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Not completely relevant but somewhat on topic. Heavy duty vehicles like the semi basically use Supercharging as their minimum level of charging up to mega charging. They charge multiple times a day in most cases. Will be interesting to see what that impact is on the batteries and it will help...

Older ABS systems would lock out the brakes if it thought you were on ice or other low mu surface to prevent you from making things worse. It can activate on track cars with sticky tires at all the wrong times too :) Most newer systems are much more advanced to prevent this so I would be...

Maybe they can make some panels out of polished SS like that one cybertruck and get the blaaaaang on there.

FIFY

Its the safest truck!

Cool info, thanks for sharing and glad you had a good time! This lines up well with regen capturing about 50% of the energy used to go up a grade on the way down.

Solution coming in two weeks. Right after we get FSD working!

And the fact its good for a lot more cycles making a replacement far less likely in the normal lifespan of a passenger car. For heavy duty trucks like the semi its a different ballgame as the expected useful life is around a million miles so its significantly more than passenger vehicles...

LMFP has been in the news more recently which is supposed to improve energy density of LFP among some other benefits. Will be interesting to see if it takes off. A huge benefit to LFP is just its much lower cost making EVs more affordable which is needed to get more adoption. From what I have...

Thanks, its clearly available and in use then!!!

BYD has a really nice LFP blade cell design that allows for cooling plates on the top and bottom for better cooling. I believe CATL is planning to release a similar design soon if they have not already. There is some experimentation going on with LFP to add additional metals and adjusting the...

Its definitely the chemistry. LFP is way more stable and can handle way more cycles then NMC/NCA. I just did a quick search and this clip seemed reasonable comparing the differences. https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/lfp-battery-in-your-next-ev-tesla-and-others-say-yes

Thats how it currently works with all the electric Semis globally. Do you think they put public chargers at their depots? Do you see a lot of places for a semi to charge with a trailer attached mid route? No electric semis are doing cross country runs, they are for local/regional use and mostly...

I ran across these articles today by the ICCT which I thought were interesting related to the question of HD charging infrastructure: Battery electric trucks - US Northeast electric utilities and planning for tomorrow Also: Powering Seattle fleets - Charging infrastructure strategy for battery...

Good question. Seems incredibly difficult to get enough charging @350kW available in many truck depots to support electric trucks. A number of MCS stations would probably be a heck no for most areas. I am very interested to see how this goes as EV semis start appearing in bigger numbers due to...

How big was the rock you are living under?

Semi related article...

Finalized, no. Far enough along that there will not be major changes so hardware can roll out, yep.

Lead times for sites, especially ones that use an MCS charger are quite long if they can even be supported at all due to local infrastructure. If you have a site that has multiple MCS chargers that will be in use at the same time....whoa. One issue with fleets is a lot of the depot sites are...

Came to post this and you all were on it! It was nice to see the tare weights which eliminates some of the guessing although they ended up what was expected IMO. One key note that a lot of people miss is the truck is not meant for all applications. There has been a lot of talk about this truck...

I'm not aware of either piece of information. I assume the Semi is just rolling out to more "fleet test" partners and not an actual sale which is why we do not have price. I have not seen any actual tractor weight info available either.

I believe NHSTA (or other agency in NA) requires exterior mirror(s)? Not sure about the passcar regulations, but it's been an issue for semi-trucks. If you look some of the newer trucks have very small mirrors which meet the minimum requirements and use cameras as supplement for the decreased size.

Good question. From an engineering and functional safety standpoint you have to think about what happens when things don’t go to plan due to a component failure, sw bug, or communication issue. For the CCS plug where the DC pins are separate from the AC pins you KNOW the electricity sent...

Pretty much any battery in an EV has CC and CV charging. The reason why you switch to CV is so you don’t overcharge and because its balancing so it can’t handle all the juice as its bleeding off the high cells so there is no need for a huge inrush of power. When the battery is empty depending...

Most of the trucks have batteries under the cab as well as on the side of the frame. Replacing them is not trivial! Also keep in mind there are coolant connections as well as electrical connections. Its not really fast or easy to change packs….charging them takes much less time!

Well thats part of the plug shape. I should have said plug shape/pinout or whatever but it is the plug interface (minus communication). Most would argue its silly to use the same pins for AC and DC from a safety and risk mitigation standpoint but its what we are going with in NA. I wouldn’t say...

Usually “calibrating” is confirming the starting point for the Coulomb-counting method of determining SOC. If you don’t get into the extreme low or high <20%/>80% the voltage is essentially the same so you don’t really know if you are 50% or 65% SOC as an example as your starting assumption may...

