This. Is. Brilliant. Good analysis of the nooks and crannies of potential for trucking. I work in this space and there's still a lot to learn here.
Thanks for reading and the compliment! :)
On Trucking
101–110 of 113 posts
Re: On Trucking
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
DAT's full name is "Dial a truck". They used to have these large screens in truck stops showing loads and encouraging drivers to call for loads. So I guess these drivers mostly hung out at truck stops (they still do today), just that most truck stops aren't as clean/nice as before.
Woah!! They're like tube TVs at the airport but with loads on them? This is so interesting! I wonder how they kept them updated/what systems that ran on
Yup exactly! I'm not too sure what the early systems were running on but here's a photo of early DAT load boards - https://www.dat.com/blog/life-before-load-boards
Re: On Trucking
#103Relevant John McPhee article from a couple of decades ago: https://archive.md/5GIIg He rode across the country with an owner operator, and he tells the story. "A true truck has eighteen wheels, or more. From Atlanta and Charlotte to North Powder, Oregon, this was the first time that Ainsworth had so much as tapped his air horn. In three thousand one hundred and ninety miles I rode with him he used it four times. He g…
Never saw this article before but wow is it a great read.
Re: On Trucking
#104Maybe this is a stupid question but is there any value in trying to put solar panels on the roofs of trucks to offset fuel costs? Solar panels are (new) around $0.75 / Watt and less than that used. Maybe you could fit 9 or so on the top which, depending on what panels you use, could be about a 1kW or so in sunlight. Maybe it's too much of a stretch to ask for a modified engine but heating the driver cabin or even pro…
Aren't most trucks actually hauling intermodal containers? The panels would have to be on the containers themselves, and then they could not be stacked.
Intermodal is actually a relatively small subset of trucking - probably behind generic dry van, reefer, and flatbed.
That being said, solar panels are great but what happens when they break down or get damaged. I don't think the savings are worth the hassle right now.
Re: On Trucking
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't comparing autopilot in an aircraft to autopilot in a car. I was comparing remote piloting of an aircraft to remote operation of a vehicle.
the paren'ts exact same point holds, how long to swap an attentive person in. Have you done support chat? it will immediately be one person to 55 cars, and add in the latency, they're not stopping that tesla move left and hit the breaks issue let alone a 30 car pileup.
I said "All it needs is to be able to recognize when it’s unable to safely have control *with enough advance notice to delegate to a human*"
IMO, there are road conditions where this is possible. For black swan cases like random wind gusts, tire blowouts, boulders falling onto the highway etc. I think AI would be better on average *currently* (again, just clarifying what I already said).
Re: On Trucking
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO (and this is just my relatively uninformed opinion), the key driving force here will be the shift to electric trucks. These are more expensive to buy but cheaper to operate. At least right now. And also easier to turn into self driving platforms. ICE trucks are really hard to operate. You are basically micro managing the gears, dealing with lot of fairly complex bit of equipment, etc. Electric trucks basically h…
You seem to me way too optimistic/entusiast on the matter. Volvo (which is BTW one of the more optimistic companies) is still today excluding long-haul trucks from being fully electric, and they have just started production of short-haul and "regional" electric trucks. And of course full self-driving is still beyond the horizon. BTW, and only as a side note, traditional trucks already use engine braking or retarders…
Tesla just launched a long haul truck with 500 mile range. They are not the only ones targeting long haul. The perpetuating myth here is that this is somehow hard or impossible. The reality is that this is just a matter of including a few extra tonnes of battery and multiple companies have trucks on the road that can do this. Which is what Tesla did. They also have a fairly efficient drive train. And a charging system to top this thing up. Early days but it seems like it's starting to become worth the trouble.
Nikola advertises a battery electric heavy truck with 330 miles of range. Nikola and Volvo seems to still be pretending that they are going to use hydrogen but at the same time they are selling a lot of battery electric at this point and not a whole lot of hydrogen trucks. Mostly ranges are creeping up to the point where drivers must stop to take a break anyway that is long enough to top the battery up. So, the range anxiety argument is simply not there. It's a pure cost driven thing. And it's not like hydrogen fueling is particularly fast or cheap.
Of course, a lot of companies are opting for shorter range trucks because they are much cheaper and because that suits their needs. Long haul electric trucks are more expensive. Because of the extra batteries. So, yes, the sweet spot of the market is short haul, for now. But there's nothing inherently hard about longer range trucks. It's just a cost and supply chain issue. As battery production scales and prices come down further, we'll see more companies dip their toes into long haul.
Self driving is a thing that multiple electric truck and van companies are talking about at this point as something that they want to do. It's still pretty far out but it's not that much harder than self driving cars. But as I said, the bigger challenge here is simply replacing fleets which is an inherently slow process. But of course that's exactly where the money is going to be for manufacturers.
