You could run different tires, you could put chains on, etc. The mud mountain haulers have to go to extremes to find places where it looks rugged. Here on the east coast, in our rapidly degrading deciduous forests the primary threat is urbanization and parcelization and invasive species. All brought about because we have so many roads. We also have very few pulp mills and are harvesting hardwood products (oaks, walnut, cherry, etc) instead of small conifers used in buildings (think of a 2x4 for home construction). We work in an ecosystem of about 200 million acres of privately held lands, efficiency of the Semi should move our numbers considerably. Cutting fuel bill from +$100k a year per truck to $30k or less will do wonders to the profitability of each logging crew.
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Semi General Discussion
- Thread starter Buckminster
- Start date
Very nice. Used to live in downtown Portland and the sound of diesel vehicles 24/7 echoing through the apartment was unbearable. We'll see if this aspiration holds, though.
My own 389 Pete daycab weighs 17,500#s scale certified. I have a new 589 on the way that should weigh about 16,300#s and that's with the 15 liter motor and all of the good stuff.
But it's fair to add 1K#s for fuel since the EV semi's when charged don't gain any weight.
Anyways, the Tesla Semi daycab weighs 28K#s. That's not a guess, I know people that have driven them and weighed them. EV Semi's are allowed a 2K overage. Not fair to other road users and taxpayers, but it does help diminish the tonnage loss a bit.
It's true that some loads are under weight, but in the trucking businesses I'm involved in, we load right to the pound. I'd lose money if I lost 4+ tons of payload.
There are so many problems with the EV Semi's that I've discussed here before, but don't have the energy to try and educated those that don't want to learn from those of us that do know.
CA has the 5% EV's rule that began this year. That means a dealer has to sell 1 EV semi to be able to sell 19 diesel semis. CA dealers are already out of diesel slots to sell for 2024 and are turning away orders until they can sell more EV Semis and have been since about Jan. 3rd.
Fortunately, at this time there are huge loopholes, and most CA customers are now just registering their diesel trucks in NV/ OR/ AZ and then you can just drive them right on in.
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Yeah the Semi is going to be heavy, no doubt. For our logging it's going to be tough because we can load heavy as long as we stay off the interstate (10% over weight allowance) so maybe get back 9k pounds but it is an issue at the present. We need to see better batteries. On the other hand the cost savings, huge. $400 a day in diesel, down to less than $100 in solar juice.
I'm surprised you can load so closely to max weight, is this a freight depot with standard commodity products?
I'll be curious to see how the 5% rule works out for CA. God bless all the californians for pushing EVs out to the world. Truly a great societal effort.
I'm surprised you can load so closely to max weight, is this a freight depot with standard commodity products?
I'll be curious to see how the 5% rule works out for CA. God bless all the californians for pushing EVs out to the world. Truly a great societal effort.
The EV Semis actually cost new well over $600K. The Federal and State government rebates are currently $140K/ unit right now in CA, which of course taxpayers pay. The diesel fuel tax in CA is $1/ gallon, so there is another $100K the CA taxpayer has to subsidize EV's with per unit, over its lifetime.
Yet, believe it or not, the issues above are not what really makes them truly money losers. See the following for a few relevant points.
EV semis can't do the miles and need time on the chargers. Due to hours-of-service rules this is either going to require shorter shifts, or additional employees or additional trucks.
You are allowed an overweight permit in OR, as we are in TX, however the overweight permit is allowed for both diesel and EVs, so no advantage there. The fact is that EV semis are going to haul a lot less. Meaning you will absolutely need to have more EV Semis on the roads to legally haul the exact same tonnage of goods.
The batteries are going to be wiped out quickly and expensively due to the 1 GW charging speeds.
I've been told by people with turned up diesel semi-trucks, with much less instant torque than the Tesla EV semis, they EAT tires and tires are very expensive for Semis. I had a guy with a 700 hp CAT tell me his drive tires were done in sub 10K miles. Normally a set of drive tires, which cost about $3K, go about 80K miles. The tire bill along with the power of the Ev Semis would melt profits. Also, tire PM is actually a larger polluter than the ICE by a long shot. Meaning a tire eating EV Semi would still pollute more than a diesel, even just at the vehicle.
Frankly, I don't believe for a moment that mining a 200+ kwh battery pack, replacing it likely annually, then figuring out a way to generate the electricity to charge these things, is actually greener than a modern diesel, whose tailpipe emissions are currently cleaner than the air they take in, in every major US City.
