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Since the article is short on details here is the Volvo trucks page. https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/trucks/alternative-fuels/electric-trucks.html https://ww

Since the article is short on details here is the Volvo trucks page. https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/trucks/alternative-fuels/electric-trucks.html https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/trucks/alternative-fuels/e... They appear to be in the testing stage

alex_duf 6y ago
I wonder what kind of charging speed these will have. I'm guessing a refuse truck doesn't need to charge very fast as it sleeps in a depot, but a delivery truck might do a few shifts a day so that requires fast charging.
- SimonPStevens 6y ago
  Or easily swappable battery packs. There was a promo/concept video a few years back, from Tesla I think, showing cars pulling up into a battery swap station and a door slid open in the floor beneath the car and a contraption automatically swapped out the battery for a fully charged one without the driver leaving the car. Not sure whatever came of that concept.
  - Gwypaas 6y ago
    I wonder if battery swapping is a red herring which always will be talked about but never realized? Hugely increased complexity since the battery needs to have all mounting points easily accessed in any condition, rain, snow, ice buildup, whatever, from the outside and all the other accessing geometry forcing the design of the entire vehicle to allow for it. Combine this with battery technology improving allowing faster charging speeds lessening the impact. Like phones fast-charging today. No point having a spare battery when 15-30 mins in a charger easily gives you all the hours you need. Where I live we've had completely electric busses on a line for a few years now (Actually Volvos). Very different use case but also commercial vehicles with similar run hours. They have automatic over-head charging at the ends, filling up enough with a 10 minute stop to run throughout the day. Some longer lines are using hybrids with the same charging technology. They run most of the line entirely on battery power, only kicking in a smaller diesel when needed. Maybe battery swapping makes sense for some specialized applications? But then I would guess just straight biofuels simply takes the cake, although eating the cost penalty.
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      I honestly don't see the issue for industrial type machinery. It's not like some Tesla that has to have a sleek body and beautiful styling. Trucks are already big boxes that carry giant boxes behind them. Why should one of those boxes not be a giant 300kwh battery pack that they swap out at the multitude of weigh stations they have to stop at along the highway already? Just run massive power to the weigh stations, put in a few massive DC chargers and some forklifts. Hell you could go further and have other parts of the drivetrain in there -- the controller, the charger unit, the DC to DC converter, etc. Then you have an upgrade path for the trucks as the tech improves.
      - myself248 6y ago
        At some point aren't you just swapping the entire horse? Just transfer the rider and the saddle bags.
        spockz 6y ago
        Who don’t we do this? Driver makes it to the way station. Has a chat with the next driver while refilling and that driver takes it for the next four/six hours.
        signaturefish 6y ago
        That /is/ how "we" do it with trains. The difference is that long-distance truckers generally live in their cabs for weeks on end, so they can't easily hand it off to another driver.
        spockz 6y ago
        Ok. So then the lorry and the driver stay behind and the lorry/payload get switched. But apparently there is no such need for speed for road transport and otherwise they would use a plane?
        throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  - noisy_boy 6y ago
    I think standards about battery swapping will evolve which will make infrastructure around that to develop easier, quicker and be more interchangeable.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    It wasn't just a concept - Tesla actually commercialized battery swapping because by doing so you got some California subsidy. Tesla drivers who applied could do a battery swap in 7 minutes at their one swap station. It was discontinued when the subsidy requirement ended. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-program-for-superchargers/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-prog... https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-battery-swap-harris-ranch-20150310-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-batter...
    - itsoktocry 6y ago
      >Tesla drivers who applied could do a battery swap in 7 minutes Is there any video of the swaps actually working, outside of the promotional stage-show? YouTube doesn't have anything, which is odd...
      - maxdo 6y ago
        not sure about tesla but in china they have commercially operational swap stations. plenty of videos
- benplumley 6y ago
  If you operate a fleet of trucks, battery swapping becomes a lot more viable because you don't have to worry about swapping your good, new battery for a worn-out old battery.
  - beamatronic 6y ago
    Came here to say, I hope someone has given some thought and planning into the full life cycle of the battery - infrastructure is needed.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nickik 6y ago
    If you have a fleet of trucks, having battery swapping batteries also means you need to have more batteries then trucks. Meaning extra capital cost. Secondly, battery swapping architecture of a vehicle makes it significantly heavier specially wants you consider battery packs or even cells with structural loads to make the vehicle lighter. For one personal luxury car that might be fine, but if you are operating 150+ trucks for 20 years, that adds up to a lot of missed payloads. This is exactly why Tesla, dropped this idea. JB Struble just gave a nice analysis of this at a Standford talk. Also, trucks, will spend some time on break and more time loading and unloading. During that time you can charge them or top them off.
