I work in the telematics/trucking software space. Many many many trucks travel less than 2-300 miles a day (Intermodal, dray, etc).
Not every truck driver is crushing miles every day, many operations are just between different modes of transportation or operating in same counties, etc.
What will be interesting is seeing how reduced "fuel" costs (electricity) will balance out with faster turn arounds (a truck can fill up in a few minutes, charging will take a long time). I could see fleets valuing either side depending on how they operate. Fleets reroute based on saving a few cents per gallon, so this could be great for the fleets that can afford to recharge overnight.
Tesla has demonstrated physically swapping battery packs in cars at least once before. For their demonstration (performance, really), they managed to do it in faster than a gas fill up.
I'd bet they'd work to actually get that production ready for these trucks. Seems like an easier and more useful place to get it working.
Many of these trucks are servicing facilities already equipped with overhead cranes in the loading bay. An overhead crane could be used for battery-swapping in addition to loading/unloading cargo.
truck with engine is usually detachable from trailer/payload. instead of swapping batteries or loading/unloading cargo, you can simply attach the trailer to the fully recharged truck waiting for you
Or make the trailer itself have a large battery in it that the truck just hooks into, then the truck only needs a small capacity battery to handle moving from trailer to trailer. Then the trailers can charge while they are empty or during loading/unloading.
Trailers are vastly cheaper than the truck. I think it is insolveable to depend on battery loaded trailers. You lose so much flexibility with such a setup. Much better to keep the battery in the truck.
yeah, you are probably right. I guess in the future if you don't need a cab (no human driver), and you don't need heavy fuel tanks (plus full fuel weight), you can use much of that space to put quite a bit of battery.
If you own the truck you can charge it at night when you're not driving it. The kind of operation described above seems to imply fungibility of trucks.
isn't the idea that trucks will be self-driven? in that case one company will own multiple trucks.
in the meantime, if you are independent driver who own's the truck, you could be switching trailers with different cargos.
you deliver the trailer to some point, unplug it, recharge, plug in different trailer and continue to its destination.
or are you asking me if I own a track and how the mechanics of truck/trailer works?
I'm thinking of businesses where you have integrated trucking service, not seperate owner/operators. Specialized fields like steel where there's a limited number of players and the relationship between the carriers and the warehouses are very tight.
All of the comments re: swappable battery packs are missing the end goal. Once the driver is gone from autonomy, these fleets are going to be dirt cheap to operate.
It won't make sense to swap a battery pack when you can just park one truck on the charger and let another take its place.
I'd also add that virtually the only compelling reason to have a single, large load like a big rig is to minimize the cost of a human driver relative to payload shipped. Without a driver, the optimal load size will likely be much different and will vary more by industry than it does today.
If anything, wouldn't the loads get larger.. since you could build trailers with more sensors, allowing more trailers to be attached to the same tractor... minimizing energy/fuel cost.
One tractor carrying larger loads is going to be more efficient than many small trucks with smaller loads: total weight over payload.
A human being can only safely handle so much cargo, and that's probably lower than could be automated.
The limit on truck size isn't because of human driving capacity, it's because road damage scales as the fourth power of axle weight. Trucks already do the vast majority of damage to our infrastructure, increasing the weight more would literally take down some older bridges.
If you don't have a driver, then the vehicle amounts to just a couple motors, batteries, and sensor arrays.
It doesn't make a difference if the battery is located in the front "truck" part of the convoy, or whether it's distributed throughout the trailers.
For a very long chain of trailers, you probably want a set of motors for every trailer right?
And as you've speculated, there's going to be a sensor array in every trailer.
So basically, you have motors in every trailer, batteries in every trailer, and sensors in every trailer. At that point ... why do you need a "truck" on the front and/or why are they connected at all?
Dropping a trailer vs waiting for it to be unloaded? I dunno. I agree with what your saying. Just moving stuff is obviously faster than waiting around for loading and unloading. At what point does the idle electric truck start to cost less than a simple trailer.
There's an "easy" solution to that too, you make it a flat bed electric self-driving trailer which takes a container similar to sea shipping containers on top.
Then you don't:
- have the unnecessary truck cab in front
- cost of the trailer being unused while loading / unloading
- potentially drastically change shipping containers received from over seas.
good point.. but that depends on the cost of the sensors, motors, etc. You could have a reduced set of sensors on the trailers, and more advanced set on the tractor.. and that may be cheaper than adding advanced sensors to every trailer.