Requiring to charge to 100% for calibrating sounds like a crappy BMS more than anything. Generally the curve for LFP starts looking good at over 80-85% (where voltage changes enough with SOC increase to know where you are on the curve). For cell balancing it depends on a lot of factors. But...

That means pedestrians OUTSIDE the vehicle.

NACS is just a plug shape. Nothing to control there really. BP could control prices on its chargers, but not the Tesla ones or other chargers with the plug. Also you could just use a CCS1 to NACS.

There is a lot of investment from oil companies into charging. They are energy companies first and petrol was the big ticket item. With legislation in place in US and Europe its obvious there will be a significant shift away from petrol and diesel so they want to grab a slice of that pie to stay...

Aurora is also a L4 ADAS company for heavy duty market FYI

Most of the EV semis currently use CCS1 (AC & DC). Some like the Freightliner (and maybe others?) use dual CCS1 one charger per "bank". The Tesla and some other more prototype vehicles use the MCS (Megawatt charging standard). Most chargers now are around 750kW to 1MW max but the standard is...

Good point. I think especially with the options available now EVs can work for a good majority of use cases. Its not that I believe they can’t its that is the general perception which is holding people back. When I looked for a new (to me) car in 2019 the offerings I could afford were not that...

I know there are Semis in CA and NY? Somewhere on the East Coast. Nice to see more customers getting the trucks. Hopefully it puts pressure on the existing manufacturers to step it up :)

I think it had more to do with a lack of good infrastructure to support charging. EVs work for a lot of people as-is but people who travel a lot or to remote places it does not work as well for. This is why hybrids and phev are popular. You can charge at home but are unlikely to get stranded in...

I don’t think anyone in the auto/transportation industry took those charts as reality. It was more of a wishful thinking extrapolation. Everyone working on these things knew the cost of batteries would not decrease like projected as the low hanging fruit of improvements was already burned...

Bellingham, WA. Whistler is not far away but I haven’t got into the bike parks. I pedal up to ride down :) Need the exercise!

This is pretty much my plan. I like the shells with the pop top so you can stand and change in the bed too. Also nice for PNW rainy days where you just need some shelter and airflow. The ones with beds are neat, but I prefer the ability to stand. Some have the bed that attaches to the...

To give an idea of mileage accumulation, current manufacturer self test engines are pulled from the field and tested to ensure it still detects failed parts and detects them before emission limits are exceeded. The mileage is 435k miles after 3 years. Just to give an idea how fast an over the...

Just making sure as the way NACS is talked about is generally different from what it actually is. When pushing for NACS started I initially assumed Elon was bored with chargers and wanted to rely on others to provide them moving forward. Not the rosy view many fans take, but I also don’t think...

I keep seeing references to the J3400/NACS connector. I don't think people realize this does not really have much to do with Tesla anymore. They allowed others to use the plug shape/connection interface in North America (Europe still uses CCS2 as they have 3 phase). Even if there were no...

Tesla has a L2 ADAS system. Level 4 is a long way to go! At this point if they believe in their software, they should at least be able to take responsibility for the product and go L3 like Mercedes. There is a very good reason they kept the software as "beta" and now "supervised" so they don't...

I agree the midgate is pretty cool and the Silverado EV looks pretty nice. I'm not in a hurry to get anything so I am waiting on the sidelines. Interested to see what the prices and options look like when the Lightning goes to LFP batteries and what the V2 offers. Also curious if GM will go that...

Back when crew cabs were for hauling crews! I don’t recall seeing many crew cabs at all in my mostly suburban environments growing up. I spent many many hours wedged on one of the extended cab rear jumper seats though! Now the crew cabs with short bed are all the rage, but I get it. Its what...

The sales of EV semis are picking up, mostly due to fleets wanting to be in compliance with CARBs ACT and ACF regulations (minimum percent sales of EV heavy duty and required purchases of EVs for fleets of larger sizes). States in many costal areas and CO have these in place too. Most fleets...

I hope it will be produced in quantity, but I am very doubtful it will ever be a meaningful quantity. I will be glad to be wrong though as this fills a need for electric semis and it can handle the on road regional stuff so the other OEMs can focus on the vocational, etc. Competition is good to...

I saw this today which is related to the statement above https://apple.news/Aqcaq9DwBT7mJIfPub2uR9Q

Very true, but a lot of people believe Tesla is different because they make the parts themselves. In reality they design the parts, and have suppliers build them because thats they only way to make economic sense! They use similar processes to everyone else (no surprise) but what they choose the...

A lot of bigger fleets have “extra” floaters for this reason. Not everyone has them and the numbers are minimal for obvious reasons but they can’t miss a delivery for being down or they can lose a customer. Just confirming this is not a crazy thought! Super singles were the next big thing about...