This will save a lot of money over time. Last time I checked in any detail, electricity prices per mile of transport per ton were about 25% that of fossil fuel prices per mile of transport per ton, and that was three years ago.
They should really move all long-haul trucking to electric as well, at least for the main trunk lines, and for city-wide delivery. Remote rural routes will likely be the hardest to electrify.
> electricity prices per mile of transport per ton were about 25% that of fossil fuel prices per mile of transport per ton
In shipping and logistics, time is money. Fuel can be dispensed in the US at a maximum of 10 gal/minute. Factor that against the largest charger you can find and see why the single cost difference doesn't matter yet.
> They should really move all long-haul trucking to electric as well
Reduced capacity from doing this requires additional vehicle time to haul the same amount of material. This isn't a single factor equation. Plus, over the road drivers sleep in their vehicles, and not always at truck stops. They're only allowed to drive for 10 hours, so it's not always as convenient as you might expect.
Consider the weight of 600 gallons of fuel vs. the reduced hauling capacity from using an electric truck and see why we're a ways away from this yet. Have no fear; though, the moment this is logistically favorable, they will switch.
> In shipping and logistics, time is money. Fuel can be dispensed in the US at a maximum of 10 gal/minute. Factor that against the largest charger you can find and see why the single cost difference doesn't matter yet.
You charge the mail trucks overnight, when they aren't being driven. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a postman out in the evening or nighttime. I also don't know about you, but I don't stand next to my car when I charge it at a rapid charger. (I stop where I can run an errand or use the bathroom.)
In comparison, it takes time to get gas. You have to go out of your way to get to the gas station, go up to the pump, pay for it, and then get back on your way. It always takes me 5-10 minutes to get gas.
So, time being money, what makes the most sense is to install a charger at every parking space that a mail truck occupies overnight, and getting rid of the trips to the gas station. The time it takes to plug the car in is negligible.
Long haul trucking is solved by electrifying US highways. Trains can charge from overhead lines at 200+MPH doing the same for trucks at highway speeds is relatively trivial and allows for on trip charging.
An EV semi with a relatively modest 100 mile range battery easily solves the last mile problem off highways while weighing the same as a traditional ICE engine + fuel.
C'mon guys. "Relatively trivial" is not the two words I would use to describe electrifying highway grids.
And to convert road vehicles to conduct off that highway? The words I would use to describe/implement that is "Absolute Taxpayer Aversion". Billions and billions in R&D with no guarantee of adoption and likely greater operating costs for 10s of reasons.(Maintenance, contract costs, accidents, teething.
Many counties, even liberal ones, in the US still have dirt roads. In western ireland it's about half the roads are dirt that I saw. If we can't figue out laying concrete at scale, how can we accomplish this "trivially"?
There is zero need to electrify dirt roads, just specific loans on ~1% all us roads due to that 100 mile range battery I just mentioned.
We had electric trollies 140 years ago and modern trains have surfaces in contact at 3x the speeds and much higher power draws. Trucks in comparison don’t need constant power, so you can maintain the line without interfering with traffic.
But you don’t need to trust me it’s a proven technology with the obvious revenue stream of charging for electricity.
PS: America has dirt roads because dirt roads work well when you have low traffic. Their old, cheap, and therefore proven technology just like electrified roads.
Agreed, my point on dirt roads doesn't make much sense.
But point still stands, if state govt's struggle to repave arterial roads every few years to the standards of our taxes, do we think any national gov't would shoulder paying 10,0000 times that cost yearly to maintain bleeding edge technology across 100k highway miles?
In the 19th-20th century rail/trolley was used in the same way municipal buses are now. Great for absolutely defined schedules across short distances for local residents. Do you see that scaling up to highways though? Even if we used old school powered rail and cable technology to charge up highways for big rigs only, that would be such an unfathomable, enormous cost to implement and maintain. We can't maintain the rail network in this country, which is dwarfed in size by highways.
You seem to think this is expensive, but these systems are cheap enough to save money when used infrequently by electric trains. Highways see a lot more truck traffic.
At scale this isn’t the kind of thing state or federal government needs to pay for out of pocket, it’s a revenue generating opportunity like total roads and can be financed as such.