Yes and no. Cost of fuel is also a big factor. A big rig is typically running about 6 MPG, and for lighter loads that doesn't change very much if you're hauling a half-size or full-size container. Sending two trucks means burning twice as much fuel, which could easily be hundreds of dollars.
But definitely that's less of a factor with an electric truck since the charging cost will be a lot lower than a comparable amount of fuel.
I think the bigger savings will come in being able to precisely control stops, starts, and turning, which will both minimize damage to the road surface and lengthen tire life.
ISTR a case where a large open pit mine bought GPS-driven trucks and saved a great deal just from longer tire life (each tire was $20K).
Re: gearbox, I wonder whether an autonomous truck could be paired with a little scouting drone to "look ahead" at things like blind corners or stop-and-go traffic, to allow the truck enough foreknowledge to gear up and down more gradually.
It is almost certainly cheaper to have big motors centralized at a single unit, because motors scale faster than linearly with size.
It is also almost certainly cheaper to have small batteries spread through the train, because batteries scale mostly linearly, but there are a few problems with dense packs (like cooling).
Thus, if you want to plug the unities one into the other, you will probably have one or two powered unities, many cargo unities, and a few battery unities spread between them. Besides, you will also want dummy unities on the front and back with aerodynamic shapes.
Capital costs? If a truck can only operate 50% of the time because the other 50% is spent recharging, you'll need twice as many trucks to move the same load.
While those trucks are recharging you're still paying for them.
>It won't make sense to swap a battery pack when you can just park one truck on the charger and let another take its place.
That depends on the relative capital costs of a truck sitting idle for hours while it charges and the costs of the systems for swapping and charging batteries.
It's the difference between making every truck and charging station a little more complex and making every station significantly larger and increasing the number of trucks you need to own.
> It won't make sense to swap a battery pack when you can just park one truck on the charger and let another take its place.
I'm guessing an operator would want 100% utilization from a truck.
If a battery discharges at the same rate as charging, then you would need 2x the number of batteries. You would need more batteries if charging is slower than discharging.
More accurately, an operator will want lowest cost of operation. You can add complexity, cost, and failure modes to every single truck by making the battery swappable, then build infrastructure to swap the batteries, or you can just build more trucks. Given that wheels and axles are likely to be the cheapest part of the equation, I'm betting they'll buy more trucks.
And you can make batteries out of other materials. At current prices lithium might be best, but more demand will lead to different prices; and if lithium supply doesn't pick up, people will substitute.
I don't know whether it counts as "such a large part of the costs", but at least in the US it does appear that wages and fuel are about equal as the two major costs:
While fuel costs were historically the largest share of total cost, driver wages surpassed fuel as the largest share at 31 percent of total cost in 2015, and fuel now accounts for 25 percent – its lowest share since the inception of this study. Fuel was followed by equipment lease or purchase payments at 14 percent, with repair and maintenance, insurance premiums, permits and license, tires, toll costs, and driver benefits each representing 10 percent or less of average total marginal costs.
Tables 10, 11, and 12 show a more exact breakdown. If all else remained the same, removing the driver would appear to reduce total costs by 40% (30% wages plus 10% benefits). So unless the electricity is much cheaper than diesel it won't be "dirt cheap", but certainly would be a significant reduction.
Actually I was thinking last time I was driving from LA back to SF that one way to move faster with autonomous trucking would be to dedicate a highway lane during very off peak hours (such as between hours of 12 am to 4am) to autonomous freight trucks.
The lane could have flashing sign indicators similar to some carpool lanes in California to warn normal drivers about the risks.
When I was driving around LA, the rush hour traffic seemed to be made worse by the number of freight trucks on the road (presumably moving stuff into/out of Port of LA/Long Beach).
That's an impressive number considering the weight that it'll be pulling, but hows does this compare to gas range on current new rigs? Those refill to a full tank in a few minutes, whereas you need to wait quite a while from a full to empty electric charge.
TSLA may intend to debut battery swapping with the trucks, where the large physical form factor might be more amenable to swapping. While the range is low, if the equivalent mpg is higher, and the energy recovery from braking significant enough, then it would pencil out as an financial advantage to use the electric truck.
A Yahoo Answers post [1] gives an idea of the kind of metrics TSLA will have to soundly beat. Fuel is the biggest cost. Bring that down and you'll get the trucking companies' attention for the pitch.