Re: On Trucking
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to me way too optimistic/entusiast on the matter. Volvo (which is BTW one of the more optimistic companies) is still today excluding long-haul trucks from being fully electric, and they have just started production of short-haul and "regional" electric trucks. And of course full self-driving is still beyond the horizon. BTW, and only as a side note, traditional trucks already use engine braking or retarders…
It continually boggles my mind that more people aren't interested in hybrids here. There's a company called Hyliion that's been working on this for a while (I have no involvement or investment with them, just interested), and there are likely others as well, but there still doesn't seem to be a lot of uptake or discussion about it. Hybrids seem to me like a net win all around for at least some use cases. I'm not sure…
I think companies looking to switch to electric trucks are primarily motivated by the lower maintenance/operational cost and lower electricity cost. It's a big investment but over the lifetime of the vehicle it's worth the money. The environmental benefits are a nice plus point of course but not the main thing.
Using a hybrid, you get back a lot of the maintenance hassle and on top of that your fuel is again more expensive. It's basically most of the downsides of an ICE truck without most of the upsides of a full battery electric truck. So, the business case for hybrid trucks is just a lot more murky. I'm sure there will be some companies that will try this but the money is going to be in full battery electric.
Re: On Trucking
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
It continually boggles my mind that more people aren't interested in hybrids here. There's a company called Hyliion that's been working on this for a while (I have no involvement or investment with them, just interested), and there are likely others as well, but there still doesn't seem to be a lot of uptake or discussion about it. Hybrids seem to me like a net win all around for at least some use cases. I'm not sure…
I think companies looking to switch to electric trucks are primarily motivated by the lower maintenance/operational cost and lower electricity cost. It's a big investment but over the lifetime of the vehicle it's worth the money. The environmental benefits are a nice plus point of course but not the main thing. Using a hybrid, you get back a lot of the maintenance hassle and on top of that your fuel is again more exp…
I appreciate that perspective, I know many share it.
> you get back a lot of the maintenance hassle and on top of that your fuel is again more expensive
The entire value proposition of hybrids is that they both reduce the amount of required maintenance on the ICE part (plus the brakes) and reduce the amount of fuel needed-- while maintaining all the flexibility of ICE vehicles. As a bonus, they require far fewer batteries than full electrics at a time when battery supply is clearly going to be constrained for the foreseeable future.
Fully electric trucks will have trouble anywhere with long stretches of cold weather. Operating outside of their ideal temperature zone will result in much lower efficiency, exacerbated by the weight of the batteries remaining the same regardless of charge level.
I think there are ideal niches for both approaches. Honestly, I also think most pure ICE drivetrains should be converted over to varying types of hybrids in the long run, because it almost always seems to be a net win to me... but I could be wrong. Would love to see more R&D put into it, in any case.
Re: On Trucking
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think companies looking to switch to electric trucks are primarily motivated by the lower maintenance/operational cost and lower electricity cost. It's a big investment but over the lifetime of the vehicle it's worth the money. The environmental benefits are a nice plus point of course but not the main thing. Using a hybrid, you get back a lot of the maintenance hassle and on top of that your fuel is again more exp…
I appreciate that perspective, I know many share it. > you get back a lot of the maintenance hassle and on top of that your fuel is again more expensive The entire value proposition of hybrids is that they both reduce the amount of required maintenance on the ICE part (plus the brakes) and reduce the amount of fuel needed-- while maintaining all the flexibility of ICE vehicles. As a bonus, they require far fewer batt…
> The entire value proposition of hybrids is that they both reduce the amount of required maintenance on the ICE part (plus the brakes) ...
Is that a net win? It reduces maintenance on the brakes, it may reduce maintenance on the ICE, and it adds a whole bunch of new stuff to maintain. Does anyone have data on the net effect? Does anyone have data for trucks?
Re: On Trucking
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to me way too optimistic/entusiast on the matter. Volvo (which is BTW one of the more optimistic companies) is still today excluding long-haul trucks from being fully electric, and they have just started production of short-haul and "regional" electric trucks. And of course full self-driving is still beyond the horizon. BTW, and only as a side note, traditional trucks already use engine braking or retarders…
Tesla just launched a long haul truck with 500 mile range. They are not the only ones targeting long haul. The perpetuating myth here is that this is somehow hard or impossible. The reality is that this is just a matter of including a few extra tonnes of battery and multiple companies have trucks on the road that can do this. Which is what Tesla did. They also have a fairly efficient drive train. And a charging syste…
For long range trucks (electric) there could be (in theory) yet another possibility, adding a trailer on the highways.
Not entirely unlike existing multi-trailer (used on some roads in Australia), so called Road Trains, but limited to two trailers, the main one and the battery trailer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train
the truck would enter the highway, stop at a service station, add a "powerpack" battery trailer, drive until the next station, swap battery trailer as many times as needed, then leave it at the last service station before destination.