It’s a classic chicken and egg problem where you need enough miles of electrified highways to convince people to buy new or modify old trucks. Realistically if hot swapping batteries or hydrogen was the cheaper alternative that’s the correct infrastructure to build.
Passenger rail largely failed because of the last mile problem, but here batteries solves the issue. A mile of electric highway can easily let you drive several miles of non electric roads.
We were doing this 100 years ago for inner city trolly’s. Trains travel 3x the speed of highway trucks, vastly higher power draw, and we solved that decades ago. There’s even been successful demos of actual highway trucks and power delivery. With modern battery technology we don’t even need a continuous system just enough to keep trucks topped off on highways so maintenance is easy and existing automated toll lanes even cover billing.
So, yes it really is trivial as shown by how cheap existing demo’s have been.
You have to go out of your way to get to the gas station, go up to the pump, pay for it, and then get back on your way. It always takes me 5-10 minutes to get gas.
Wow. Gas stations are everywhere, conveniently located, and always on route to some place or another.
The mental gymnastics employed, to try to make this seem arduous, does not make for a compelling argument.
Only if you don't need to travel further than your available range in a single day. While gas stations might be less common, there are still way more of them than high powered electric chargers.
Having an electric vehicle is not useful if the only "fast" charging available to you as a consumer is a 240v hookup at your home (and you need to drive long distances regularly).
USPS trucks that deliver mail aren't driving more than 100 miles (rarely) a day. I'm pretty sure these trucks can be on a 2-3 day recharge cycle and still have plenty of juice left even if they don't hit those recharge cycles.
Seriously, take a moment to calculate how much stopping at a gas station takes out of a trip.
For example, when I have to get off of a freeway in order to get gas, I usually have to navigate an intersection and might have to sit through a traffic light.
In places I used to live, getting gas meant turning left instead of going right on red. Then leaving the gas station meant sitting through another stop light or two.
You might not have to put up with this if you live somewhere rural, where you're not dealing with divided highways and traffic lights.
It doesn't need to be USPS specific, but that is an interesting thought. Many new neighborhoods have spots for postal workers to park and distribute the mail on foot. This is typically faster in my experience. I don't think it's a big leap to also have those dedicated spots have chargers.
Conveniently, gas stations also have small commercial electric, and in some localities are partnering with utilities to provide high speed charging. (solves the street parking and no high amp service issues)
Gas stations also have large flat roofs that some are putting solar panels on top of.
Those high-amp chargers are very expensive. You would need a few of them at every station. Solar panels are not going to be sufficient to power them. To power all these charging stations, you need massive power generation. The USA can't even seem to complete a new nuclear facility in Georgia right now.
>You have to go out of your way to get to the gas station, go up to the pump, pay for it, and then get back on your way. It always takes me 5-10 minutes to get gas.
Almost everybody consuming a "your local post office" volume of fuel has a tank and pump to dispense with on site.
That said, consumer shipping has enough regularity that it lends itself well to electrification and electrifying any given class of vehicle in that industry should pencil out a little sooner than the equivalent vehicle in general.
I know it's been talked about a lot and never really implemented, but if you've got a fleet of identical vehicles, then doing battery swaps should be possible and practical.
The economics of long haul trucking make electrification hard.
Fortunately, for local deliveries like the post office, constant stop-and-go means that regen braking can really stretch the range of electric batteries.
I think we are all just talking about start and stop delivery trucks. I know the UPS vehicles as well as the USPS vehicles in my area all stop running the engine when they stop and get out.
Maybe? I think direct injection motors are actually pretty good at reducing that. Catalytic converters help too. But yeah, there’s more waste than an electric motor.
The reassuring thing to me is that in just over 100 years we made the ICE so efficient. It’s a fundamentally wasteful design and we have taken it very, very far. With another 100 years of battery and electric motor development we will have equally impressive capabilities with the added trick of energy source agnosticism.
When the engine is warmed up starting it doesn't AFAIU cause any big pulse of pollution. Also vehicles equipped with these stop-start systems AFAIK have more powerful starters so they can start faster.
Plus they aren't driving at high speed between suburban and city houses, plus they aren't actually driving that far (probably 50-100 miles in suburbs, less than 50 in city) so they don't need a huge battery.
