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Electric Semi's

Got a ways to go yet. They've been working on self driving farm tractors now for how long? A big empty square of land is a whole lot easier than navigating a road.

See the story on the self driving van that got backed into in Vegas a couple weeks ago. The van stopped like it was supposed to when it encountered an obstacle, but wasn't able to figure out what to do with an aggressive vehicle coming towards it.

Oh yeah, it was predicted we would all have flying cars by now.
 
Kids are going to have great 'fun' trying to play with this new technology.

Walk out in front of cars with the auto braking.

Drive a car into the other lane or into a wall, see if it stops in time.

So forth.

Going to be a lot of downside with all this.

They can probably figure out what other cars are going to do.

Figuring out what individual humans will do, the machines will be overwhelmed.

Paul
 
The truck I drive today will about drive itself except for the steering.
I can get on the interstate and set the cruise. It will maintain cruse speed as long as the road is clear ahead.
If I come upon a slower car the truck will slow down to maintain a safe following distance.
If I change lanes to where no one is in front of me or the car in front gets off the exit the truck will speed back up to the set cruise speed.

If they could figure out how to keep it between the white lines such as very accurate GPS or forward vision of things imbedded in the highway I could sleep while the truck drove itself down the highway.
 
Self driving test car in, IIRC, Las Vegas, crashed within an hour or so of test drive.

IIRC, car stopped and truck backed into it.

Do not expect electric road tractors to be suitable for anything but short distance routes. The energy density is not there and won't be there for (ever?) years.

Dean
 
I believe that SOMEDAY we will have vehicles that completely drive themselves. By 2025? Meh...that's pushing it.
My daughter is a computer programmer that got a six-figure job right out of college. She's very talented and I'm extremely proud of her. She's also very outspoken.
So one day she says: "I can't wait for all cars to drive themselves using only a computer and computer programming."
To which I replied: "What happens when somebody hacks the system and commands all cars to make a left turn at the exact same time?"
That was probably the one and only time I can recall where she has been speechless.
 
WHY are we even Considering such a fiasco , IMHO ,that is no different transplanting a human head ,, Just to prove we can, is admireable and alot of knowledge mite be gained or at the very least exercised to the extreme ,, but is it practical ???,,.we landed and walked on the moon too ,.. but we are not renting condos there,,,.. Self drivers shared by the public aint gonna happen without CAUSING A HALE of a dam-mess,,you think the judicial system is mired down now ,they cant even legislate Proper drone protocol ,with self drivers and terrorist hackers we are setting us up for a mess,..Self drivers will have an achilles heal that Smartazzseverywhere will attempt to exploitand unwittingly cause and release more havoc than any idiot with a computer can dream up and instantly short circuit ,,.. one thing for sure is ,the publicity caused by making such annoucements makes all the disappointed voters of the last election beg their daddies for more money to invest in Tesla stock , and that boosts their stock bottomline coffers for awhile. til the party is over and everyone sobers up to reality
 
I tried to go to the link but the page was not there. I assume your talking of the new Tesla truck. Very impressive numbers they are spouting off. 0 to 60 with a load in 5.9 seconds. That's insane. 500 miles on a charge. 30 minutes to recharge. As for no drive. I think there nuts. Big accidents about to happen.
 
My question is what do the batteries for a truck weigh and whats the payload of the truck? How much room do the batteries take up? Electricity may be efficient in some installations, but I don't see a battery powered truck and trailer weighing 80K working out hauling logs or stone up our mountains.
 
I wouldnt want to get in a vehicle that would take me to anywhere THEY wanted it to. I'm keeping stuff that cant be controlled by itself or someone else.
 
(quoted from post at 05:40:07 11/28/17) My question is what do the batteries for a truck weigh and whats the payload of the truck? How much room do the batteries take up? Electricity may be efficient in some installations, but I don't see a battery powered truck and trailer weighing 80K working out hauling logs or stone up our mountains.
Click to expand...

