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Tesla Class 8 Semi Truck Thoughts
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I could see 250,000 KM a year pretty easily for a heavily used truck. Because many in the US government oppose non-ICE vehicles and the price of fossil fuels are so low here (mostly due to low taxes compared to the rest of the world), the economics of EVs in the US isn't as favorable as they are in a lot of other countries with higher fuel prices. Though the governments will want to recoup those lost fuel taxes and EVs will likely get taxed pretty steeply, if not now, then soon.
A lot of US states have put EV surcharges on the registration of EVs. In Washington state it's $150 a year, which is more than most people pay in gasoline taxes per year, but taxes will go up if the legislature can get away with it.
In cars, the electric drivetrain minus the battery is a bit cheaper than an ICE drive train. With a truck the difference is probably even bigger. Scaling up electric motors is easier than scaling up ICE. I read several years back than when Dodge introduced a new diesel engine in their pickups that produced more torque than ever before, they had a lot of trouble making transmissions and differentials small enough for a pickup that were strong enough to take the torque. They still didn't introduce a 4 wheel drive version for a couple of years because of it.
The components of the electric drive train need to be beefed up too, but not as dramatically. When done right, delivering high torque from an electric motor to the wheels is a simpler problem than from an ICE. It's a major reason the P100DL is the drag race king of the hill. Tesla can make a drag race super car by taking their standard production car, putting in a larger rear motor, some small improvements to the electrical system, and some firmware tweaks.
Elon has been talking lately about starting construction on new Gigafactories next year. Probably one of them is going to be the semi plant. The semi's production is going to need close to as many cells a year as the Model 3, even with much smaller production numbers.
I wonder if Tesla can acquire a shuddered semi plant? Paccar bought Kenworth and Peterbuilt in the 1980s. The Peterbuilt plant in California and Kenworth plant in Kansas City were closed after the merger. The factories may be gone now. The California plant has almost certainly been redeveloped at this point. Freightliner (currently a division of Daimler) closed plants in British Columbia and Portland, OR in the last 20 years and those facilities may still be there. Part of the Portland facility is still used. A friend of mine was working there as a programmer and when told they would have to relocate to somewhere in the Southern US, the programmers made it clear they would all quit rather than move, so the company kept the software development office open in Portland.
There are a number of idle car plants in the US Tesla could look into acquiring. Many of them are in depressed areas where Tesla is either unknown or not very well liked.
Huge detail given today on the Q1 2017 IR call:
The Tesla Semi is using "lots of Model 3 motors, actually." Whoa.
The Tesla Semi is using "lots of Model 3 motors, actually." Whoa.
dhanson865
Well-Known Member
If you are going to discuss the earnings call revelation maybe the mods should merge this thread with Tesla Semi we already have several posts on it.
Oh, shoot! I didn't even think to check the Investor sections. Great point.
Moooooooodddsssss!
Just got back from a fascinating* talk from a fleet management event held by local government. (*I guess all things are relative
)Specifically interesting was one presentation around how one area of London moved from Diesel to B100 Bio-Diesel on Euro 4/5 level refuse trucks for one of the London Boroughs. This was seen as the most environmentally option under the budget constraints, but serious interest was being shown in an EV refuse collection vehicle, that used EV power for propulsion, with a much smaller 3 cylinder diesel for the compaction/hydraulics.
PM me if you want me to dig out the contact details from the slide deck.
ProphetM
Member
I wonder if this setup will enable them to use less batteries than we might assume are needed. How much juice will a long haul truck need to use when it's just driving down the highway? If you're got an electric truck with one motor per axle (or even per wheel), do you really need all of them just to maintain your speed? Maybe you can start and stop with full power but then shut down a majority of the motors during the long cruise down the interstate that makes up the majority of the traveling distance. How much power would that save you?
It's difficult to say for certain, but it's a) definitely a net positive and b) not that much.
It's basically just torque sleep on steroids. How much does torque sleep gain in D cars? A couple percent at best methinks. That's a good thing, btw.