They don't need 0-60 in 4 seconds, so a single axle motor is probably all you need.
You don't need NMC chemistry for the range, you can just use LFP or sodium ion when it reaches mass production later this year hopefully.
You can even use a range extender ICE for the rural models like the BMW i3.
Sure, a long haul semi with multiple drivers is a use case that won't be filled by electric trucks anytime soon. But that's a fairly narrow niche. Even on long haul routes it's pretty normal for trucks to have only one driver and stop for several hours for a rest. With a megawatt charger and 500 miles of range on a charge, even long haul trucking is just a mild engineering problem.
For in town trucks the math works out very well, and very quickly. Which explains why there are already multiple entrants into that market niche.
A megawatt charger might not be cheaper than fuel. It's a lot of power to dispatch. It'll also still take longer to recharge at that rate than it does to refuel.
On the other hand, megawatt chargers might get cheaper rates because they're buying in bulk, and it's (generally) easier for power companies to provide service to one big customer than a hundred or a thousand little customers.
(That's assuming the infrastructure in the area can accommodate it. I expect any heavily-used truck charging stations are going to be located where the utility hookups are comparatively cheap and easy.)
Fuel is money as well. Recent diesel price inflation caused a lot of misery for truckers. A full tank of fuel costs way more than a typical trucker earns per day. And most truckers own their trucks and are under heavy debt. 600 gallons is a lot for a truck. Depending on where you get your diesel, you are going to pay 2-3 dollars per gallon at least. Closer to 5 in some places. So even a "modest" 150 gallon tank could set you back close to a 800$.
Recent price fluctuations due to the rise in oil prices have hit that sector really hard.
How many truckers will answer the question "would you like to save more in fuel cost per day than you currently earn per day?" with a "no?. Time loss for charging is maybe inconvenient but the price tag isn't that high for everyone.
Anyway, this stops being optional pretty soon after electrical trucks start undercutting transport prices because they simply have lower cost of course. But while there is still a choice, there are going to be smart truckers and broke truckers. They'll pay the difference out of their own pocket.
In any case, if the vehicle charges at night and has enough charge for the route, there is no time loss.
We're talking mail delivery here not trucking. They are not doing hundreds of miles per day. More like tens. With lots of drive a little, idle, drive a little, etc. driving. This has very poor fuel economy with an ice vehicle. An EV essentially has no energy cost when it is idling. At best you lose some energy to keep the AC and the radio going. Which isn't free with an ice vehicle either.
Mail and package deliveries are an ideal use case for EVs. Most commercial delivery companies have largely completed their move to EVs for this reason and are rolling out EVs as fast as they can get their hands on them. That debate is over and there never was much of a debate beyond "Would you like to cut cost? Yes!". Ancient history, the industry has moved on and the answer was conclusive. If you want to compete in that sector, EV is the only way. There's no case left for ice vehicles in that sector.
According to the USPS, "The longest rural delivery route is in Clarinda, IA. The carrier travels 181.4 miles daily and delivers to 234 boxes." It seems like most electric vehicles should have no problem covering that in a single trip and I assume this was something they tested before ordering.
Yeah, hopefully they tested range for the coldest days in winter in that region as well, considering an aerodynamically optimized tesla gets 200 mile range in optimal weather conditions (i.e. sunny day in Los Angeles/the bay area)
They do not need the trucks to work in the most extreme cold and rural routes. A lot of low hanging fruit in electrifying easy targets: urban delivery in warmer climates. For instance, a delivery truck in LA might only ever go tens of miles per day and never see cold weather. At the scale of USPS, this could bee hundreds of thousands of trucks.
The comment im replying to literally says that theres a route in iowa with a distance is 181 miles. I dont understand why theres so much gaslighting in this whole comment thread.
> In shipping and logistics, time is money. Fuel can be dispensed in the US at a maximum of 10 gal/minute. Factor that against the largest charger you can find and see why the single cost difference doesn't matter yet.
If the time wasted charging/refueling is super valuable you can fix this by provisioning a few more vehicles than there are drivers, or having hot swappable pre-charged batteries and provisioning a few more of those than there are vehicles. Then your recharging/refueling time drops down to a couple of minutes max because you're either swapping batteries out or hopping in a different truck.
