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Major breakthroughs in autonomous driving may change that. If drivers are eliminated, the costs of waiting 30-60 minutes while charging becomes almost 0.
by KillerRabbitt 9y ago
Major breakthroughs in autonomous driving may change that. If drivers are eliminated, the costs of waiting 30-60 minutes while charging becomes almost 0.
- hughes 9y agoEspecially if the truck can hand off its payload to a fully charged & waiting replacement cab. If you have access to a fleet or don't need the same truck back, it becomes more of a baton relay than a marathon.
- TillE 9y agoWith the kind of infrastructure required for that, I can't help but think it would just be a lousy version of an electric railway. At least for long hauls with high throughput.
- colordrops 9y agoThat's like saying that circuit switched networks are better than packet switched.
- amluto 9y agoThey would be if packets had enormous per-packet overhead.
- Gibbon1 9y agoAt some point you start wondering about improving intermodal transportation. Using rail for longer distances with trucks handling the last 50-100 miles.
- tomhschmidt 9y agoHow would it be lousy? The cars can now go anywhere and dynamically route instead of being stuck on rails and the infrastructure costs are orders of magnitude less.
- hobofan 9y agoIsn't it the other way around? With drivers, you can fit the charging inside the already mandated breaks, while without driver, you have to introduce longer breaks to get enough charge. Idle time of EV-rig per day (30min charge every 4 hours): ~11% Idle time of Non-EV-rig per day (5min refueling every 4 hours): ~2% Sure, for short distance trips where loading/unloading takes as long as charging the EV-rig, it doesn't make a difference, but for longer hauls, the charging pauses of EV-rigs will severely cut into utilization of the fleet.