51–60 of 123 posts
The (bad) justification for overtaking seems a much better justification for the slower truck to fix their calibration and go faster. Lots of good info but it all feels a bit like it is being used to create a "just so story" to support whatever the current status quo is.
And yet, electrical semis exist that come without 16 ton batteries. The fallacy here is that most of the diesel is used to heat the universe rather than move the truck. Truck engines are relatively efficient but it's still a combustion engine. EV trucks are now a reality.
Mercedes-Benz’s eActros 600, one of the flagship battery-electric long-haul trucks now in series production, uses *three 207 kWh LFP battery packs for a total of 621 kWh of installed capacity, and under realistic conditions can deliver about 500 km of range on a full charge with a 40-ton gross combination weight, with opportunity charging in driver breaks enabling well over 1 000 km of daily travel. That's 4-6 tons of battery, not 16.
Volvo Trucks’ current flagship, the FH Electric, has 360–540 kWh of batteries (four to six packs) and achieves up to ~300 km of range for typical heavy-duty operation, and its forthcoming FH Aero Electric long-haul variant is being announced with ~780 kWh battery capacity targeting ~600 km of range. That's around 3 tons of battery.
The weight goes at the cost of the useful load. Though the EU allows an extra 2 tons for new energy trucks. And of course a lot of trucks aren't fully loaded typically. Also, the weight limitations have a lot to do with safety issues related to diesel trucks and their brake systems that electrical trucks have much less. Regenerative braking and lots of torque at low speeds mean that they could move a lot more weight safely than currently allowed. And adding more axles to distribute the weight can address any road damage concerns.
With mandatory 45 minute breaks every 4.5 hours, trucks can just top up as needed. With normal truck driver hours that's 1 or 2 breaks in a working day. There's a growing amount of chargers all over Europe and these things routinely drive all over Europe from Scandinavia to Iberia to Balkans and everything in between. There are of course still many places where more/better chargers are needed but these ranges are usable and practical enough that you can get loads from A to B in most of Europe with only minimal delays relative to diesel trucks in terms of charging time losses. It's early days and charging infrastructure is rapidly being improved. But the point is, that electrical trucks work just fine today. There are no fundamental real load or distance limitations here. But of course more infrastructure is needed to scale.
Lighter batteries will make trucks slightly more efficient. But price and longevity matter much more. Sodium ion with its well over a million mile lifespan looks like it should revolutionize trucking over the next decade. LFP is commonly used today already. NMC is lighter but has a lower lifespan.
> This isn’t advisory. It’s a physical limiter in the engine’s ECU. The truck cannot go faster. I live in Latvia (in the EU) and see a significant part of our ARTICs on the roads go well past 90km/h daily. I presume their fleets do monitor the speed and alert the driver if speeding for a prolonged period of time but they are obviously not physically limited. Maybe the limits do come from the factory but get disabled?…
One thing I'd update is that early in the article you say that for switching from diesel to lithium-ion, "It's 16 tonnes of payload that disappears".
But then later you take engine efficiency into account and say it's "about 6.4 tonnes of battery".
So the claim that it would ever reduce payload by 16 tonnes seems incorrect, and not everyone is going to read both parts.
I was reading the NASA truck aerodynamics thread earlier and realised that commercial freight is one of those fields that touches everyone's daily life (everything you own arrived on a truck) but sits in a complete knowledge blindspot for most people. I work in fleet fuel efficiency and wrote up the foundational mental model, covering why trucks weigh what they weigh, why they're all doing exactly 56mph, why diesel i…
>. That’s roughly 28 to 35 litres per 100 km, or around 30 litres per hour at cruise speed. This is not a misprint. A truck burns in an hour what a small car burns in a week. Let me paraphrase - a truck weighting 25 times more than a car burns only 4 times as much fuel per 100km at corresponding cruising speeds. > At 0.25 kWh/kg, that’s still about 6.4 tonnes of battery — roughly 18 times heavier than the 350 kg dies…
For people that want to make the calculation: A truck does not need a 15 ton battery. In Europe, we have mandatory breaks for truck drivers. So you need a battery pack for max 400km of range, let's say 500km. When you have a break, you charge. For this, you need like 1500kWh battery pack, which weigths like ... wait, 15 tons. But this is not entirely correct, the real values reported are between 120-150Kwh/100km, tha…
> At 0.5 mph differential, the overtake takes 291 seconds — over a minute of blocking the outside lane. Annoying, but it gains the driver 5.0 extra miles across a working day. The driver gets there 5 minutes earlier in exchange for causing a 7-km tailback multiple times per day? That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away: the truck in front is limited to 90 km/h, you're limited to 90 km/h…
> Most assume the truck driver is being inconsiderate. From the article. Then goes on to show exactly how they're inconsiderate with maths. How they're not seeing it is baffling.
>. That’s roughly 28 to 35 litres per 100 km, or around 30 litres per hour at cruise speed. This is not a misprint. A truck burns in an hour what a small car burns in a week. Let me paraphrase - a truck weighting 25 times more than a car burns only 4 times as much fuel per 100km at corresponding cruising speeds. > At 0.25 kWh/kg, that’s still about 6.4 tonnes of battery — roughly 18 times heavier than the 350 kg dies…
A Cat 3406 weighs around 4000lbs and an Eaton 18spd weighs around 1000lbs. So rounding up a bit for accessories and other equipment say 6000lbs total (~2750kg).