All of this has a capital penalty and requires stuff that doesn't exist yet. We're discussing exactly what stuff might be worth said capital penalty.
If the basic running costs of these are really 25% of ICE vehicles then there's a lot of wiggle room for some extra "capital penalty" while still saving a tonne of money.
I’m not convinced EVs have a capital penalty over ICE. If an operator already has a truck they aren’t going to be in the market for a replacement, EV or not, until it reaches EOL. The lower cost of operation may move the needle on when ICE trucks reach EOL but not by much. How does an owner-operator justify the cost of buying two trucks and staging them? Even for larger operations how do they justify buying trucks that will sit still? Once EVs can meet the hours per day limits they will be appealing without additional infrastructure or over-provisioning.
Logistics companies currently need 1 truck to go cross country. Why would they opt for 4 instead? That have to be driven to checkpoints and wait. It makes no sense
Implementing a battery-swap system at major truck stops seems plausible. The semi would pull in, its battery pack would be pulled out by a light crane and slotted into a charging unit, and a fresh pack would be installed, no stop-over time needed.
I also wonder whether semis on certain well-defined long-haul routes (I-80 etc) could be partially automated, such that the driver could sleep in the back of the cab much of the time. Not sure if the technology is really there yet, though.
> I also wonder whether semis on certain well-defined long-haul routes (I-80 etc) could be partially automated, such that the driver could sleep in the back of the cab much of the time. Not sure if the technology is really there yet, though.
You don't need a swap system even. Just tow a trailer (you know like those multi-trailer semis UPS and others have) but one of them is a battery (or generator if you want), and swap the trailer at a swap station.
> Have no fear; though, the moment this is logistically favorable, they will switch.
I think the thing that makes this logistically favorable is electrification of major highways. What I worry about is that this requires coordination between government agencies and car and truck manufacturers and it requires political will to make it happen and find the funding. We could start building it right now, or we could sit on our thumbs for the next twenty years.
(There are several different ways to electrify highways. My preference would be to use something like the system they're testing out in Sweden that uses power rails in slots embedded in the road surface. Cars/trucks have a device that swings down and makes contact. Overhead lines are cheaper, but aren't practical for cars to use. Induction charging is another option but it's much more expensive and power delivery isn't great if there's no physical connection.)
Solar and Wind electric production costs are still dropping by 10-15% a year same for batteries. A lot of people and countries don't realise the electricity revolution that is coming. Cost of production for a lot products will start coming down with cheaper electricity.
They don’t realize it because they don’t get any of the benefits. Electricity costs are rising across the country almost without exception.
Meanwhile California is paying other states to take electricity because they generate so much excess power during the duck curve (while simultaneously having rolling blackouts)
That's my point. We're told (wholesale) prices are falling, but retail prices are rising everywhere[1]. Especially in CA where they're skyrocketing compared to the national average[2].
That's why they don't "realize it", because so far it has had ZERO positive impact on them.
I think it's more than that actually, but still a great idea if you don't have subway or something under you. I finally met someone in real life that has that set up and it's a bit capital intensive even after the diffing. In about half of US you need a backup heating system for real cold spells.
In Scandinavia the summers provide loooong days. When it's sunny, there is SUCH a surplus of heat that could (in principle) be captured for wintertime use.
No blackouts here. Rural blackouts are more common in high wind situations to mitigate wildfire risk. It's just the reality of living in the WUF.
75% of electricity costs in California come from the grid, not generation. Grid costs recently are up due to wildfire mitigation for power to rural communities.
I've lived in California for decades and have never experienced a rolling blackout. The only times my power has gone out was because of maintenance, one particularly bad thunderstorm, and drivers crashing into the poles.
Whether or not you get a black out or a "flex alert" depends entirely on where you live. PG&E avoids cutting power to the rich people who live in the SF bay valley, and instead cuts it to the rural and outskirt areas.
That's because they chose to live in the wildlife-urban interface, where wildfire risks are elevated. Note the article talks about damage to power lines. The shutoffs were not related to a lack of capacity.