    - evgen 6y ago
      Tesla is the last company I would look to for advice about the future of the market for haulage. Weight is one point against battery packs, but easy refill/swap and maintenance are two points in their favour. When you start to deal with volume commercial vehicles the cost of maintenance and repair adds up and is considered a part of doing business. If you try to tell me that your load-bearing conformal battery packs that are critical to making the truck move are an item my depot mechanics cannot touch or repair I am going to show you the door. If my truck are loading/unloading they are probably doing it at customer facilities so charging is unlikely to be an option. If they are loading/unloading at my facility then I can swap the battery pack at the same time.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I would assume the light delivery trucks, the ones that go door to door dropping off e-commerce parcels don't do much mileage at all.
  - brewdad 6y ago
    Largely depends on the neighborhood and existing infrastructure. My suburb is reasonably compact and Amazon and UPS have large facilities at the edge of town, right off the freeway. FedEx still has to process everything through a facility in the city center. It's a 30 mile RT for them just to begin delivering packages here. I'm sure this will change soon but until it does, there's still a lot of wasted transit time.
- myself248 6y ago
  The usage model they're targeting is trucks that return to a depot overnight. Local delivery and drayage routes have ample time to charge. Honestly one of the bigger issues is upgrading the electrical service at the depots to support the chargers. I worked on a prototype EV truck, and they had to software-limit the charger when first installed, because running flat-out it could draw more power than the entire rest of the prototype facility. They had to get the utility out to drop a new transformer before they could unleash the charger's full power. The power you buy in a few gallons of diesel fuel is simply staggering.
  - rkangel 6y ago
    It's the new version of the old 'the fastest data rate is a truck full of harddrives'. Now we can say 'for transferring energy, you can't beat a petrol pump pouring fuel'
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      MOX fuel pellets do slightly better. Tritium-lithium may, some day. But yes, hydrocarbon chains are damned energy dense for chemical reactions.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >for transferring energy, you can't beat a petrol pump pouring fuel Pretty much any time fissionable material is moved probably beats it.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > The power you buy in a few gallons of diesel fuel is simply staggering. 1 Liter per second ~= 38.6 megawatts, for diesel. I’ve never bothered paying attention to the flow rate in a fuel station, but it’s really fortunate that electric cars are fundamentally more efficient than combustion engines.
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      For comparison, a high speed train is around 10MW according to a quick search.
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  specs in the brochures.volvotrucks link above.
Softcadbury 6y ago
This link is a bit hidden, but quite interesting: https://brochures.volvotrucks.com/hq/product-guides/electromobility-en-en/ https://brochures.volvotrucks.com/hq/product-guides/electrom...
- qwertox 6y ago
  These appear to be old trucks. In the brochure there is a link to a YT video which then links to a playlist. This playlist contains the following video "Volvo Trucks - Say hello to the future - Volvo FL Electric & Volvo FE Electric" [1] which was posted on May 14 2018. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIhkqRc-_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIhkqRc-_Q
TooCreative 6y ago
As a web designer, I had to compare it to the Tesla truck page: https://www.tesla.com/semi https://www.tesla.com/semi Was not disappointed. The Volvo page is very Volvo and the Tesla page is very Tesla.
- Unklejoe 6y ago
  The Volvo page is so much better in my opinion. It's neat with decent information density. I'm not a fan of pages that try to do the whole dynamic immersive full screen huge picture thing.
  - TooCreative 6y ago
    The Volvo page has a lot of text. But does it have information? On the Volvo page, I do not see a single piece of information before I scroll. Instead I see fluff like "We know that many transport operators work hard to reduce the environmental footprint..." On the Tesla page, I see four pieces of information right away. Acceleration, energy consumption, drag coefficient and that it has four independent motors.
    - Someone 6y ago
      On the other hand, I don’t think any of the numbers Tesla gives is of direct interest to those who buy such large trucks (with the exception of the D energy consumption, which implies “cheaper to operate”, but what fraction of a truck’s cost is spent on fuel?) Volvo’s ‘fluff’ at least hints at “this truck may be allowed to enter city centers” and “disability payments to drivers may go down”.
      - kungtotte 6y ago
        Roughly 1/3 of the operating costs of trucking is the fuel, another 1/3 is wages, and then the remaining 1/3 covers everything else (facilities, maintenance, repairs, purchase cost of vehicles, insurance, etc. etc.). So ~33% of a truck's cost is spent on fuel.
    - deleted 6y ago

alex_duf 6y ago

I wonder what kind of charging speed these will have. I'm guessing a refuse truck doesn't need to charge very fast as it sleeps in a depot, but a delivery truck might do a few shifts a day so that requires fast charging.

