Daimler is setting up a $650M charging network for commercial EVs

This is a much-needed move for the commercial EV sector. With Greenlane focusing on medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, long-haul electric trucking could finally become a reality. It's interesting that they plan to add hydrogen fuel cell infrastructure and eventually chargers for passenger EVs, making it a more comprehensive network. Exciting times ahead for the decarbonization of the trucking industry!

> long-haul electric trucking

I wonder, does it even make sense? Long-haul (electric of course) rail + short to medium haul trucking make more sense - it would be much more efficient.

Do long haul electric truck even make sense? Don't the batteries needed weigh too much?

Is any of that coming from the US Dept of Transportation's Federal Infrastructure fund?

https://www.transportation.gov/rural/ev/toolkit/ev-infrastru...

It's still a net positive that they're doing this.

It’s an engineering challenge, but doable as you get about a ton of extra weight for EVs.

The main mental miscalculation I think people make when they say “why not just trains” is ignoring that rail is a super conservative industry, at least in the US, and in the case of passenger rail (not on existing tracks) that building out new rail infrastructure is super expensive, particularly for HSR where rights of way have to obey Newton’s Laws when it comes to turning radius.

It literally may take more time to do the environmental review for adding, say, catenary lines to existing rail than to just go to electric trucks. Some companies have been really effective at building out charging infrastructure. Additionally, just convincing the rail industry to make changes to enable/allow electrification (especially in non traditional ways) could take a generation.

Additionally, the US has removed a lot of seldom-used rail, so you just need a lot of trucking. Moving cargo from truck to rail to truck just may be a lot more cost and hassle than direct via truck.

Electrifying trucking, even long haul trucking, is just potentially the fastest way to electrify a lot of current logistics given the cultural, infrastructure, regulatory reality we live in today, as opposed to the ideal cultural, infrastructural, regulatory world we’d LIKE at here to be.

Engineering a decarbonization transition with realistic assessments of infrastructure & industry/regulatory inertial as a constraint is very different than “ideally we use trains for logistics as they have a lower coefficient of friction.”