Rural grid connection and maintenance costs are heavily subsidized by urban electricity users already. These subsidies should be applied for rather than being hidden so it's clear to everyone they exist.
That depends on what problem you're solving and how much you're willing to spend. Some people seem to thing grid storage is a failure if it can't store power in the summer to use in the winter, but that's really not a realistic goal. Storing power during the daylight to use at night is far more reasonable -- expensive, but doable with current technology.
Pumped hydro storage is another option. As is relying not so much on storage but rather expanding grid interconnection. Day/night solar cycles are less of a problem if you can buy and sell power across many time zones.
That is what is happening. Non lithium tech for grid storage has started to pick up steam 1/8 to 1/10 the current cost for grid storage will be here by 2030
The US has quite a bit of freight rail - that's what is currently one of the things holding passenger rail back. There might not be a train station, but there definitely is rail!
Meanwhile, Europe has so much passenger rail that freight is really tricky to run. For example, there is a really busy freight corridor from Rotterdam to Germany with rail dedicated solely to freight, but the rest of The Netherlands is pretty much 100% passenger. Europe uses a lot more inland shipping instead.
In Europe there's also problems with cross-border rail freight, partly due to incompatible systems, and partly due to bureocracy (national operators lobby politicians hard to protect their home turf, while trying to expand internationally, running into the same issue there with the local national operator).
If you look at the share of freight transported by rail as a function of the distance, in the US that curve goes smoothly upwards, as long distances play into the economic benefits of rail, whereas in Europe there's a sharp drop beyond 500-1000km or so. Meaning that international shipments in Europe largely switches to trucks.
If you mean the Betuwelijn, that is apparently still not at full capacity - only 70-80 trains per day instead of the planned 150 or so. Which I guess is still fairly busy by American standards (3-4 TPH now, planned for 6 TPH, averaged across the whole day)
The US is still littered with railroads, and rail carries a large amount of cargo.
It's still not not as dense as UK, Germany, or Netherlands, and cannot be, outside areas like North-East. What makes sense around places like NYC, Chicago, or Seattle, may not work equally well in Nebraska. Building a road and running trucks on it is just more affordable.
Also, rail is optimized to have ridiculously high throughput at the expense of latency. Rail is great at hauling grain, huge hunks of steel, wood, etc, but is too slow for time-sensitive stuff like flowers or that birthday present you ordered at a last minute with express delivery.
This is why relatively long-haul trucking exist in the US, despite the presence of a large and busy rail system, to the best of my knowledge.
(Passenger rail vs cars is another kettle of fish entirely.)
On the European rail networks with good passenger service — not the high speed lines, but conventional lines — the tracks are good enough to support fast freight trains carrying parcels and so on. That also means they can run during the day without disrupting passenger trains.
Perishable food and parcels are commonly carried by rail, although there is still a lot by road.
Container trains in Britain can travel at 75mph on such tracks. That's faster than a truck is allowed to drive (60mph).
Checking my numbers, I found this [1] which is interesting:
> There are many other examples where people are utilising rail in new ways. For example -
hot slab steel shipped from the furnace to arrive warm enough to be rolled into sheets.
I think the problem with long haul trucking is just getting the range. Are we close to having enough battery capacity to allow drivers to meet their hours-per-day limits? If not electric won’t be economical for operators.
Local delivery is a much clearer fit for electric, even in the short term. We see that here.
Stop-start traffic and local delivery is much clearer, but from what I've seen of the energy calculations on Tesla Semi, it actually makes sense for bulky vs. heavy shipments on flat, warm routes, as long as there is appropriately sited charging infrastructure. Especially good for consumer-facing and high margin fleets, which is why Frito-Lay is an ideal launch customer. Even if it doesn't make absolute sense today, it probably will in 5-10 years.
Yeah you point out something that is easy to miss in these conversations. This is a transition. It won’t happen overnight. Local delivery will be first, which will contribute to economies of scale that will make ideal long-haul routes feasible, which will make further routes feasible. It will probably be decades before long haul Alaskan semis can be replaced with EVs but we can deliver the mail in LA with an EV today.
Ok, that’s cool. Seems obvious in a place like central Washington where you can see hundreds of windmills lining the highway.
