The weird exterior many electric cars have is to lower the drag coefficient to increase range. This is especially true for Semis as they have a notoriously bad drag coefficient. The range for the Volvo trucks could be up to 300 km as stated in the article, that is okay for some haul distances but you need serious charging infrastructure if you are going to be charging a Semi every 250 - 300 km. These trucks will probably need 0.8 - 1 MWh batteries.
> The weird exterior many electric cars have is to lower the drag coefficient to increase range.
In Europe vehicle footprint is a big deal and for a box truck, minimizing vehicle footprint (and maximizing capacity) is likely more important than reducing drag. Particularly when you are looking at vehicles which will likely spend most of their time pushing 16+ tons and accelerating and decelerating to speeds around 30 MPH all day long.
> you need serious charging infrastructure if you are going to be charging a Semi every 250 - 300 km.
These trucks aren't designed for long haul/ cross country trips. There won't be charging every 250 km, they will go out, do their job, come home and park on a charger.
About 15 years ago I rebuilt an old golf cart. What I learned was in the late 90's better motor controls lead to a resurgence of electric golf carts especially for fleets. In most use cases electric is better logistically. The electric ones just run and run and they don't require handling gasoline and oil. It's really quick for an employee to plug the golf carts in at night. Pain in the ass to run around with gas cans. Not to mention having to store fuel on site.
Reason conversion to electric happened earlier for golf carts was electric golf carts only have about 4-5kwh worth of batteries. Interestingly historically lead acid batteries are about $100-150 per kwr. Which is close to where automotive grade lion batteries are now.
So no surprise that delivery trucks are converting to electric. They have the exact some scenario going on.
A friend of mine runs a business servicing fork-lifts and similar vehicles. Mostly old propane or diesel powered fork lifts. When people ask him for recommendations about replacing a dead machine, he recommends they go electric due to reliability. It's a bit counter to his self-interests because they do require a fraction of the maintenance.
He also owns several electric golf-carts he's tunes up for speed and light 4WD.
When the Prius came out I looked at the drive train and it seemed obvious that the transmission on those things should and appears to be very reliable. It's a planetary gear set and two electric motors.
Fixed gears and electric motors life spans are between 25,000 and 50,000 hours. Vs less than 10,000 hours for a piston engine.
Everything about cars is designed around that fact that the engine is shot after 200-250,000 miles. Would not surprise me if eventually the expected life of an EV will end up being 2 to 3 times longer.
Footprint is at least partially due to regulations. EU regulations are much stricter with dimensions, whereas in the US the limit is more the weight.
Technical development might have some impact as well. I remember as a kid many trucks needing bigger engines (e.g. sand or concrete transport) had the cab-behind-engine layout, but nowadays those are more or less completely gone. Maybe turbochargers and intercoolers allowed a sufficiently powerful engine in the cab-above-engine layout?
If that’s the case, they’ll make a single 300 km trip or day. I doubt that the business case for that is strong. With autonomous Semis on the horizon, the potential reduction in costs with the scaling of hauling in km / day will drive costs down. 300 km a day won’t be competitive in that space.
For a buyer of semis, the cost of running one is arguably the most important factor. Producers need to focus on $ / km and there range is quite important (as well as charging infrastructure)
> If that’s the case, they’ll make a single 300 km trip or day. I doubt that the business case for that is strong.
You might have heard of UPS? FedEx? Amazon? Maybe you've had a contractor work on your home or business?
All of these businesses operate on less than 180 miles round trips per day typically inside the US. In Europe distances tend to be even shorter.
Semis are by nature long haul. It's rare to see semis pulling 40 foot trailers through urban areas even in the US. Semis are usually limited to long haul or short haul freight from industrial or agricultural areas. The Volvo trucks are designed to operate locally and it's a huge market.
> For a buyer of semis, the cost of running one is arguably the most important factor.
There is definitely a market for semis—particularly in the US—but it's a vastly different market than what this targets.
> All of these businesses operate on less than 180 miles round trips per day typically inside the US. In Europe distances tend to be even shorter.
Yes but you are referring to the small urban trucks used in last mile deliveries. The article mentions heavy duty trucks. Even in the last mile delivery case, a limited 300km range is a problem because that means the same truck cannot be shared by workers in following shifts. Or maybe operate autonomously 24/7.
> Yes but you are referring to the small urban trucks used in last mile deliveries. The article mentions heavy duty trucks.
We don't have to guess. If you go to Volvo's site, you can see exactly what sort of trucks they are talking about. We're talking about:
=> "A two-axle truck with a gross vehicle weight up to 16 tonnes and an excellent working environment for the driver. Volvo Trucks can deliver complete vehicles for urban transport like deliveries."
AND
=> "A three-axle truck with a gross vehicle weight up to 27 tonnes and a comfortable working environment for the driver. Volvo Trucks can deliver complete vehicles for demanding types of urban transport like waste collection, light construction transports and deliveries."
> Even in the last mile delivery case, a limited 300km range is a problem because that means the same truck cannot be shared by workers in following shifts.
Pretty much all delivery companies have sub 12 hour routes which run during business hours and into the evening. There is very little demand for package delivery at 2am. Likewise, construction is a 9-5 sort of job. Garbage collection (which is specifically mentioned) is almost always a once/ per day route.
I'm sure there is demand for autonomous 24/7 vehicles out there, but there are also plenty of commercial vehicles which are parked over night as well.
> => "A two-axle truck with a gross vehicle weight up to 16 tonnes and an excellent working environment for the driver. Volvo Trucks can deliver complete vehicles for urban transport like deliveries."
This is still significantly heavier than what most courier companies like FedEx and DHL use; within Europe most use Ford Transits and similar, which have a maximum gross weight of 3.5t (this is partly due to licensing; these vehicles can be driven on a normal "car" driving license).