It does also open up the potential for more dynamic regen, which is a good thing too.
The dual motor Model Ss get better range than the RWD cars, but I think most of the gain is in starting and stopping rather than when running at speed. When doing regen you have a second motor to take in energy. When accelerating both axles are propelling the car, so it's a more efficient start.
I've done experiments coasting downhill in neutral vs in drive and the car is actually more efficient in drive and the car does not coast very well in neutral. When the motor is off it is still spinning, just not energized or running as a generator, so you still have a mass turning on the axle. Coming down our hill from the top of the hill to our house, my Buick in gear and coasting would get up to dangerous speeds for a neighborhood street (over 40 mph before I applied the brakes). My Model S in neutral barely gets to 25.
The biggest loss at low speed is friction and at high speed it's wind resistance. There is always some energy lost from the friction of the tires on the road. It's the major reason tires warm up as you drive.
Torque sleep may help a little bit at speed, but not much because the biggest losses at speed are from air resistance. Things can be done to make any vehicle aerodynamic, but you get into diminishing returns eventually. Trucks have a pretty big cross section pushing down the road and there isn't anything that can be done about it.
Look at the losses from making the Model X taller than the Model S. The X 100D has 295 miles of range and the S100D 335 miles. That's a 12% decrease in range and most of it is due to the larger aerodynamic cross section of the car, though the weight contributes a bit to the range loss too.
A semi is moving a lot more weight plus a much worse aerodynamic profile. The Tesla semi will probably be 2-3 times more energy efficient than a diesel, but the Kenworth T680 is one of the most efficient big rigs on the road and it get around 7 MPG. 5 MPG is pretty normal. The Model S is rated around 100 MPGe by the EPA, the Tesla semi will probably be about 10-12 MPGe.
I've done experiments coasting downhill in neutral vs in drive and the car is actually more efficient in drive and the car does not coast very well in neutral. When the motor is off it is still spinning, just not energized or running as a generator, so you still have a mass turning on the axle. Coming down our hill from the top of the hill to our house, my Buick in gear and coasting would get up to dangerous speeds for a neighborhood street (over 40 mph before I applied the brakes). My Model S in neutral barely gets to 25.
The biggest loss at low speed is friction and at high speed it's wind resistance. There is always some energy lost from the friction of the tires on the road. It's the major reason tires warm up as you drive.
Torque sleep may help a little bit at speed, but not much because the biggest losses at speed are from air resistance. Things can be done to make any vehicle aerodynamic, but you get into diminishing returns eventually. Trucks have a pretty big cross section pushing down the road and there isn't anything that can be done about it.
Look at the losses from making the Model X taller than the Model S. The X 100D has 295 miles of range and the S100D 335 miles. That's a 12% decrease in range and most of it is due to the larger aerodynamic cross section of the car, though the weight contributes a bit to the range loss too.
A semi is moving a lot more weight plus a much worse aerodynamic profile. The Tesla semi will probably be 2-3 times more energy efficient than a diesel, but the Kenworth T680 is one of the most efficient big rigs on the road and it get around 7 MPG. 5 MPG is pretty normal. The Model S is rated around 100 MPGe by the EPA, the Tesla semi will probably be about 10-12 MPGe.
JOEV1
*****joe
Member BRANDO has given us some thoughts about carting away waste stuff from NYC.
How about supplying such cities? Its again Elon who is thinking ahead. In a lot of populated areas, Park&Raid paces are being build outside the cities so, ICE-Folks, when they arrive can park their cars and move those "stranded" people to the city by electric Buses, Trams etc. (AP or not).
"We want city folks to be able to open their windows again at night" as one of our Green Politition has said recently.
But what about the million of tons supply such a city needs to function? You can not stop trucks outside the city because they are not EPA- friendly. Well, thats when Elon comes into play: Quietly and with no polution! EV-Trucks! Why has not somebody else thought about this before? He must be from MARS...