Those are some of my questions also. Plus, the estimated range is only 500 miles. Interstate 80 across Nebraska is 480 miles.
 
Going down a 2 lane highway I caught up to a couple of trucks hauling doubles.
One had pulled out to pass the other but did not have the power to get by quickly.
They were side by side and coming up to a hill, the second I saw another big truck crest the hill coming toward them I got real hard on the brakes expecting there to be metal everywhere in a second or two.
The two outside trucks had wheels hanging off the shoulder trying to make room and for as close as they were to each other when they passed 3 abreast I would be willing to bet all of them had to stop to readjust mirrors and change underwear.

When they prove driverless vehicles can calculate and coordinate with each other in a split second to avoid a scenario like this then maybe we will have to accept the technology as the way of the future, personally I don't think they will be there for a long time to come.
 

A very big factor to electric trucks is the regenerative braking. It will slow these heavy trucks down very quickly, much better than an engine brake, and the braking will keep recharging the batteries, which is how they get the 500 mile range. I can see electric driverless trucks playing a major role in long haul open road settings, for the major carriers, between break bulk terminals, A terminal worker would back the trailer up to a dock, drop the trailer, put the tractor on the charger, and then send a different reworked trailer back to the sending terminal with a recharged tractor pulling it.
 
Electric vehicles are in the future, but we have to improve the batteries; weight, cost and efficiency. Then driverless, how about a 3rd lane on interstates for the driverless vehicles?????

Presently I think diesel electric, like locomotives, might be the alternative for big trucks.

Bill
 
The entire trucking system will be reconfigured to take advantage of self driving electric semis. You no longer need a cab and sleeper so there is plenty of room for a battery. A dock worker can plug in a remote control joy stick and back the truck up to the dock while walking along outside of it. Trucks could exchange batteries like fork lifts. Instead of the trucking company owning the batteries the trucking company can lease kilowatt hours from a battery company. Instead of buying gallons of diesel they will buy KWHs. The actual design of the tractor will completely change. You really don't have a drive train you have electric motors on each drive wheel. You only need about half or less of the trucks we have today. Driverless trucks can run 24 hours no rest needed. Everything we think about today that is associated with trucking will change. There will be truck operating centers that people go to and monitor trucks remotely. They do an 8 hour shift and the next shift comes in. I think the mistake people make is trying to do a one to one direct replacement of what we do today. The only thing in the trucking industry that is required is delivering freight. Everything else about how the trucking industry works can change.
 

Anyone who claims a battery powered class 7 or 8 truck is one of the following. A shyster who is making bucks selling the idea . The news media needing a story . A company such as Walmart or Loblaws wanting to purchase some good will from greenies . The hard core greenie/SJW that doesn’t care about facts and just has a power or control agenda . Or John Q Clueless Public that heats something that sounds good but lack the engineering knowledge to understand what is possible and what is practical.
 

Tell us how many gallons of diesel is required to haul a loaded truck 500 miles . Now convert that to Kw hr battery capacity . Tell us how many batteries, physical size of batteries , weight of the batteries, cost of the batteries and the recharge time/power.
 
Never work!! If you have no driver who's going to do the loading and unloading of freight. All most all you freight is delivered by LTL driver that unload and load freight.
 
Agreed, WNYBill.

Diesel-electric-hybrid makes sense for heavy OTR road tractors for the immediate future, but the greenies would not accept such.

Dean
 
The way things have changed during my life time , I will be surprised if Loblaws and Walmart are even still in the retail business in 8 years, let alone trucks powered by some thing other than Diesel. It is like weather forecasting, the farther into the future the forecast , the less likely it will ever happen.
 