Not all semis are long-haul; there are local delivery semis that fit into the 2-300 mile range, and that could be an initial market.
Some shipping networks may be more amenable to swapping than consumer markets, too.
If I were swapping batteries, I would have some concern about the condition that battery was in. In the consumer market, it's hard to manage that in a trustful way.
Some shipping networks will allow swappable packs to remain in the possession of one entity. Hopefully, that entity trusts itself.
> hows does this compare to gas range on current new rigs?
It doesn't come close. Most semis load 250~300gal diesel and have a fuel economy of 5 to 8mpg[0] so you're probably looking at at least 1000 miles, and possibly > double that depending on the exact model, trip and driving style.
[0] though recent full-aero tractors can reach the low 10s, Volvo advertises 12MPG on their most efficient models
I would assume since these are going to be commercial vehicles Tesla will resurrect or otherwise leverage their battery swap idea. Which fizzled out for private vehicles but would really help extend the range of these trucks.
http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-to-debut-battery-swapping-sta...
Also more of the tractor can hang underneath the trailer so there's the chance for a larger battery capacity. Like this extended tractor (the semi painted green not the flatbeds behind it) in this image that is 22 feet long. http://www.bigtruckguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Sout...
I'm thinking trucking companies will start building cab-switching depots. So your truck is almost out of battery juice, just get another, hook it up to your trailer and continue on.
I think the biggest problem, as stated in the article, which I think is being missed by many commenters, is the cost. According to the article, the batteries alone (not including the chassis) cost almost as much as a current diesel truck.
Another huge issue is weight. Batteries are extremely heavy and a truck loaded with the batteries needed to have this range would seriously cut into the delivery capacity.
A better 0 emission alternative that is already being tested in real world applications [1] is battery power with a fuel cell range extender. Loop Energy has a fuel cell that is cheaper than diesel per mile with comparable range for the drayage, bus, and port/distribution markets.
Despite Musk's disparaging remarks about fuel-cell tech, until a major breakthrough happens in batteries, fuel cells are the best way to make battery powered heavy-duty trucks a reality from both a cost and practicality stand-point.
Remember that the reason a supercharger takes an hour to charge is due to the limits of battery chemistry. If you quadruple the size of a battery, it will still take only an hour to charge. Presumably Tesla has a super-duper charger in mind which will be able to charge a truck in an hour just like normal super chargers can charge several vehicles simultaneously. Creating a high voltage/amperage charging system would be easier than swapping batteries.
Truckers often prefer driving many hours at a time, but most would be willing to pay more for a rig that needs to stop every 4-5 hours to recharge the truck if the fuel costs are much lower. Owner-operators can only drive around 13 hours a day anyway. Maintenance costs should also be lower. Electric trucks should win a few years after you can find super-duper chargers everywhere.
I look forward to the day we never have to hear another Jake brake.
> Owner-operators can only drive around 13 hours a day anyway.
Let's see how this changes with self-driving trucks in a few years. It seems like electric trucks and self-driving will arrive in the mainstream at roughly the same time.
Not sure how this will compete with traditional long haul incumbents unless they can get battery swapping down. Also if they can find a way to keep the batteries and the efficiency up in extreme heat and extreme cold (truckers experience it all) then they will have something truly interesting on their hands. Otherwise, and this is unlikely, if they intend for truckers to do 200 - 300 miles on a charge and then hit up a special truckers only supercharger this isn't going to work.
Tesla responded to Reuters questions with an email statement saying, "Tesla’s policy is to always decline to comment on speculation, whether true or untrue, as doing so would be silly. Silly!”'
I think their first foray into autonomous trucking will be "follow trucks", so you have 1 human driver, but 2 or 3 trucks that follow the leader, without a driver.
IMHO trucks are not the best option right now, the best option to launch them is when they get fully automated driving. This could be 2-10 years later judging from Tesla history (I know, automated driving has been in the 5-year-range for the last 50 years). However, specially for trucks, when these come out who would want a non-automated truck? Unless of course they are forward-compatible, then I have said nothing ;)
I could be wrong, but I am guessing automating trucks is easier than doing it with autos. That's because so many trucks drive standard, well-mapped routes, whereas cars generally have to be able to go anywhere.