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I'm sure the push to eliminate ICE from city cores in Europe is one of the reasons Tesla is looking at electric trucks now. There is no such regulatory need in the US. I think it would be nice if some US cities banned ICE from city centers, but it's not going to happen any time soon. Even Los Angeles which is one of the most air quality conscious cities in the world is not seriously considering it right now (at least I haven't heard about it, though I could be wrong).
Los Angeles is so dependent on cars and there are so many of them, it would be pretty much impossible to eliminate ICE from the city for many decades at minimum. Any initiative to eliminate them would unfairly impact the poor for one thing and there are plenty of working poor who need a car to get to work, but can barely afford an old ICE now. Once EV alternatives are available, I could see some cities giving some kind of incentive for driving electric in the city though I'm not sure what that might be. For businesses who use electrics in the city, I could see tax incentives to do so. That would speed up the transition and would help air quality. Large diesel trucks contribute more pollution per engine than cars do by a large margin.
Los Angeles is so dependent on cars and there are so many of them, it would be pretty much impossible to eliminate ICE from the city for many decades at minimum. Any initiative to eliminate them would unfairly impact the poor for one thing and there are plenty of working poor who need a car to get to work, but can barely afford an old ICE now. Once EV alternatives are available, I could see some cities giving some kind of incentive for driving electric in the city though I'm not sure what that might be. For businesses who use electrics in the city, I could see tax incentives to do so. That would speed up the transition and would help air quality. Large diesel trucks contribute more pollution per engine than cars do by a large margin.
JOEV1
*****joe
You are absolutly right about US- situation.
But look at China! Some days (depending on weather) there are 100s of cities which ban Cars from entering. Even in Europe I can name half a dozend Cities right now where Polution is so servere that some days one can not enter a city unless You live there. Speed Limits are enforced more and more often.
Salzburg, my place, is currently gearing up too. One-person occupant Cars are banned not only for polution but mainly because of traffic jams and parking. Car-pools have been promoted for commuters for many years. Oslo will take a lead because they have the highest No of EV´s per Capita already.
The cities want and need the tourist back... its as simple as that. Oh yes, one can hear often that they are run-over by cyclist!
@JOEV1 Another data point is my local city (Nottingham in the UK) is also one of a number of cities planning zero emission limits within the city centre.
Already we have a number of EV only busses (a mix of Optare and BYD units), as well as an electrified tram line. So the pieces for the mass transit system are in place, the next step is the private cars.
Work is currently underway to build dedicated EV lanes into the heart of the city. (Which is causing some disruption to traffic flow, which I do get teased about by friends with ICE's). There are also likely to be fees for driving into the city centre at all, though phased in with an initial exemption for EVs.
It is not unusual to see EV delivery trucks either, doing the last mile sort of stuff (I've had numerous packages delivered by them). I suspect these will be even more common once the zero emission zones kick in.
There are a number of other incentives going on too, such as 100% grant funding for local business to install 7kW points, as well as some council funded rapids and charge points.
Now it's not all rosy, a lot of this funding has come about from central government, via OLEV (Office for Low Emission Vehicles). OLEV's view is IMHO pragmatic, that weening people off ICE via PHEV's is the easiest approach. So all the perks and benefits for BEVs also apply to PHEVs. This in itself isn't a huge problem if the PHEVs drive under EV power, however this is somewhat un-policeable, and I think will be abused.
As for class 8 semi's, TBH they are such a tiny,tiny fraction of our urban traffic, that I'm not really sure how their removal will be noticeable in improving local air quality issues. It's the 3.5-7.5t class rigid box type stuff you are more likely to see in our urban area, so if Tesla had been announcing a range of 3.5t-7t fixed body (don't know the US class system), these would make far more sense in addressing urban A/Q issues, while tapping into the incentives / restrictions / perks, we see being rolled out here.
Already we have a number of EV only busses (a mix of Optare and BYD units), as well as an electrified tram line. So the pieces for the mass transit system are in place, the next step is the private cars.