Battery life and capacity is increasing rapidly. Don't think what we have today is going to be what we have in 5 years. Just look at cordless drills over the past 10 years. Battery life must be 5 times what it was 10 years ago. You don't have to charge the battery on the truck. You can have exchange stations. You can exchange a battery just about as quickly as you can fill a truck with diesel. Stop thinking what we do and how we do it will be one to one comparison. Only constant is the freight needs to be delivered. Everything else can be changed. I don't know if this will happen or not. It comes down to what will be the most economical way to deliver freight. But it will be possible to do it full electric I just don't know if that will be the cheapest. I have no dog in this fight but I recognize that technology can and will be used to do things cheaper.
 
Just because the driver is involved in unloading freight today does not mean it has to be that way. A dock worker can also unload the freight. This isn't a road block to driverless trucks. Just a change in how it gets done.
 
LTL deliveries do not always involve a dock worker and do you think a freight line is going to trust somebody else unloading freight when there are other customers freight on trailer?
 
(quoted from post at 07:40:27 11/28/17) Never work!! If you have no driver who's going to do the loading and unloading of freight. All most all you freight is delivered by LTL driver that unload and load freight.
Click to expand...

D. beatty, line haul trucks don't deliver freight. Peddle trucks do it.
Nobody is expecting driverless trucks to run off the intestate for a long time let alone make LTL deliveries.
 
If you tell the end user that it is cheaper freight if they unload the truck then magically a dock worker will appear or they will pay extra for a real driver to unload the truck. Partial loads with other peoples freight can be handled by contractual agreements. The dock worker signs off what he took and becomes legally liable. Radio tracking devices can also be connected to partial loads of goods so you know what they took off. Cameras in the trailers can also monitor what someone took off. Even robotic devices that pull items out of a truck and place it on a dock behind the truck are possible.
 
With all kinds of batteries needing to be recharged for cars and trucks, the demand for hydro will increase and when demand rises so does cost usually. I can see hydro companies raising prices more and more. Just thinking offset to the electric vehicle.
Lyle
 
I read an article on them last week, it's pretty impressive stuff. But I always think back to elementary school where they told us we had to learn the metric system because it's all we would be using by the time we were out of school. That was 1976.
 
(quoted from post at 09:51:43 11/28/17) Battery life and capacity is increasing rapidly. Don't think what we have today is going to be what we have in 5 years. Just look at cordless drills over the past 10 years. Battery life must be 5 times what it was 10 years ago. You don't have to charge the battery on the truck. You can have exchange stations. You can exchange a battery just about as quickly as you can fill a truck with diesel. Stop thinking what we do and how we do it will be one to one comparison. Only constant is the freight needs to be delivered. Everything else can be changed. I don't know if this will happen or not. It comes down to what will be the most economical way to deliver freight. But it will be possible to do it full electric I just don't know if that will be the cheapest. I have no dog in this fight but I recognize that technology can and will be used to do things cheaper.
Click to expand...

You better check your facts. A son in law is an electrical engineer. He's working with stuff that requires long life batteries. The hang up they have now is battery life and there is nothing on the horizon that looks like there will be any change anytime soon. And this is working on government stuff, not for the civilian market and they can't get any better than you can for yer cordless drill. The last things that improved run time on the cordless tools is better efficiency of the tool. Lithium Ion batteries haven't improved, it's the power consumption of the tool.

Now look at the company making these claims. Every time they are close to running out of money they showcase something else to make investors up more money. I think investors are going to take a bath on this. Notice how they showed this truck 2 months BEFORE they were going to be broke. Plus they can't even get production going on their flagship car?

Recharge while braking? What happens when that truck is on the interstate in very lite traffic? Just how much braking is there going to be?

No from a liability point of view. Few if any carriers are going to invest in driverless trucks unless they are going to be able to duck liability. Lets say so hacking can make all vehicles make a turn at the same time. The trucking company is still going to be liable for having a vehicle out there without someone to take control if it malfunctions.

Rick
 

The diesel/electric setup was talked about a few days ago here.Makes good sense.I have to wonder why this hasen't been tried long before now.
 
If you think about all the extra cost your not going to see it in your life time and there are still things that a machines can't do. Trucks can't change placards when needed and it can't repair itself along side of road.
 