To build a single truck charging station (not the additional electricity generating plants, which cost much much more) to charge approximately 8 EV Semis cost approximately 1.5 million. I was told of a company that did it strictly by the book in SoCal, all permits and processes followed, and when they try and charge their 8 EV's several blocks of their local neighborhoods lose power as each EV Semi uses about 24 homes worth of electricity.
EV semis are what happen, when a bunch of politicians actually think they are a lot smarter than they are.
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There are different types of pollution, and different ways of measuring what "pollutes more"...
But, I'll do some terrible math for one measure of "pollution" that I think about:
Lets say the EV truck goes 400 miles per day, 365 days per year (we've seen plenty of tales that the Tesla Semi can cover 400 miles per charge fully loaded...and can charge mid-day to go farther. But I'm really just trying to approximate here. VERY Rough numbers).
400*365 = 146,000 miles per year (if that's way too much...please bear with me anyway).
Let's say that a similar Diesel truck got 10 miles per gallon doing that much driving in a year (I'm pretty sure diesel semi rigs get well below that mpg rating, so I'm making them look better):
146,000 / 10 = 14,600 gallons of diesel.
Each gallon of diesel weighs about 7 pounds.
So, 14,600 * 7 = over 100,000 pounds of diesel burned, to cover 146,000 miles.
So, a 16,000 pound diesel truck is also burning 100,000 pounds of fuel to go 146,000 miles.
But wait, there's more! The diesel is burned with (mostly) oxygen. So, for example, the C's in the Diesel become (mostly) CO2's. As a result, among other emissions, each 7 pound gallon of diesel emits about 22 pounds of CO2.
So, a 16,000 pound diesel truck burns over 100,000 pounds of fuel and spews out over 300,000 pounds of CO2 to travel 146,000 miles.
So, even if that EV truck battery weighs 20,000 pounds on its own (it's lighter) and has to be replaced every 146,000 miles (it won't), the comparison becomes the pumping, refining, and delivering of over 100,000 pounds of diesel to be burned into over 300,000 pounds of CO2 and other gases, to the mining, refining, and building 20,000 pounds of battery.
On tire usage.....mostly a different type of pollution (particulates, versus gases). And, a scare story about burning through tires super quickly doesn't somehow mean that acceleration on an EV truck can't be tuned and/or drivers can't be reasonable. But, still, on a straight mass-to-mass comparison, it would take an absolute lunatic to get up to burning through 10's of thousands of pounds of tires in 146,000 miles to be comparable on a mass basis to the above pollution figures.
And, there is plenty of industrial recycling of battery materials now...which is ever-improving, making that process all the more efficient. While the diesel is just burned and sent into the air, necessitating pumping and refining ever more crude oil, those battery materials can be recycled and reused again and again. There will be no land fills full of old truck EV batteries...
Of course, the electricity comes form somewhere...but in the future that is envisioned, an ever-increasing amount will be solar, wind, hydro, and other renewables that don't actually require constant material inputs. The renewable share currently is already good in many areas. As an example of that potential development though, if 400 miles of fully-loaded Tesla semi requires about 900 kWh of electricity, that could reasonably be offset in 4.5-hours of sun hitting 200 kW worth of solar panels elsewhere on the grid. That's somewhere in the ball park of 10,000-20,000 pounds worth of solar panels and components for the system, and it's going to last 20+ years with some small amount of maintenance. So the required mass of material to produce electricity from solar for 20+ years is much smaller than the mass of diesel required to drive a diesel truck for one year. In a sense, 20,000 pounds of stuff lasting 20 years is like 1,000 pounds needed for each year....and that is so dang much smaller than the 100,000 pounds of diesel fuel needed for the fossil-fuel alternative in my hypothetical year.
Yes, there are other things we're not considering -- the mass of raw materials for the solar panels and batteries is more than the final mass, but recycling of the final materials is also well proven and allows for a nearly circular economy. On the flip side, the refinery used for making the diesel is a huge, massive, polluting thing on its own. And both the refinery and the solar panels have associated land costs and location considerations.
But, doing the actual math, even making rough assumptions, it's pretty obvious that in a future of EV trucks and other vehicles, much less stuff will be spewed into the air, and much less stuff will need to be pumped, mined, refined, and shipped around the world.
I just find it hilarious someone would believe Tesla sells vehicles whose batteries get destroyed annually from normal usage.
To be fair (and joking a bit), I just noticed the root of that mistake!
