561–570 of 575 posts
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when a semi tire goes... ... it's usually because the company was too cheap to buy anything but retreads.
Retreads don't fail appreciably more often than new tires. Being in the boring part of the bathtub curve makes up for their age. DOT HS 811 060 is the study you should Google.
Sorry, not buying it.
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It's way beyond that. 1. it makes changing a tire more complicated, and time is money, the longer it takes to change a blown tire the higher the penalties 2. when a semi tire goes, it goes hard , as GP noted with this arrangement the cowling will probably shatter, requiring a replacement (not just a replacement tire) and the pieces taking out other tire. If the cowling does not break, it will funnel bits of tire stra…
If a truck tire blows, it sometimes hits nearby cars and causes accidents, or just hits a motorcycle driver, cyclist or pedestrian and causes an instant death. These covers could be useful, if they were made for containment. Requires something like kevlar that can stretch and absorb the impact.
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It looks like the first big buyer is using them for those short-haul trips. Does the Semi have a sleeper cab? If not, it won't be used on long-haul routes regardless of battery.
What's required for a sleeper cab? We got some shots of the interior and it looked easily big enough to add a bed or the like. With a battery that big heating overnight should be practically free.
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No, but you can improve the range by a few percent.
until you consider the weight of the solar panel
It's fairly likely one could get well below that mass using some of the more experimental solar panel designs (such as those in use for solar aircraft), but it would probably not be cost-efficient .
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There’s a lot of surface area on top of a trailer, just saying.
30 square meters, laying flat. So maybe 3kW. While the engines need more like 100kW. You can't effectively power any vehicle with 15% efficient solar panels.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse#Solar_Impulse_2_...
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Pretty sure Model 3 production is going amazingly well, yeah. Astoundingly well. But the media's portrayal of it has people convinced otherwise. Let's try this perspective instead: "Decade-old electric car company moves up plan for mass production of new affordable long-range sedan by 2 years" And then ask ourselves, after moving it up by 2 years, does a 3-month delay mean "things are going badly"? If I say I'm going…
I'd say someone who buys robots and operates them manually by men and claims "air resistance" is the biggest challenge in robotics because they should move so fast you can't see them, looks to me as not very sophisticated. But I don't operate robots.
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"Well, it's a fraction of the cost to operate, but if a tire blows, the mechanic will have to detach a piece of plastic. So I think we'll pass."
It's way beyond that. 1. it makes changing a tire more complicated, and time is money, the longer it takes to change a blown tire the higher the penalties 2. when a semi tire goes, it goes hard , as GP noted with this arrangement the cowling will probably shatter, requiring a replacement (not just a replacement tire) and the pieces taking out other tire. If the cowling does not break, it will funnel bits of tire stra…
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It's this kind of ridiculous bootlicking that makes me dislike the Musk cult with a passion.
Bow before your your betters, prole. Also, be sure to protest Thanksgiving and Columbus Day as racist by working - nothing says antiestablishment like free labor.
I've been making the point that fuel duty and car taxes (if your country has them) need to be removed and road pricing brought in. Price per litre of diesel in the USA is about $0.75 vs $1.64 in the UK. Given that Tesla stated that the truck would pay for itself within 2 years ($200,000 in diesel savings), we're talking 11 months in the UK. The implication is that eHGVs will radically reduce the tax revenue of countr…
>Dynamic road pricing, based not only on time of day, but also vehicle type, is probably the only way forward. Wouldn't want to let poor people with inflexible work hours go un-screwed... /s I don't know why everyone sees reduced tax revenue as a problems. Less money to spend means more critical evaluation of how it gets spent.
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So if Tesla has trucks, and is developing self-driving capability, and the trucking industry is a mishmash of legacy systems, what pieces does Musk need to just go into the trucking business direct?
This is a huge question. It depends on so many things. We can make assumptions on viable strategies given Tesla's finances and past behavior. But that still leaves us with a lot of solution space. First you have to accept that the trucking industry is conservative. The mom and pop distributors, the big guys, everyone. The people who own, lease and operate the trucks. There are all sorts of legislative hurdles to deal…