Work is currently underway to build dedicated EV lanes into the heart of the city. (Which is causing some disruption to traffic flow, which I do get teased about by friends with ICE's). There are also likely to be fees for driving into the city centre at all, though phased in with an initial exemption for EVs.
It is not unusual to see EV delivery trucks either, doing the last mile sort of stuff (I've had numerous packages delivered by them). I suspect these will be even more common once the zero emission zones kick in.
There are a number of other incentives going on too, such as 100% grant funding for local business to install 7kW points, as well as some council funded rapids and charge points.
Now it's not all rosy, a lot of this funding has come about from central government, via OLEV (Office for Low Emission Vehicles). OLEV's view is IMHO pragmatic, that weening people off ICE via PHEV's is the easiest approach. So all the perks and benefits for BEVs also apply to PHEVs. This in itself isn't a huge problem if the PHEVs drive under EV power, however this is somewhat un-policeable, and I think will be abused.
As for class 8 semi's, TBH they are such a tiny,tiny fraction of our urban traffic, that I'm not really sure how their removal will be noticeable in improving local air quality issues. It's the 3.5-7.5t class rigid box type stuff you are more likely to see in our urban area, so if Tesla had been announcing a range of 3.5t-7t fixed body (don't know the US class system), these would make far more sense in addressing urban A/Q issues, while tapping into the incentives / restrictions / perks, we see being rolled out here.
Ulmo
Active Member
That may be entirely true in Nottinghamshire, but in USA (especially in, well, most of the country (I'm thinking some of the exceptions are ultraurban like San Francisco City and County (only 49 square miles) and Manhattan (a very tiny island))), there are loads and loads of full class 8 semis themselves high traffic in urban roads (freeways and other feeders and some destinations), as well as rural freeways being basically clogged with them (a lot of them don't even take pretense to stay in the right lane any more in California in many freeways, much like in New Jersey turnpike, because there's so many). Because of that, when we look at "trucks" which can be anything from the little 4 wheelers that families own to huge full class 8 semi's, we want to include everything from the top down, because that's what is a realistic attack on our pollution. California has a huge amount of pollution just from class 8 semi's alone. Get that, and not only do we stop a huge amount of pollution step one (including nearly all long distance truck pollution which is a huge portion of rural pollution), but the system is in place to take care of the rest just by downsizing.
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Ulmo
Active Member
This makes the most practical sense, and I've advocated it for a long time: put the motor almost in the wheel, and:
- you don't even need long drive shafts
- Wires weigh less than axles.
- Every wheel regenerates electricity.
- All wheel drive.
- Plenty of power and control.
- No drive shafts allows you to put more space for other stuff.
- All wheel steering:
- The axles for all-wheel steering would be trivial.
- All wheel steering is a huge advantage for some tight places, and would allow huge space savings in all areas. Some areas could be served that are not current served.
- All wheel steering allows huge safety advantages in accident handling (by super AI).
- The truck doesn't twist every time you accelerate in a new gear. Huge advantage. (Have you ever seen them bopping left and right when they accelerate?)
- You don't need as much structure to transmit weight of movement of wheel from frame to road. Less weight, less expense, less need for weight for expense, more cargo capacity, and more possibility for lighter weight cargo in less expensive trucks.
- Possibility to have trailers with motors in every wheel too (same advantages). If trailers have their own batteries, then they can also have their own motors.
- Eventually, trailers will get front steering wheels and drive themselves.
- Tractors could be these "steering wheels", and themselves would be nothing more than light weight dollies (with a few smaller motors by their wheels) with driving controls, rather than the huge locomotives of current.
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Ulmo
Active Member
Solutions for trash collection industry are multitudinous, so I in no way want to prejudice you in any particular direction, because the real options that come to market at any particular time especially initially will most likely not align with my thoughts. But, and I've said this before:
- Most road damage in suburban settings is from garbage trucks. Over half.