From Suns_PSD: "The batteries are going to be wiped out quickly and expensively due to the 1 GW charging speeds."
Charging the Tesla Semi pack at 1 GW would fill the entire pack in about 4 seconds. That would be like charging a Model S 100 kWh pack at 100,000 kW or 100 MW. That would indeed wipe out the battery, the car, the charge cable, and much of whatever is nearby
.In reality, the peak charge rate on a 100 kWh Model S is around 250 kW -- 2.5C.
On the ~82 kWh Model 3 and Y, that 250 kW is about 3C.
On the nearly 1 MWh semi, I've seen charge rate notes that would range from below 1C up to about 1.5C.
So, on the Semi, the battery is about 10 times the size, but the charge rates are only increased by a factor of 3-6 compared to Tesla's other vehicles. That provides some extra cushion.
I believe we've figured out that the Tesla Semi has about a 950 kWh pack (just under 1 MWh) and Pepsi charges them at about 750 kW -- so less than a 1C peak charge rate. I believe the longer-term goal is to bump up to 1 MW charging, and then perhaps 1.5 MW. The spec Tesla lists is to regain 70% of range in 30 minutes on a Tesla Semi Charger, which would average to about 1.4C. Even at 1.5 MW peak charging, the Tesla Semi will be seeing a peak charge rate below 2C, which is notably more gentle than Tesla uses on their other vehicles.
Anyway...we also know that Pepsi has had Tesla Semi's in use since December of 2022 (over a year), and Tesla has their own fleet running between Fremont and Giga Nevada. This batch will certainly be under careful monitoring to determine how hard they can be pushed and what refinements the next generation might need...
CARBs ACT legislation has been adopted by many states on the coasts. Can’t remember if OR is included or not. WA is.
Either way there will be a lot more electric trucks soon. There is already a lot out there (non Tesla).
Wonder if there will be 110v battery heaters in the Semis? You can plug a Diesel into a 110v socket to keep the Engines and fuel warm when not being used.
How do you keep a fleet of Battery powered Semis from getting cold soaked in Frigid Weather without being plugged into these large power chargers like the Mega Chargers?
How do you keep a fleet of Battery powered Semis from getting cold soaked in Frigid Weather without being plugged into these large power chargers like the Mega Chargers?
They are not long haul trucks like we have in the US (assuming thats where you are). This would cover pretty much everything from dump trucks/tippers to refuse trucks to mixers to local delivery and regional haul. This is a vast majority of trucking in Europe as major destinations are much closer together.
I haven’t paid attention to this personally so I don’t know the answer. I don’t live in a cold enough climate where this would be necessary so I have never had to utilize the functionality if it was available.
Mostly the batteries are preconditioned plugged into the chargers as you would expect. I think in most cases currently when trucks are parked they are being charged as charger capability now is ~350kW from CCS1 and it takes a long time to charge the trucks. Many sites have a ratio of like 1 charger for 2-3 trucks.
Im curious so I will look into this more. Seems a 110v or 220V coolant heater would be able to keep temps reasonable like on the ICE coolant/fuel/oil plug ins.
Interesting...
I would assume that, just like with Tesla cars, the same port on the Semi can hopefully plug into a mega charger and some sort of mobile charger that can plug into a variety of outlets. Range wise, even 30 amps at 240 V would only add a few miles per hour of range (at least for a fully loaded truck with trailer). But that's better than nothing...and like you said it could be used to keep things warm.
A few related thoughts:
1) a standard 120 V outlet can deliver 15 amps...but code says 12 amps if used for a long time. So, about 1.5 kilowatts. If 1.5 kW was indeed useful for heating the battery, but there was no plug option and the battery had to use its own power, that would be about 36 kWh in a 24 hour period. So, on the semi, 1.5 kW used for battery heating would only consume a few percent of the full battery capacity per day.
2) with the large size of the semi, and the large battery that is more bulky instead of a thin slab on the vehicle floor, and the overall shape of the vehicle systems, the battery will probably retain heat much better than in the cars. Lots of thermal mass, more insulation, and a lower ratio of surface area exposed to the ambient temperatures per mass of battery. It should lose heat slowly, and a relatively small amount of heating energy would be needed to keep it warm.
3) of course, with all that battery mass, it will take lots of power and time to warm it back up in the unlikely case that it does get too cold. If somebody decided to abandon a semi with a drained battery up in the frigid north for a couple weeks, getting it back to operational will be quite an ordeal.