SimonPStevens 6y ago
Or easily swappable battery packs. There was a promo/concept video a few years back, from Tesla I think, showing cars pulling up into a battery swap station and a door slid open in the floor beneath the car and a contraption automatically swapped out the battery for a fully charged one without the driver leaving the car. Not sure whatever came of that concept.
- Gwypaas 6y ago
  I wonder if battery swapping is a red herring which always will be talked about but never realized? Hugely increased complexity since the battery needs to have all mounting points easily accessed in any condition, rain, snow, ice buildup, whatever, from the outside and all the other accessing geometry forcing the design of the entire vehicle to allow for it. Combine this with battery technology improving allowing faster charging speeds lessening the impact. Like phones fast-charging today. No point having a spare battery when 15-30 mins in a charger easily gives you all the hours you need. Where I live we've had completely electric busses on a line for a few years now (Actually Volvos). Very different use case but also commercial vehicles with similar run hours. They have automatic over-head charging at the ends, filling up enough with a 10 minute stop to run throughout the day. Some longer lines are using hybrids with the same charging technology. They run most of the line entirely on battery power, only kicking in a smaller diesel when needed. Maybe battery swapping makes sense for some specialized applications? But then I would guess just straight biofuels simply takes the cake, although eating the cost penalty.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    I honestly don't see the issue for industrial type machinery. It's not like some Tesla that has to have a sleek body and beautiful styling. Trucks are already big boxes that carry giant boxes behind them. Why should one of those boxes not be a giant 300kwh battery pack that they swap out at the multitude of weigh stations they have to stop at along the highway already? Just run massive power to the weigh stations, put in a few massive DC chargers and some forklifts. Hell you could go further and have other parts of the drivetrain in there -- the controller, the charger unit, the DC to DC converter, etc. Then you have an upgrade path for the trucks as the tech improves.
    - myself248 6y ago
      At some point aren't you just swapping the entire horse? Just transfer the rider and the saddle bags.
      - spockz 6y ago
        Who don’t we do this? Driver makes it to the way station. Has a chat with the next driver while refilling and that driver takes it for the next four/six hours.
        signaturefish 6y ago
        That /is/ how "we" do it with trains. The difference is that long-distance truckers generally live in their cabs for weeks on end, so they can't easily hand it off to another driver.
        spockz 6y ago
        Ok. So then the lorry and the driver stay behind and the lorry/payload get switched. But apparently there is no such need for speed for road transport and otherwise they would use a plane?
        throwaway0a5e 6y ago
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  I think standards about battery swapping will evolve which will make infrastructure around that to develop easier, quicker and be more interchangeable.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  It wasn't just a concept - Tesla actually commercialized battery swapping because by doing so you got some California subsidy. Tesla drivers who applied could do a battery swap in 7 minutes at their one swap station. It was discontinued when the subsidy requirement ended. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-program-for-superchargers/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-prog... https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-battery-swap-harris-ranch-20150310-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-batter...
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >Tesla drivers who applied could do a battery swap in 7 minutes Is there any video of the swaps actually working, outside of the promotional stage-show? YouTube doesn't have anything, which is odd...
    - maxdo 6y ago
      not sure about tesla but in china they have commercially operational swap stations. plenty of videos
benplumley 6y ago
If you operate a fleet of trucks, battery swapping becomes a lot more viable because you don't have to worry about swapping your good, new battery for a worn-out old battery.
- beamatronic 6y ago
  Came here to say, I hope someone has given some thought and planning into the full life cycle of the battery - infrastructure is needed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nickik 6y ago
  If you have a fleet of trucks, having battery swapping batteries also means you need to have more batteries then trucks. Meaning extra capital cost. Secondly, battery swapping architecture of a vehicle makes it significantly heavier specially wants you consider battery packs or even cells with structural loads to make the vehicle lighter. For one personal luxury car that might be fine, but if you are operating 150+ trucks for 20 years, that adds up to a lot of missed payloads. This is exactly why Tesla, dropped this idea. JB Struble just gave a nice analysis of this at a Standford talk. Also, trucks, will spend some time on break and more time loading and unloading. During that time you can charge them or top them off.
  - evgen 6y ago
    Tesla is the last company I would look to for advice about the future of the market for haulage. Weight is one point against battery packs, but easy refill/swap and maintenance are two points in their favour. When you start to deal with volume commercial vehicles the cost of maintenance and repair adds up and is considered a part of doing business. If you try to tell me that your load-bearing conformal battery packs that are critical to making the truck move are an item my depot mechanics cannot touch or repair I am going to show you the door. If my truck are loading/unloading they are probably doing it at customer facilities so charging is unlikely to be an option. If they are loading/unloading at my facility then I can swap the battery pack at the same time.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I would assume the light delivery trucks, the ones that go door to door dropping off e-commerce parcels don't do much mileage at all.
- brewdad 6y ago
  Largely depends on the neighborhood and existing infrastructure. My suburb is reasonably compact and Amazon and UPS have large facilities at the edge of town, right off the freeway. FedEx still has to process everything through a facility in the city center. It's a 30 mile RT for them just to begin delivering packages here. I'm sure this will change soon but until it does, there's still a lot of wasted transit time.
myself248 6y ago
The usage model they're targeting is trucks that return to a depot overnight. Local delivery and drayage routes have ample time to charge. Honestly one of the bigger issues is upgrading the electrical service at the depots to support the chargers. I worked on a prototype EV truck, and they had to software-limit the charger when first installed, because running flat-out it could draw more power than the entire rest of the prototype facility. They had to get the utility out to drop a new transformer before they could unleash the charger's full power. The power you buy in a few gallons of diesel fuel is simply staggering.
- rkangel 6y ago
  It's the new version of the old 'the fastest data rate is a truck full of harddrives'. Now we can say 'for transferring energy, you can't beat a petrol pump pouring fuel'
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    MOX fuel pellets do slightly better. Tritium-lithium may, some day. But yes, hydrocarbon chains are damned energy dense for chemical reactions.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >for transferring energy, you can't beat a petrol pump pouring fuel Pretty much any time fissionable material is moved probably beats it.
- ben_w 6y ago
  > The power you buy in a few gallons of diesel fuel is simply staggering. 1 Liter per second ~= 38.6 megawatts, for diesel. I’ve never bothered paying attention to the flow rate in a fuel station, but it’s really fortunate that electric cars are fundamentally more efficient than combustion engines.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    For comparison, a high speed train is around 10MW according to a quick search.
hindsightbias 6y ago
specs in the brochures.volvotrucks link above.