I think it's interesting to point out that the semi program can exist as a halo program for Tesla consumer trucks i.e. the Ford F-150, GM Pickup bread and butter market which is unbelievably profitable in the US. e.g. if you can 0-60 a 40 ton load in 10 seconds, then maybe I want your product. I think the solving long-range is a down-the-road shibboleth.
200-300 miles may sound minimal, but it is the sweet spot for day trips like the article mentions. A lot of truck drivers don't want to be on the road away from home for extended periods, and so take jobs that are A->B->A, doable in one day, which works out to about 200-300 miles per leg.
How about running "aid trucks" that would be going next to truck on highway to charge it remotely, like jet fighters grt refueled? Once fully chearged aid truck make u-turn and feed off another truck going opposite way.
This doesn't sound very promising. There may be a niche of some kind here, but this is a very expensive, very short distance and very light weight alternative to diesel trucks.
* 200-300 miles is around a 5 hour day when long haul trucking typically has a 10 hour day.
* 4.7 ton payload (9,400 pounds) when the average local haul is probably closer to 10 tons.
* Overnight recharging on a platform that values short downtimes.
* Will likely cost 2x what a diesel truck costs.
What you have here is a truck that costs twice as much and goes half as far with half as much load. The price/ton to operate this electric truck is going to be 4-8x what it is to haul with a diesel truck.
If Telsa keeps pushing forward with this as is, business majors are going to be studying it in 10-15 years as an example of a terrible business decision that was pushed through despite all the red flags.
This wouldn't be suitable for long range OTR trucking, but great for shorter regional trucking. Delivery drivers like UPS or Fedex don't hit 200 miles a day and other trucks in denser areas also travel shorter distances and diesel fumes in urban areas is a huge concern. There are plenty of use cases for an electric truck that can travel 200 miles, even if it won't immediately replace diesel or gas.
I've run the numbers before.. and yes, you could do this. It will considerably impact the weight that a truck can pull, though. You're going to sacrifice anywhere from 5,000 lbs to 15,000lbs of load capacity depending on how much capacity you want and how much armor you're going to need (an exploding semi radial is not something to disregard).
The _real_ problem is charging capacity, especially in large depots and yards. You're going to need a rather insane tap into the grid in order to pull the current necessary to re-charge these batteries in anything less than a day, and if you can't do that, you're going to end up with a huge stockpile of batteries and a new set of logistics challenges you're going to have to absorb to make it work.
Part of logistics currently is to track fuel prices across the country, and determine based upon the trucks location the "correct" amount of fuel to put in the truck to get the best pricing given the miles needed to travel. You're going to have to re-build this entire system and track electrical rates.
Finally.. consider that some loads in this country will travel for 2,000 miles or more on a truck before being delivered. A 300 mile capacity battery is utterly ineffective for this mode. It _might_ be better suited to mid-size local delivery trucks that never stray more than 100 miles from their depot, outside of that, it's doable, but it introduces more problems than it solves.
This probably makes more sense than it does for consumer-owned vehicles. My guess is that at roll out, the battery may be swappable, but the feature won't be publicized or used for a while.
Please don't write in Imperial numbers in an international comunication platform. Most of us don't know what a mile is compared to a kilometer. (Yes you can google it, but you have no 'feeling' for it still, and why put the workload on many that could be done by a single person?)
The title is taken from the headline of the article, which was written by an American news company, about an American corporation, about a product destined to debut on American roads. It makes sense to use American measurements considering the context.
I'll concede that it is a bit silly for America to still be on the Imperial system.
Or it makes sense to change the American measurements.
Btw I'm not native English and I use English to write this comment despite being born in this non-English country, being grown with my native language, and still being in this country while writing this comment. Why do I do this?
The submission title is the article title, and submission guidelines specify to use the original title (with some caveats). Hacker News also has a large US contingent. While that doesn't mean everything should be converted to imperial units, it also shouldn't be surprising when they show up. I wouldn't expect people to modify their units in this way in either direction, frankly. As you mention, it's not that hard to find a place that does the conversion, and it's also not that much harder to become accustomed to having a ballpark feeling of another unit system.
Not every truck driver is crushing miles every day, many operations are just between different modes of transportation or operating in same counties, etc.
What will be interesting is seeing how reduced "fuel" costs (electricity) will balance out with faster turn arounds (a truck can fill up in a few minutes, charging will take a long time). I could see fleets valuing either side depending on how they operate. Fleets reroute based on saving a few cents per gallon, so this could be great for the fleets that can afford to recharge overnight.