- Automated robotic sleds that weigh about car-weight could go a few times per block (or a few per block) and get every refuse bin's worth of material per pass with almost no more damage than a residents' car causing less than half the wear and tear and road maintenance cost on county roads currently experienced, then come back a few blocks out onto main roads to a waiting:
- main carrier 40 ton truck that stops only once per neighborhood, not once per home, and sits and waits on the side of the main truck route road. The small worker bees I explained in step 2 would come to the main carrier truck, dump in their small car size amounts of collected refuse into the big truck, and then the big truck could go about compaction duties. It would be large enough to carry huge batteries, or it could even just wand-like (watch the electric buses in San Francisco that use catenary) plug into a utility substation and just feed directly from the grid. It could even quick-charge the cars into high capacity capacitors every ten minutes (since they are going back and forth like bees), and batteries could be skipped altogether, but this all works with Lithium Ion batteries as we already know, so there are literally a plethora of engineering choices that can be made here.
- This huge main carrier truck could have extra axles to distribute the weight more on the main road. The main road would be a main truck route, not any side streets.
Us small government advocates sometimes say the only purpose for government is police (and I'm not even sure about that) and courts (so in that method, residential toll roads would already price out heavy garbage trucks from existence practically overnight*), and then the slightly not as small government advocates throw in "and roads" as a purpose for government, and then what do you know, the biggest expense in government is therefore garbage trucks (mostly in road damage). I would eliminate that using my system above. Of course, big government advocates create governments so large that these road costs aren't even a blip in their budgets; they actually make up waste to spend tax money on to stay larger. But one could still sell it to them as giving more money to the rest of the government for their pet projects. Aw, heck, this could become another wasteful pet project to spend money on, with a net tax "revenue" increase bonus at the end! Either way you cut it, it doesn't make sense in any robot containing future to continue with large heavy garbage trucks in small residential streets.
* You actually see this in rural mountainous forested areas around here: people put their garbage cans into their own little 4 wheel cars (pickups), drive them down to the public road, and line them up in big long lines of garbage cans 20 to 100 long. The big heavy garbage trucks of the current age then just sit there munching on the garbage cans one by one in a weird mechanical feeding frenzy at a trough. This is pretty much economic proof that it is not financially prudent to let garbage trucks into residential streets (because in these cases the roads are privately owned and the non-government owners get to make decisions based upon economy rather than collectivism).
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Ulmo
Active Member
Yeah, that makes sense; probably half of them would have had fights to the death in whatever town they ended up moving to due to cultural differences. I'm somewhere in the middle. Of course, the truck manufacturer could have just hired new employees, but that is usually a bad idea for a working product.
Yup. I wonder if Elon realizes this. He's probably gotten a crash course in it in Nevada, what with Buffet et al. Nevadans are a crappy bunch, so this was probably already a great lesson, and he will do fine. He's now just learning how the collectivists in UAW and the San Jose type employees in the Fremont factory work out.
As a Tesla car driver, and a former Mercedes and a former Honda and Volvo driver, I found that I got the most disrespect in the Tesla. People literally hate Tesla and its drivers. Mercedes is seen as a snobby car, and occasionally I got chased by the cockroaches of society, but not often (once per week). Tesla actually gets less chases (I haven't been fully chased yet in my Tesla), so it's a safer car to own, but I'd have to say that almost all of the population disdains Tesla. It is a palpable disdain that you can pick up from all sorts of angles. The net sum of disdain against Tesla is far greater than the net sum of disdain against Mercedes. (Curiously, the Mercedes gets a very anti-nazi hatred as well as a very anti-snob hatred, whereas the Tesla gets kind of an anti-environmentalist hatred, and I see many pickups getting mad when they see me. I just leave faster than they can follow.) I find it most amazing that the hatred of Tesla is mostly a sense that Tesla is anti-USA; I believe the source of that is one of the most amazing false brandings of history. One odd effect (or source of that branding) is that in Silicon Valley, it seems like almost all Tesla owners are Indian (Asia's India) and Asian, as well as a very large number of well off retired folk (whom I thank very much for helping to save the world (and Elon & large shareholders thank very much for making them unbelievably wealthy)).
