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Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

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Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#91

Post by root_axis »

ashtonkem wrote: post #17

Why bother? With top line EV ranges reaching close to 400 miles, after that amount of time I need to get out of the car. If you want people to be able travel huge distances cleanly without stopping, then what you’re actually looking for is a train.

400 miles is possible but there isn't a 100% EV that achieves a 400 mile range under typical circumstances. Realistically you get about half that if you're doing highway driving and live in a place where you need to have the HVAC running all the time. Though, I think it'll probably get there within the next 10 years.

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#92

Post by vonmoltke »

goodcanadian wrote: post #49
baltimore wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because charging takes much longer than filling up with gas. If someone is willing to pay a premium for charging while driving to reduce total trip time, that's a business opportunity.

This is often said, but I am not so sure. Fast-charging takes somewhat longer than filling with gasoline/petrol, but I usually also want a bathroom and coffee break. I can easily do that while my car is charging. That is not really true while dispensing gasoline. It is not so obvious to me that I am losing out time-wise. This is not idle speculation. I own an electric car. Furthermore, the vast majority of my chargin…

> Fast-charging takes somewhat longer than filling with gasoline/petrol, but I usually also want a bathroom and coffee break.

It's more than "somewhat". I can put over 400 highway miles of range into my vehicle in five minutes with a gas pump. It takes 30 minutes to put half that into an EV. I don't want to stop for half an hour every 200 miles.

> This is not idle speculation. I own an electric car. Furthermore, the vast majority of my charging occurs at home, over night. The total amount time I have saved by not having to visit gas stations for literally months is significant.

It sounds like you don't have many days where your driving exceeds the range capacity of your vehicle. The technology in the article, and the post you are responding to, are in the context of long-distance highway travel. It's for cases where a vehicle must be recharged in the middle of a trip, even when it starts with a full battery.

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#93

Post by [deleted] »

goodcanadian wrote: post #49
baltimore wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because charging takes much longer than filling up with gas. If someone is willing to pay a premium for charging while driving to reduce total trip time, that's a business opportunity.

This is often said, but I am not so sure. Fast-charging takes somewhat longer than filling with gasoline/petrol, but I usually also want a bathroom and coffee break. I can easily do that while my car is charging. That is not really true while dispensing gasoline. It is not so obvious to me that I am losing out time-wise. This is not idle speculation. I own an electric car. Furthermore, the vast majority of my chargin…

[deleted]

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#94

Post by slavik81 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #52
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding an extra step (rail hub to short haul truck transition, potentially at both ends of the trip) adds cost. This cost is (and will be for the foreseeable future) less than having the less efficient semi-truck do the entire trip at least for the kinds of loads that are currently carried by semi-truck. JIT inventory systems also don't play nice with rail.

Semi trucks are cheaper because they receive a $125B+ yearly subsidy in the form of road maintenance. Semi trucks do 99% of the damage to our public roads, but only pay 35% of the cost. I suspect that rail would be much more price competitive if we took that subsidy away. You’re right about JIT, but we’re also seeing the downsides of JIT infrastructure during this pandemic. I suspect that we’ll see a push for more re…

Assuming we're resurfacing our roads once every 5 years, if we banned trucks it would take 100x longer to accumulate the same amount of damage, so we'd be able to resurface only once every 500 years?

I would expect there to be a significant amount of damage done just by the elements, independent of usage.

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#95

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #17

Why bother? With top line EV ranges reaching close to 400 miles, after that amount of time I need to get out of the car. If you want people to be able travel huge distances cleanly without stopping, then what you’re actually looking for is a train.

Not everyone wants to take an hour long break every 400 miles.

On a 2000 mile trip, that's an extra 5 hours of travel time. I'd much rather be at the beach than at Rest Stop X in the middle of nowhere for an hour.

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#96

Post by valuearb »

jccc wrote: post #9

Asking sincerely: Why should we not simply pull over to do this? Planes obviously are a different situation, but cars can easily just stop. While cool to imagine, it seems unnecessarily complicated and unsafe to do this in motion on the road. [Edit: The prof and his team are quite serious about it, so I assume there must be a reason and I'm actually curious what it might be.]

Commercial planes don’t even do midair refueling, because it’s expensive and dangerous.

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#97

Post by Gibbon1 »

goodcanadian wrote: post #49
baltimore wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because charging takes much longer than filling up with gas. If someone is willing to pay a premium for charging while driving to reduce total trip time, that's a business opportunity.

This is often said, but I am not so sure. Fast-charging takes somewhat longer than filling with gasoline/petrol, but I usually also want a bathroom and coffee break. I can easily do that while my car is charging. That is not really true while dispensing gasoline. It is not so obvious to me that I am losing out time-wise. This is not idle speculation. I own an electric car. Furthermore, the vast majority of my chargin…

Back when I did more road trips with friends I measured how long stops take. Stops take a lot longer than people think. People think a gas and pee stop is 5-10 minutes tops. Really 15 minutes to half an hour. Fast food place, half an hour. Sit down meals take more than an hour.

Yeah certainly by myself, I could do a gas stop in 5 minutes. With other people never works out like that.

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#98

Post by m463 »

brownbat wrote: post #51
ashtonkem wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains. The fact that long haul semi trucks are a thing is a failure of infrastructure. Edit: as some have pointed out, it’s more a failure of policy.

Trains are far more efficient, less subsidized, safer, less polluting... https://grist.org/article/freight-trains-19th-century-techno... Even if you electrify trucks the tire and brake wear and road degradation contribute an enormous amount of PM 2.5. Sure you'll need trucks for the last mile but every ton of freight we can move to rails or waterways is a victory for humanity.

I used to think that too, but

- economically trains are a monopoly. This point dwarfs all others.

- we don't have two-directional rails everywhere

- electric trucks can change the economics and mitigate the pollution of trucking

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#99

Post by m463 »

patall wrote: post #26

Can anyone explain what happened to battery swapping. A few years ago there was this Tesla show where they swapped three cars in the time it took to refuel a normal ICE automotive. But after that nothing happened. I know it is difficult to handle when you do not own the battery but I would guess 90% of private long distance trips are return trips, so you could swap batteries at your trusted former gas station every 2…

Nobody who actually owns a car wanted to swap batteries.

There are many reasons: ownership of the battery, logistics of the swap and swap back, required payment for convenience, need to stop anyway, range of vehicle, etc.

Re: Can electric cars on the highway emulate plane-to-plane refueling?

#100

Post by ashtonkem »

m463 wrote: post #98
brownbat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains are far more efficient, less subsidized, safer, less polluting... https://grist.org/article/freight-trains-19th-century-techno... Even if you electrify trucks the tire and brake wear and road degradation contribute an enormous amount of PM 2.5. Sure you'll need trucks for the last mile but every ton of freight we can move to rails or waterways is a victory for humanity.

I used to think that too, but - economically trains are a monopoly. This point dwarfs all others. - we don't have two-directional rails everywhere - electric trucks can change the economics and mitigate the pollution of trucking

Electric trucks will still emit a rather large amount of pm2.5, and are still heavily dependent on both direct and indirect federal subsidies.
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