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Just curious, their first customer delivery is to who?

Bob Wilson

 

'gm beats tesla to ev market' how did that work out?

 

same or similar reason(s). toyota might not have wanted to be a leader in releasing EV's into the wild.
Plus it did give big T a much clearer start in the market, which turned out to be a good thing for T, if you want to look at it from that -perspective.
Watch Bait quote this post - I can't wait !

 

Of course, the EV1 which they subsequently ended the leases and crushed. That EV vandalism inspired the start of Tesla.

Bob Wilson

 

There ya go.

 

Thanks for humoring me. You sir are a gentleman and a scholar,
even when I don't fully understand what you're writing

 

Total Transportation Services Inc.
They operate at ports of long beach and la. California is pushing zev trucks for short routes from the ports to distribution centers. It is also the company testing 2 toyota fuel cell trucks.

 

I don't know where you're getting this, because BEV semi trucks are not happening, right now nor any time before 2050.

This video covers it in a nutshell, but I'll go a little more in depth.

Notable: Specific Energy is weight-to-energy ratio;
Energy Density is the space-to-energy ratio.

Battery energy density has increased steadily over the course of years, which is why they've gotten increasingly longer ranges. They fit more battery into the same space, but this makes the battery, and the car, heavier, while consuming more material for a single car.

A tank on a 2010 Prius is 27.3 pounds of its own, and can hold 11.9 gallons of gas, each gallon weighing 6.1 pounds. Therefore, a full tank of gas in a 2010 Prius would weigh 99.89 pounds, with 72.59 pounds (about 72.7% of the weight of the system) being gas. Given gasoline's specific energy of 46.4 MJ/kg, multiply by 0.727, you get a practical specific energy of 33.7 MJ/kg. That, filtered through the about 25% efficiency of a regular gas car, gives a at-the-wheels specific energy of 8.425 MJ/kg, ish.

Per this, the hydrogen inside the Mirai's tanks only account for 5.7% of the weight of the tank, and gives a tank full of hydrogen a practical specific energy of about 6.8 MJ/kg. Given the roughly 60% efficiency of a fuel cell vehicle, this results in an at-the-wheels specific energy of 4.08 MJ/kg.

about half that of gasoline, which is pretty bad, yeah? for reasons I'll get to soon, but for comparison...

Wikipedia gives the highest specific energy of Lithium-ion batteries to be 0.875 MJ/kg. assuming 100% efficiency (which is possible), that's 0.875 MJ/kg at-the-wheels specific energy.

Or about 1/5th that of hydrogen. about 1/10th that of gasoline. It took decades to jump from nickel-metal hydride to lithium-ion, which broadly speaking was about half the specific energy of lithium-ion. It would take not one, but two battery revolutions equivalent to the jump from nimh to li-ion to get to the effective specific energy of current hydrogen, which is still half that of gasoline. I'm not emotionally attached to any particular emissions solution, and I'm interested foremost in the practicality of things - hydrogen certainly does have negative interests backing it, but it could be cleaned just as the current electricity grid is being cleaned - by people being aware of that, and pushing for truly green hydrogen, the same way green electricity grids are pushed for now.

This is compounded by the fact that sure, semis are the heaviest thing on the road. But they are not the heaviest thing running on fossil fuels. Cargo ships, planes, these things have practical weight limits, and if you're going for a zero-emission Earth, there has to be something they're running on, whether or not it's hydrogen, it's definitely not going to be batteries. Further, if it is hydrogen, this is exactly why the societal energy inefficiency of running something on hydrogen won't matter. Batteries are literally too heavy, and if history is anything to go by, they won't be light enough by 2035 or 2050. Nevermind that charging the kind of battery fat enough to run a semi would take forever, even with a supercharger.

Further ignoring that BEV's are less efficient than just having sensible public transit, but since America is unlikely to do that, let's consider the consequences of a fully-BEV-itized America.