Maybe the $7,500 federal lower tax incentive the government places on EV's is the problem that causes all the hubub, in which case, I say end the incentive, and soon. Tesla is looking forward to the end of this incentive as well.
I have a feeling that somehow a factory in the hinterlands of the rural parts of the country would not be a big problem for Tesla, even if everyone in the region of the factory doesn't take Tesla seriously. It's gone up against harder odds than that! Tesla will probably find medium-term that it's actually much better, easier, and funner to operate a factory out there (once development is in hand).
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There is a lot of misinformation out there about Tesla. A lot of people are under the mistaken notion that Tesla only exists thanks to handouts from the government and that it isn't viable as a stand alone company. This idea is pushed by people like Bob Lutz, but certain media outlets also cultivate the idea of the "socialist" Democrats giving handouts to green businesses for no return. The collapse of Solyndra after taking US government loans is one example frequently cited. As far as these misinformed people are concerned, Tesla is one step away from the fate of Sylndra and their pinko commie ideas would die if the government just quit giving them money.
I'm surprised you run into many people like that in the Bay Area. The attitude is much more common in "flyover country". Where the traditional auto industry is one of the biggest employers, Tesla is especially despised. But Japanese cars were equally despised in that part of the country once upon a time. Attitudes changed when the Japanese car companies re-opened a number of shuttered car factories and built some new ones in some other areas where Japanese cars were not well regarded.
Ultimately it comes down to fear. Especially fear of change and what that may bring to themselves and their community. Trump won a lot of votes in coal country by promising to bring back coal, but it's ultimately an empty promise because those jobs aren't coming back. Coal mining has become much more automated which reduces jobs and the total volume of coal needed has dropped because natural gas is a cheaper and cleaner energy source. Add to that the renewables coming online and coal's future is bleak no matter what the government does.
The industrial Midwest has taken a heavy beating from international competition too. Car companies from all over the world build cars in the US only because it's cheaper to do final assembly on the same continent where the cars will be sold. Same with some other types of large machinery like trucks.
Tesla does pose an existential threat to the existing car industry. They have a car tech that is superior to ICE vehicles in most ways. But ultimately the workers building the vehicles just want to be able to pay their mortgage or rent. If somebody new took over the plant they work for and they kept their job, things are good.
The factory where Tesla builds cars now was originally a GM plant, then it was jointly owned by Toyota and GM. When they re-opened the plant as NUMMI, Toyota wanted to rehire a number of the laid off GM workers, even though the GM Fremont plant had the worst labor relations record in GM's system. Toyota retrained the workers and NUMMI was a big success.
When Toyota sold the plant to Tesla, the workers were initially laid off, but Tesla re-hired a number of the NUMMI workers that were there when it closed. Initially they needed fewer workers because they were making fewer cars, but some of those people who were at NUMMI at the end are now working for Tesla.
The $7500 tax incentive will run out before the Tesla semi hits production, so that removes one argument that Tesla is propped up by the government. It probably won't stop some people from claiming otherwise.
If they move into a town that has been devastated because the local vehicle plant closed, I think the locals will see them as heroes.
Tesla is a left coast company and they will probably always suffer from the same perception people have against companies like Apple in some parts of the US. Flyover country sees the left coast as a bunch of vegetarian hippies and really overlook the high degree of innovation and productivity in the region.
Brando
Active Member
Elon/Tesla and Mercedes working together for many years (eSmart uses Tesla battery packs - motor too? do they still?) anyway note:
Mercedes-Benz will test its all-electric truck on German roads this year — here's everything you need to know
Red Sage
The Cybernetic Samurai
I believe that though Daimler/Mercedes-Benz has plans for their own sort of 'Gigafactory' battery plant, their batteries for hybrids, plug-in hybrids, battery electric, and hydrogen fuel cell cars are currently from a Korean supplier.
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