I'm not entirely sure what you are saying here, that Volvo doesn't know what they are talking about? You'd think after decades in this industry Volvo knows who their target market is.
I don't live in Europe, but I'm inclined to take Volvo at face value on this.
You two appear to be talking past each other. When Volvo says deliveries they likely don't mean residential deliveries in the typical P700/P800/P1000/P1200 package cars that people associate with UPS, and the analogous models at FedEx. The two-axle Volvo truck is comparable to a Freightliner M2 106, a straight-truck, not a package car. And the Volvo truck has a maximum GVWR of 16 tonnes, the final configuration would be lower, and you could operate it without a CDL. The poster is correct about licensing requirements. I do not have a CDL, but I can drive the straight trucks and package cars because they are under the 26,000lbs GVWR limit in my state.
> The two-axle Volvo truck is comparable to a Freightliner M2 106, a straight-truck, not a package car. And the Volvo truck has a maximum GVWR of 16 tonnes, the final configuration would be lower, and you could operate it without a CDL. The poster is correct about licensing requirements. I do not have a CDL, but I can drive the straight trucks and package cars because they are under the 26,000lbs GVWR limit in my state.
Note that within the EU, in general "large goods vehicle" licenses cover everything over 3.5 tonnes, so these Volvo trucks are _well_ into that category. Package delivery companies avoid such large vehicles for last-mile deliveries.
But yes, two-axle trucks like what Volvo is proposing do of course see heavy usage for deliveries in commercial/industrial settings. Most smaller supermarkets are supplied by such trucks, for example, especially within cities (where loading bays are rare).
You know I saw his post and I thought... hmm maybe he's right. Then you go and confirm that we aren't talking past each other. You just don't seem to get that there is indeed demand for this kind of truck for local use.
Again, look at Volvo's site. They understand this market, they've been in it for 50+ years.
No, we're not talking about long haul trucking, which is done with tractors. To use an American example, the two-axle truck could be used for intra-city moving, like U-Haul. Speaking with my commercial customers, they also do their own intra-city deliveries of plumbing supplies and HVAC/appliances. Amazon runs two workers in a box truck for irregular packages. Furniture companies use box trucks for intra-city deliveries. Document shredding companies could use these trucks. Landscaping companies use trucks like the Isuzu NQR. Look around you at next time you're in a city and make a note of what trucks you see. That's what Volvo is targeting here
Deliveries as a segment is not exclusively UPS/DHL/etc. package delivery to end consumers. At least where I live there's plenty of small trucks doing deliveries from regional warehouses to various shops.
> If that’s the case, they’ll make a single 300 km trip or day. I doubt that the business case for that is strong.
Europe is much denser when comapared to US. You can do a lot within 300KM in Europe. Volvo openly states that the trucks are "to be used for regional transport and urban construction operations in Europe".
The trucks in question and the possible range is very well suited to this kind of operation.
Also, there's another important factor: Noise. Some European countries are more sensitive to noise than others. The Netherlands and Sweden comes to my mind.
These trucks will be a huge win on that front because a 44 tonne truck is not exactly silent, especially under load.
I live in Norway and I can tell you, 300 km will not suffice. The thing is, when you have other trucks on the market with more range (e.g. Tesla-Semi), and likely, much better charging infrastructure, why would you go with Volvo?
Volvo has a way to go if they want to compete in this market.
Noise wont have any effect as it is not government regulated. A buyer of Semis wont think twice about noice if $ / km is lower.
Semis are used to for DC to store within urban areas. With groceries, the trucks are usually plugged into an electrical outlet while parked to keep the refrigerator running and saving fuel. So it seems the infrastructure is already in place for those applications.
A large part of the distinctive EV design is to increase their value for signalling. There has been at least one study where they compared Prius sales to Honda (Civic?) Hybrid sales by geographical area, and correlated it with politics. In more 'green' areas, the Priuses sold much better, whereas in other areas, both cars had similar sales. The take-away was to make the hybrids and EVs look different, to encourage conspicuous consumption.
There have been many very aerodynamic conventionally contoured gasoline powered cars, including one of my favorites, the Mazda MX-6 Mystere.
> A large part of the distinctive EV design is to increase their value for signalling.
I've heard this too, but while Chevy and Nissan went the exotic route, every Tesla so far has been fairly normal looking. There were nice-things on them like the gull-wing doors and the handles on the Model S, but those were contained in a traditional design.
The CyberTruck will obviously break that mold, but I suspect that much of the look of the CyberTruck is to keep costs down and efficiency up. It is extremely difficult to make a traditional pickup truck efficient.
Tesla is conventionally configured, with a number of EV design cues, such as the door handles on the Model S, the lack of a real grill on any car, etc. Tesla also has the advantage that its logo is known to signify 'EV'.
The original Tesla Model S had a grill. Also, their name and logo weren't known when the Model S was launched, it is now, but it wasn't when they launched. Tesla wanted their vehicles to be "Normal" looking. If there was any signaling going on, putting a token grill on a car which doesn't need one was signaling this is a normal car. It was only after Tesla had built up a strong enough brand and reputation that they removed the needless grill on the trunk.
The door handles are not an EV design cue at all. They are only on 2 Teslas and no other EVs. They are meant to look and feel luxurious and futuristic and would not be out-of-place on any higher end car. Like the gull-wing doors, I suspect they were done that way because Musk thought they would look cool.
Or at least that's how the stereotypes go. Fancy styling didn't work for them for the same reason that Hyundai is having a hard time convincing people Genesis is actually a luxury brand. Buying something as a signal doesn't work very well when the signal is conflicting.