The 100kWh battery in a 400 mile Model S is 1377 pounds. Source. That is to barely reach 400 miles of range - finally - in, I kid you not, the most aerodynamic sedan on Earth. Now take every SUV, minivan and pickup truck in America, and toss in a battery weighing well over 1000 pounds to give it 400 miles of range. Roads are destroyed proportional to the amount of weight on them - add on all that weight onto the road and you're going to be paying a lot more, in terms of both dollars and emissions, to fix them.

Would this outdo the energy inefficiency of hydrogen? Probably not. However, there are other concerns.

Per this, there are 21,000,000 tonnes of lithium in the world. That's not the amount we pull out of the ground in a year - that's only 58,000 tonnes - that is all of the lithium on planet Earth. (an estimate, obviously).

21,000,000 tonnes is 21,000,000,000,000 (21 trillion) grams.

Various online sources found by searching "how much lithium in a kWh of batteries" state something around 160 or 170 grams/kWh for lithium-ion.

So let us say we managed solid-states that were half that amount, 80 grams/kWh. If you used the entire world's lithium supply, that's 262,500,000,000 (262.5 billion) kWhs of battery. for all of it, assuming we have advanced solid-states which have only been coming for the last...oh, 10 or so years.

Given that there are 284 million vehicles on the road in the U.S. alone, replacing every one with a 100 kWh 400 mile range model S would cost 28.4 BILLION kWhs of batteries. This includes industrial vehicles that, were they actually BEV, would have much larger batteries.

That is - assuming next-generation batteries - 10.8% of the entire world's total lithium supply to turn every land vehicle (we're not including boats or planes or any power storage whatsoever!) in one country into a Model S, and in reality this number would of course be much, much higher.

Is hydrogen issue free? gods no. It's got countless issues that you could learn about from anyone on this site, it seems. The lack of efficiency would put more stress on energy generation, it's not particularly easy to transport, and it's energy density is - depending on tank size - pathetic in comparison to batteries.

I apologize for the incredibly long-winded rant - I'm just incredibly tired of this site acting like BEV's are the end-all be-all. I don't see it in the slightest.

I hope this gets you, or someone, to at least think about these problems instead of being complacent. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Edit: Am reading the rest of this thread now...

Vehicle weight: undisclosed

hmmmm, I wonder why. Maybe because, by rough estimate, a 753 kWh battery would be a little over ten thousand pounds... (going by Tesla's 100 kWh 1377 pound battery, gives us 13.77 pounds per kWh, multiply by 753....10,369 pounds, about 1/8th of the total weight the vehicle can be, in batteries alone.)

 

I'm not in the market for a Class 8 trailer. Regardless, I've seen some articles claiming the early deliveries have started, Electric Commercial Trucks Are Coming—and We Drive Four of Them

Electric Big Rigs Are Coming—and We Drive Four of Them
Semi-truck maker Freightliner has a test fleet of 40 rigs, with availability in 2022.
. . .​

Bob Wilson

 

Was at the ACT Expo in Long Beach this week. A few class 8s here but range limits them to urban short deliveries. CNG and fuel cells had more representation.

Our interest was in class 3 to 6 electrified chassis. Cost will be a huge factor for our customers. At least three times the cost relative to a gas chassis at this time. But our customers and we need to get into the game at some point. It is like picking a horse at the race track these days trying to determine who to partner with.

Interesting times given everyone’s lack of confidence in the infrastructure being available to support the transition to commercial EV vehicles.


iPhone ?

 

Little steps
.

 

That is a bold prediction. Yes these things exist in the wild, but they are in the testing phase.
Electric Commercial Trucks Are Coming—and We Drive Four of Them
https://freightliner.com/trucks/ecascadia/?utm_source=google&utm_medium_cpc&utm_campaign=emobility_brand&utm_adgroup=117382736051&utm_keyword=%2Becascadia&utm_device=c&gclid=Cj0KCQjw4PKTBhD8ARIsAHChzRLlUC1zKXoZM6KAPbZnP6hj16q80ZhoWo0UXjZgkEyMhpszt-Oa2tUaAn7WEALw_wcB