Might also be beneficial on hillclimbs where instant battery capacity may be lacking.
If we imagine building EVs that are 1:1 replacements for ICE we see challenging hurdles but with even small changes in the status quo EVs suddenly become feasible on shorter timeframes.
Probably. But Washington has the Cascades with existing power lines that have to cross the same mountain ranges as the highways from those wind farms to the population centers around Seattle. I bet there are a lot of opportunities to demonstrate this technology.
Daimler Truck, one of the world’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, has unveiled its first heavy-duty, battery-electric truck – the Mercedes-Benz eActros LongHaul – with a new e-axle and a range of 500kms.
Electric truck maker Janus has debuted the first battery-powered prime mover in Australia and has plans to set up battery swap stations up and down the eastern seaboard within months. .. a first taste of the company’s plans to electrify long haul truck fleets using only batteries.
> Drivers must not exceed 4.5 hours of driving without taking a 45-minute break and a standard day of driving for a HGV driver is considered to be 9 hours long.
The speed limit for this vehicle will be either 80km/h or 100km/h, I'm not sure how they decide, but with some good logistics for a rapid charge part-way through that's not far off.
Mainland USofA is the same land area as Australia.
500 kms w/out having to stop is a long leg.
Being able to stop and swap out | replace batteries in the same time as a refueling | load | unload is indeed "a long haul technology" as it enables long haul trucking.
Catenary on main trunks, combined with a requirement that all trucks have some battery range, would be super interesting. Trucks could be extremely efficient without needing to carry their own energy sources
Also this may not be true for the US now but in parts of Europe the charging cost for driving an EV has at times already surpassed the gas cost for regular cars. And that was despite the war also leading to increased oil prices in Europe at the same time, thanks to the EU's climate policy and certain countries shutting down coal and gas power plants without even having enough alternate capacity yet. Germany was the king of that, they're shutting down nuclear, coal and gas power plants at the same time :)
If you think that sounds idiotic, that's politics for you. I wouldn't count on this never happening in the US, a lot of people support "climate action" without caring about the details or understanding anything about any of this on a technical level.
True. But keep in mind the price of electricity has gone up for everyone in all of Europe, not just at charging stations. For private car owners with no place to charge at home the effect is most drastically visible, as the example shows. But of course when the prices go up it also affects every businesses bottom line.
Btw in many countries there are discounted rates for large electricity purchasers, like corporations. They pay less the more they use. So companies do have an incentive to go electric. There's just a lot more nuance. The charging times the other user mentioned are one thing. Parts of North America also get pretty cold in winter which drastically reduces the range of EVs. That's something many people who've never driven an EV don't know about for example. Will be interesting to see real world results. From the electric bus projects I've seen in some cities, they're far from as cheap in real life as cities thought they would be when they were presented the numbers on paper.
Today I'm paying all of 3c/kWh for electricity. Can't get much cheaper than that.
Also the EV+range thing is mostly negated by pre-heating the car while it's plugged in at home, warm battery = more range. Just like we need to do with ICE cars to make the engines even start in the winter.
As for winter, what you say may be good for people with a house and garage who are driving to work and back (but then range should not be an issue anyway). It doesn't work when you street park and it also doesn't really work when you're driving long distances or with a car that's mostly outside, like a delivery van.
...why is it so much more than the energy required to charge slowly? The battery might get a little warmer while charging, so that's some more waste heat, but the battery gains the same amount of stored energy either way.
You could look into cheaper batteries, as there is no need to use the latest and greatest technology. Supercapacitors might also be an option.
It's all an economic sum, really: when do the higher connection fees and increased demand pricing outweigh battery cost? We are already seeing grid-scale battery storage being used in practice, applying that to a more local use case might not be that unrealistic.
Besides, if the alternative is no charging station, you can probably charge significantly higher fees.
The grid can never support a 100% EV demand. Nationwide, every single transmission line, transformer, and substation would need to be scaled up.
It is a pipe dream to do it in 30 years. I don't even know what to call it doing so in seven. Dementia is probably the most appropriate word given who is pushing it.
They should really move all long-haul trucking to electric as well, at least for the main trunk lines, and for city-wide delivery. Remote rural routes will likely be the hardest to electrify.