering.
> The power you buy in a few gallons of diesel fuel is simply staggering.
1 Liter per second ~= 38.6 megawatts, for diesel.
I’ve never bothered paying attention to the flow rate in a fuel station, but it’s really fortunate that electric cars are fundamentally more efficient than combustion engines.
> Image result for gas station pump flow rate
Light passenger vehicle pump up to about 50 litres (13 US gallons) per minute (the United States limits this to 10 US gallons (38 litres) per minute); pumps serving trucks and other large vehicles have a higher flow rate, up to 130 litres (34 US gallons) per minute in the UK. and 40 US gallons (150 litres) in the US.
So roughly 80 megawatts coming out of that diesel nozzle. Most impressive!
Assuming 1/3 efficiency (because ICE) a gasoline pump (34ga/min) has a power output of a little over 8000hp or 6mw which comes out to around 4000amps assuming normal 480v 3ph.
It's the new version of the old 'the fastest data rate is a truck full of harddrives'. Now we can say 'for transferring energy, you can't beat a petrol pump pouring fuel'
If you operate a fleet of trucks, battery swapping becomes a lot more viable because you don't have to worry about swapping your good, new battery for a worn-out old battery.
If you have a fleet of trucks, having battery swapping batteries also means you need to have more batteries then trucks. Meaning extra capital cost.
Secondly, battery swapping architecture of a vehicle makes it significantly heavier specially wants you consider battery packs or even cells with structural loads to make the vehicle lighter. For one personal luxury car that might be fine, but if you are operating 150+ trucks for 20 years, that adds up to a lot of missed payloads.
This is exactly why Tesla, dropped this idea. JB Struble just gave a nice analysis of this at a Standford talk.
Also, trucks, will spend some time on break and more time loading and unloading. During that time you can charge them or top them off.
Tesla is the last company I would look to for advice about the future of the market for haulage. Weight is one point against battery packs, but easy refill/swap and maintenance are two points in their favour. When you start to deal with volume commercial vehicles the cost of maintenance and repair adds up and is considered a part of doing business. If you try to tell me that your load-bearing conformal battery packs that are critical to making the truck move are an item my depot mechanics cannot touch or repair I am going to show you the door.
If my truck are loading/unloading they are probably doing it at customer facilities so charging is unlikely to be an option. If they are loading/unloading at my facility then I can swap the battery pack at the same time.
> Tesla is the last company I would look to for advice about the future of the market for haulage.
Funny then that many large companies disagree with you have have order literally 100s of electric trucks from Tesla.
> If you try to tell me that your load-bearing conformal battery packs that are critical to making the truck move
For a truck, you are gone have body-on-frame anyway so the battery would probably not be structural. And it wouldn't be 'critical' to make the truck move, it would be a weight optimization.
> If my truck are loading/unloading they are probably doing it at customer facilities so charging is unlikely to be an option.
Lots of companies transport thing between their own facilities and lots of companies have long term costumers. Adding the charging equipment is relativity cheap and could be built to you.
> If they are loading/unloading at my facility then I can swap the battery pack at the same time.
Go check out how complex these battery swapping robots actually are. Having those at your facility is very costly and need a lot of space. The are prone to break down because they mechanical machines are moving around heavy batteries.
Also, so far nobody has even demonstrated this type of battery swap device for a large truck. Current system drop the battery from under the vehicle, this however is not possible in a body-on-frame construction, and a different method would have to be found. Non of the electric truck vendors have announced or even talked about such a system.
There was a promo/concept video a few years back, from Tesla I think, showing cars pulling up into a battery swap station and a door slid open in the floor beneath the car and a contraption automatically swapped out the battery for a fully charged one without the driver leaving the car. Not sure whatever came of that concept.
I wonder if battery swapping is a red herring which always will be talked about but never realized?
Hugely increased complexity since the battery needs to have all mounting points easily accessed in any condition, rain, snow, ice buildup, whatever, from the outside and all the other accessing geometry forcing the design of the entire vehicle to allow for it.
Combine this with battery technology improving allowing faster charging speeds lessening the impact. Like phones fast-charging today. No point having a spare battery when 15-30 mins in a charger easily gives you all the hours you need.
Where I live we've had completely electric busses on a line for a few years now (Actually Volvos). Very different use case but also commercial vehicles with similar run hours. They have automatic over-head charging at the ends, filling up enough with a 10 minute stop to run throughout the day. Some longer lines are using hybrids with the same charging technology. They run most of the line entirely on battery power, only kicking in a smaller diesel when needed.
Maybe battery swapping makes sense for some specialized applications? But then I would guess just straight biofuels simply takes the cake, although eating the cost penalty.
“ZES (Zero Emission Services) supplies interchangeable energy containers for new and existing inland vessels. These containers – called ZESPacks – are charged using renewable power.”
Wow! Thank you for showing me that, really piqued my interest as a commercial maritime nerd on the side!
I've seen other more permanent container solutions retrofitted on ships, though mostly passenger ferries with set schedules. Also only as auxiliary power allowing to eg. maneuver when docking without having to start another genset or capture excess energy from required gensets running in inefficient ranges.
I honestly don't see the issue for industrial type machinery. It's not like some Tesla that has to have a sleek body and beautiful styling. Trucks are already big boxes that carry giant boxes behind them.
Why should one of those boxes not be a giant 300kwh battery pack that they swap out at the multitude of weigh stations they have to stop at along the highway already? Just run massive power to the weigh stations, put in a few massive DC chargers and some forklifts.
Hell you could go further and have other parts of the drivetrain in there -- the controller, the charger unit, the DC to DC converter, etc. Then you have an upgrade path for the trucks as the tech improves.
Who don’t we do this? Driver makes it to the way station. Has a chat with the next driver while refilling and that driver takes it for the next four/six hours.
That /is/ how "we" do it with trains. The difference is that long-distance truckers generally live in their cabs for weeks on end, so they can't easily hand it off to another driver.
Ok. So then the lorry and the driver stay behind and the lorry/payload get switched. But apparently there is no such need for speed for road transport and otherwise they would use a plane?
Long distance trucking will be the last to go electric for a variety of reasons, weight being one of the biggest. We're mostly talking local delivery here.
Yes it is. That is why Tesla dropped it, if you actually think threw it, it makes no sense for most cases.
JB Struble just gave a great analysis of this at a Standford talk where he explained why the dropped it.
It actually makes the vehicle more complex and importantly heavier.
It also prevents further improvement, Tesla just showed of their new Cell-to-Structure concept, where the cells themselves have load on them. This fundamentally is incompatible with fast swap. Such a architecture is really great because it negates the 'penalty' of carrying around a battery compared to an ICE vehicle. In fact you might end up lighter, because you don't have the heavy engine and the battery is not so much heavier then the structural steel you would have used otherwise.
You can charge trucks during breaks, or during loading and unloading.
It wasn't just a concept - Tesla actually commercialized battery swapping because by doing so you got some California subsidy. Tesla drivers who applied could do a battery swap in 7 minutes at their one swap station. It was discontinued when the subsidy requirement ended.
I think standards about battery swapping will evolve which will make infrastructure around that to develop easier, quicker and be more interchangeable.
Largely depends on the neighborhood and existing infrastructure. My suburb is reasonably compact and Amazon and UPS have large facilities at the edge of town, right off the freeway. FedEx still has to process everything through a facility in the city center. It's a 30 mile RT for them just to begin delivering packages here.
I'm sure this will change soon but until it does, there's still a lot of wasted transit time.