Just like bev busses that have found a big niche, short haul electric semitrucks may become very popular over the next decade. For long haul a phev semi truck may be a better solution than current diesel as these and bev trucks are easier to drive and likely as the kinks get worked out easier to maintain. with a shortage of drivers that better driving experience will be important. Battery prices have increased this year with the shortage but in 5 years with proper planning there should be plenty of capacity. A 700 kwh battery pack then should cost $70,000 or less to the manufacturer. For reference the biggest battery in the eCascadia is 438 kwh and has a range of 220-230 miles depending on the truck configuration. We have 3 different companies testing bev class 8 trucks right now. If tesla ends up with the most efficient getting about 500 mile range from a pack that size, I would expect Freightliner and other truck makers to remake them from the ground up to be bev. The weight of the pack isn't as important as cost right now.

 

Just a quick thought about the size of the transformers needed at Truck Stops to charge up Rigs from the grid.
edit Or the size of the solar farm to handle one truck stops load.

 

The proposed standard has a max charging rate of 3.75 MW per plug, tesla's prototypes are about 1/3 of that rate.
Megawatt Charging System (MCS)

If you were to charge a 700 kwh truck battery 70% that is 490 kwh or about 10 minutes if the truck had ability to charge that fast, about the same time it is to fuel a diesel semi, but trucks can't charge that fast now. How big the transformers would need to be depends on how many trucks you plan on charging an hour. If you put 5 mwh of batteries as a buffer and only need to charge an average of 2 such trucks an hour, you could get by with a Megawatt connection to the grid. If you want to average 20 an hour you would need a 10 MW connection and a bigger battery buffer. A 10 MW connection is about what you need for a semiconductor plant.

I'm not sure why we would care about the size of a solar farm. If we do hydrogen instead of bev and phev trucks the solar farm would need to be about 4x bigger ;-) and if using renewable electricity would require a much larger grid connection, but storage on site would be cheaper than the batteries at a megacharger. I am sure that short haul will be first and rates and locations for these will be much easier to build than a nation wide network. For ports of long beach and LA you just need one at each port, and one at each distribution center.

 

My concern is mostly with grid tie in. Since there are typically more than one Truck Stop with multiple diesel pumps within a mile of each other and sometimes many more than 2 truck stops in within eyesite of each other.
There might even be a metric floating around the web about how much diesel is pumped per day in the US for the commercial trucking industry.

 

If I'm reading this correctly, 2,738 thousand barrels per day. A couple of years ago (pre-Covid) it was 3,127 thousand barrels per day.
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_23.pdf

 

So ..... 50mWh-60mWh to someday convert most diesel Diesel to near 100% electric? iirc - the largest battery storage project is something like 300 - 400mWh's (napkin math - so use a grain of salt)

 

according to this conversion 1 barrel of oil to gallons
https://www.metric-conversions.org/volume/us-oil-barrels-to-us-liquid-gallons.htm
1US bbl oil = 41US gal lqd

still need to convert 42 US gallons of crude to gallons of diesel. If that's the correct metric.

 

I think the issue of electrifying trucks is similar to electrifying cars. Back when EVs first started taking off (Teslas), people said the grid could never handle all cars becoming EVs. But that's not how it works, which is why this hasn't turned out to be a problem. All cars don't suddenly become EVs overnight. It is a gradual, many decade process. The same will happen with trucks, but probably take even longer. With the Tesla Semi, they and Pepsi are building up Megachargers for specific routes. It will be a long time before we will need many Megachargers at truckstops.

And one important fact is not brought up enough--electric utilities make money from selling electricity. The more electricity they sell, the more money they make. They would rather you give your money to them than to give it to the oil companies (and just think how much money the oil companies are making). So they want more EV cars and trucks on the road. Yes it requires them to build up the grid, but they do this because they can sell more electricity and make more money. The company I work for kept increasing their electricity enough to blow out transformers, and each time the utility happily put in more wiring and bigger transformers (enough to power a neighborhood).

This is problem the utilities will happily and greedily solve.

 

or add some pepper with that salted hash.