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Tesla Semi

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Re: Tesla Semi

#461

Post by gaustin »

ni-hil wrote: post #168
gaustin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla will be selling into a very complicated industry. You think enterprise sales of software are hard, just wait. Tesla say their system includes all the functions necessary. I haven't seen a list but I doubt it. Even if they do it will literally take enterprise integration projects to hook them up to the largely bespoke systems used by existing trucking company backends. (E.g. 20 year old ADP systems)

I don't know if the timing is right, but I think what you have to understand here is that all of this is the beginning of the end for the trucking company as you know it.

Sure, but that end was coming before Tesla was a brand name. The trucking industry is surprisingly innovative, despite overall conservative practices.

Go look at Volvo concept trucks over the last few years.

Re: Tesla Semi

#462

Post by Tuna-Fish »

sebleon wrote: post #449
SigmundA wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urban buses are very different and a more obvious target. Stop and go slower avg speed regular short routes with a home base to charge. Much smaller batteries and taking advantage of regenerative braking. It is an obvious use case for batteries right now.

How effective is regenerative breaking?

It depends a lot on how you're driving. Numbers as high as 70% have been published, but I believe that requires the deceleration profile to be ideal, and that might not be the most comfortable one for passengers.

Re: Tesla Semi

#463

Post by jonknee »

austenallred wrote: post #154

The new Tesla Roadster "Founders Edition" costs $250k, paid up-front, and only 1,000 are made. In other words Tesla just put $250 million in the bank by rubbing rich peoples' egos.

Fun fact: $250m will cover ~16 days of their current free cash flow losses.

Re: Tesla Semi

#464

Post by cptskippy »

SigmundA wrote: post #373

Anyone else find it odd they don't talk about the battery? 500 miles of range at 2kwh a mile is a 1000kwh battery which is 10 model S batteries. Model S battery weighs 1,200 lbs lets assume they somehow improved on that by 20-30% so this is a 10,000 lb battery. Not sure how much the motors weigh, the Tesla motor and inverter are about 350lbs so lets say another 1000lbs. A Diesel engine, transmission and fuel for 500…

I doubt this semi is intended for long-haul trucking. The range however is very tempting for short-haul operations like JIT hubs.

Re: Tesla Semi

#465

Post by [deleted] »

andrepd wrote: post #348
mcgarnagle wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lets not compare iphonex to Elon Musk's glass. I know nothing about glass, but, I trust the guy with a company called spaceX on his portfolio to make my glass right.

It's this kind of ridiculous bootlicking that makes me dislike the Musk cult with a passion.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Semi

#466

Post by nkoren »

SigmundA wrote: post #400
bognition wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your price estimate for the battery isn't too far off. If you scoll down on the page they estimate annual fuel savings to be $200,000. They then mention a two year payback period. This seems to imply a sticker price of around $400K.

I am trying to figure out how they get 2 year payback. "On a 100-mile route, the Tesla Semi will average $1.26 per mile when operating costs are factored in to $1.51 for diesel trucks." That 25 cents a mile savings, average trucker does 45,000 miles a year, 100,000 on the top end for long haul. Even at 100k a year that's an 8 year payback right?

No, the "payback period" isn't the time to pay off the total cost of the vehicle. It's the time to pay off the difference between the Tesla and the competition.

Here's how you do the calculation:

- Diesel semi: $125k

- Tesla semi: $200k ($75k more expensive)

- Miles driven per year: 150,000 (~8 hours per day at 50mph. Rotating shifts mean these trucks don't take weekends.)

- Net savings per mile: $0.25

- Savings per year: $0.25 * 150,000 = $37,500

- Break-even vs. cost of diesel: $75,000 / $37,500 = 2 years

So after two years you have more money than if you'd bought a diesel semi. That's what it means.

Re: Tesla Semi

#467

Post by neltnerb »

PinguTS wrote: post #317
exDM69 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took an interest in this and looked up "retarder" on Wikipedia and it mentions engine braking (and exhaust braking), hydraulic retarders and electric retarders which are eddy current brakes more commonly used in the railways. Which one are you referring to? According to the article, most commonly these are not used for regenerative braking, the energy is wasted as heat instead. Eddy current brakes can be used for r…

Sorry, for not checking Wikipedia. Because I work in the industry as an electrical engineer defining standards, and owning a historic truck myself just for fun, because I can. Originally, it is right that retarders were introduced to just having a non-destructive brake by just wasting the energy. That was around the 1980s. This was just to save maintenance cost as brakes were a big part of that costs. The trucking in…

What fraction of the energy recovered by braking is actually stored? I would have thought the battery on a non-electric or non-hybrid truck would be far too small. Surely the battery gets topped off and then the extra power is dumped as heat right?

Is the energy from braking really so small that it can't even fully charge the starter battery?

Honest questions. I figured that since regenerative braking in cars seems to double fuel efficiency, that order of half the power used to accelerate was recovered and I would have thought that was a very large amount of power to store.

Or is it because of the nature of long-haul trips? I know hybrids have much less advantage on the highway, maybe for long-haul trips the ratio of energy lost as air friction to energy lost in braking is vastly different.

Re: Tesla Semi

#468

Post by rvshchwl »

mncolinlee wrote: post #406

It's bizarre that the Semi has way less attention than the Roadster on HN. The Roadster is a $250k car for people with money to burn. It doesn't seem to drastically change the equation from a Rimac Concept One with six-year newer battery and motor tech and savings from volume and automation. The Roadster is the shiny thing that sells less sexy vehicles. The Semi has the potential to change an entire industry if execu…

It may possibly be because the Roadster was a surprise reveal, while the Semi was expected to arrive this year anyways.

Regardless, I am really looking forward to seeing the Semi's on Highways, although I believe that a main roadblock to it will be the lack of Tesla charging stations across the country. Semi trucks drive throughout the US on all major highways, and they have to coordinate their routes according to where the Weighing stations are in each state. Having to add super-charging stations to their routes will certainly complicate their routes, so it should be a bigger priority for Tesla to address those first.

Re: Tesla Semi

#469

Post by rvshchwl »

flurdy wrote: post #421

:/ The centre driving location, not sure if that is a terrible idea for pedestrian and bicycle safety. Or the opposite as closer to the other side. Guess time will tell if a lot gets squashed against fences like bikers often do in London.

Also don't like that there aren't passenger seats, or at least they don't show in the interior pictures.

Re: Tesla Semi

#470

Post by JulianMorrison »

akhatri_aus wrote: post #265
owlmirror wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire reusability thing was not really a thing before spacex

There was already a working program that had their funding axed: Here's a video from 1995: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o . There were others too.

It really isn't a working program if it's never going to have enough payload capacity to lift its own fuel to orbit. It's a shiny prototype of computer controlled autonomous stabilized flight, like SpaceX Grasshopper. But that's about it.
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