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The biggest issue with electric semis is that trucks have a maximum weight limit, and the battery is much heavier than fuel for the same mileage. As much as you
by lunchbreak 9y ago
The biggest issue with electric semis is that trucks have a maximum weight limit, and the battery is much heavier than fuel for the same mileage. As much as you may get the same range, if you can't carry as much cargo, you lose the benefits of price per mile.
Note that Tesla didn't mention the weight of the battery when announcing the truck. (Though I assume they believe they can get it even lighter before they release production models)
- paranoidrobot 9y agoDo you think Fedex (20), Walmart (15), Anheuser-Busch (40), Pepsico (100), and UPS (125) would have put down money to buy hundreds of these without checking if they can actually carry a load? They're being rated to carry a 80,000lb load at highway speeds for 500 miles - clearly the weight distribution isn't a problem. The other thing you're forgetting is that it's not a battery vs fuel weight you need to compare it's battery+motor vs engine+transmission+gearbox+fuel+urea+etc. There's so much less that needs to be in an electric truck.
- lunchbreak 9y agoTrue points - though I would think for at least FedEx and UPS carry significant amount of light cargo in some trucks (boxes with empty space around the actual contents, and other lighter contents) compared to other trucking groups which carry almost solid cargo (a truck carrying sugar for example). Pepsi specifically is an interesting one - because I assume that most of the cargo space is liquid, though I wonder how much empty space is in their cargo areas due to round bottles
- femidav 9y agoBattery alone (for 500-miles range) will weight more than double of engine+transmission+gearbox+fuel of 2000-miles range ICE semi.