Softcadbury 6y ago

This link is a bit hidden, but quite interesting: https://brochures.volvotrucks.com/hq/product-guides/electromobility-en-en/ https://brochures.volvotrucks.com/hq/product-guides/electrom...

qwertox 6y ago
These appear to be old trucks. In the brochure there is a link to a YT video which then links to a playlist. This playlist contains the following video "Volvo Trucks - Say hello to the future - Volvo FL Electric & Volvo FE Electric" [1] which was posted on May 14 2018. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIhkqRc-_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIhkqRc-_Q

TooCreative 6y ago

As a web designer, I had to compare it to the Tesla truck page: https://www.tesla.com/semi https://www.tesla.com/semi Was not disappointed. The Volvo page is very Volvo and the Tesla page is very Tesla.

Unklejoe 6y ago
The Volvo page is so much better in my opinion. It's neat with decent information density. I'm not a fan of pages that try to do the whole dynamic immersive full screen huge picture thing.
- TooCreative 6y ago
  The Volvo page has a lot of text. But does it have information? On the Volvo page, I do not see a single piece of information before I scroll. Instead I see fluff like "We know that many transport operators work hard to reduce the environmental footprint..." On the Tesla page, I see four pieces of information right away. Acceleration, energy consumption, drag coefficient and that it has four independent motors.
  - Someone 6y ago
    On the other hand, I don’t think any of the numbers Tesla gives is of direct interest to those who buy such large trucks (with the exception of the D energy consumption, which implies “cheaper to operate”, but what fraction of a truck’s cost is spent on fuel?) Volvo’s ‘fluff’ at least hints at “this truck may be allowed to enter city centers” and “disability payments to drivers may go down”.
    - kungtotte 6y ago
      Roughly 1/3 of the operating costs of trucking is the fuel, another 1/3 is wages, and then the remaining 1/3 covers everything else (facilities, maintenance, repairs, purchase cost of vehicles, insurance, etc. etc.). So ~33% of a truck's cost is spent on fuel.
  - deleted 6y ago