One big thing the media has barely covered is the fire hazard that exists when you have a large concentration of Li-on batteries. It's been an issue for years for air cargo carriers with numerous incidents and a couple of crashes having been caused when shipments of batteries caught fire due to thermal runaway.

When one of these trucks has even a minor fender bender and there's damage to the batteries you have the potential for a quite a fireworks show in addition to the hazmat situation of spillage.
There was a Tesla crash last year (IIRC) where the batteries caught fire and were going off like roman candles.

The batteries have been working ok for hybrids and light vehicles but when you try to compile enough battery storage to move 40 tons for 500 miles......well, we're just not there yet.

No truck drivers in 7 years? Well, in grade school we were told that scientist were certain the world would run out of oil by 1999.
 
. A fundamental lack of understanding regarding batteries for anyone who thinks the truck can run 24/7 and recharge in 30 minutes .
Anyone who thinks there is battery tech beyond today’s lithium cells used in the 787 or the Bolt . They ain’t knowledgeable about batteries.
 
battery life and capacity will not increase . What you have seen in the past decade is a switch from NiCad to lithium . And battery manufacturing moving from the west . To the east with low wages and a disregard for pollution.
If there were better batteries the Navy would be using them in subs . Guess what the Navy uses ? A version of the lead acid battery invented in 1859.
 
oldtanker and CenTex have the topic covered as well as any.
Beyond the loading dock and the golf course . The only practical electric vehicles is mining equipment , European electric rail or hybrid electric rail and electric transit vehicles . All are powered one way or another directly from the utility grid .
For a short hop commuter car . The Chevy Bolt makes a great status symbol however compared to it’s stable mate the Sonic which costs $26,000 full loaded . A loaded bolt costs $52,000 and GM is sell at approx $15,000 loss each. Then the tax payer here has the privilege of paying $15,000 towards the EV and a L2 home charger .
Don’t know how the greenie stands there and says they are saving $$$ with thier Bolt when it cost them $38,000.
 
I didn't even get into the issue of Cobalt and that we get it from countries with significant political issues and poor records on human rights. The Cobalt supply alone could effective limit future production volume of Li batteries, particularly when you get into the volume they're dreaming of for E vehicles.
 

Most of the EV promoters don’t know about technical issues and don’t care . They have an agenda of political power which they justify by “saving the planet”. Some believe that any tech can be made possible with enough research funds . Many of these same promoters own engineering firms who receive tax payer funded research grants .
 
(quoted from post at 15:22:53 11/29/17) battery life and capacity will not increase . What you have seen in the past decade is a switch from NiCad to lithium . And battery manufacturing moving from the west . To the east with low wages and a disregard for pollution.
If there were better batteries the Navy would be using them in subs . Guess what the Navy uses ? A version of the lead acid battery invented in 1859.
Click to expand...

I agree. If they really want to use electric vehicles for heavy loads then perhaps a return to the old over head power line, like in electric trains, might be an answer. Yeah, you;d need a dedicated lane for trucks and they'd have to have a backup for getting off the mainline, but maybe that's an option.
 
(quoted from post at 20:06:09 11/28/17) With all kinds of batteries needing to be recharged for cars and trucks, the demand for hydro will increase and when demand rises so does cost usually. I can see hydro companies raising prices more and more. Just thinking offset to the electric vehicle.
Lyle
Click to expand...

I agree, and when the cost of electricity rises to the point of being equal to or higher than other fuels you will have people reviving old generators to charge up there batteries.

Then why not just strap the generator on the truck so you can extend your range.

Then why not just run the vehicle off the generator because your worn out batteries are too expensive to replace.

Then why not just hook up the generator engine to a transmission and differential because the cost to rewind the generator or drive motors is too high.

Full circle and we will be back to burning whatever is the cheapest fuel to convert into motion.

But then someone will determine it is producing too much emissions and the circle will repeat.
 
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