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My stance is that diesels should only be permitted if they satisfy the EPA 2008 diesel PM standards or better. No older engines should be permitted unless they

by ak217 6y ago

My stance is that diesels should only be permitted if they satisfy the EPA 2008 diesel PM standards or better. No older engines should be permitted unless they are retrofitted to comply with the standard and pass regular state tests. We could have a "cash for clunkers" type program to incentivize them to be lawfully scrapped. I appreciate that you are as annoyed as the rest of us at the coal rollers. I think we need much more aggressive fines and impounds for those, too.

Syonyk 6y ago
Destroying nearly-new trucks for emissions reasons is a pretty questionable use of funding (and, yes, a 12 year old truck is still quite new) - and you're not going to be able to get away with a token few thousand dollars to encourage people to scrap them. A decently maintained heavy road engine (tractor trailer) is a million+ mile motor, easily. A medium truck engine (think your typical toolbox work trucks, tow trucks, International boom trucks, etc) will do 300k-500k miles, and depending on how much the truck is used, that may be 20-30 years of operation. Same for the light diesels - they tend to have a practical service life of decades. My 24 year old truck is starting to be a little bit more rare on the roads out here, but I still see plenty... If you know what to listen for, you can identify a lot of diesels by sound - and the International T444E (mid-90s design, the Ford 7.3 Powerstroke is that engine with a few tweaks) has a very distinctive snap at idle from the single shot injectors. There are still an awful lot of those on the road, and the youngest of them is almost 20 years old. "Destroying 30-50% of the diesel fleet on the road" is not something I'd be particularly excited about - especially since new vehicle production isn't particularly environmentally friendly either. If you're specifically focused on the PM emissions, there may be ways to retrofit those older engines (at the cost of likely a substantial increase in fuel burn from the backpressure), but if you're going to hold them to the newer NOx standards, there's just no way to do it. They don't have the injection pressure and EGR systems in place to do it. As of right now, they'd just be replaced with new diesels, because there are no electrics meaningfully on the market that solve the problems a large diesel engine solves right now. Plenty have been announced, very few are actually shipping, and of those announced, everyone is silent on their towing capabilities (I don't care if you can tow 15k lbs on a receiver mount, that kind of trailer weight should be on a gooseneck or 5th wheel hitch, and everyone is really, really silent on how their announced electric trucks fit either of those). I also very much dislike "Cash for Clunkers" type programs in that they're one of the most nastily regressive programs one can possibly create. That program ruined the bottom end of the used car market for most of a decade, and permanently destroyed a lot of vehicles of a particularly easy to maintain and cheap to operate era (low pressure single point throttle body injection, not a ton of luxury features). It was a nice little handout to the next couple tiers up, but if you were operating in the "$100 car" realm (which were a thing at the time, I've owned 4 sub-$400 cars in the 2000-2010 era), it was absolutely devastating to your ability to find cheap cars. That sort of effective floor on vehicle prices for a while, followed by the hollowing out of anything below that price in the market... eh. Let's not do that again. As far as coal rollers, though, the best thing that could happen is that everyone stops getting worked up about them and ignore them. They do it for the attention, and I'll suggest that it works really, really well. If you see one, get the plate, call it into your local emissions enforcement hotline if that's a thing, and move on with life. Everyone getting all wound up about them on the internet is exactly what I expect a lot of them enjoy about it anymore.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Of course just scrapping diesels on the road isn't the best/most efficient idea. We have the technology to do EV conversions, we just need to make that more cost effective. Volkswagon has talked about shipping a mass produced "crate" system that could fit into older VW vehicles' engine blocks. Though if we are talking *trucks* the big player that should be building an EV conversion kit yesterday is Ford, who still seem to act like EV is a passing fad they can just dip their toes in and not get serious about.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Right, but the parent's point is that these things do not actually exist. VW "talking" about doing something or Ford "should" have done something does not describe things that are actually available on the market today, regardless of whether or not the technology is within our capabilities.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      They do exist in small shops that are doing EV conversions every day (and have been for years). The thing missing is mass production to drive costs down from it being an artisanal thing with used Tesla and pinball machine parts to being a reliable mini-industry. Those artisanal projects are on the market though, and have been for some time. They have a market price, it's just that that price isn't as cheap as we would all like it to be, hence the emphasis on mass production being a currently unfilled need and that it is on at least one manufacturer's stated roadmap and should have been on at least one other's. The flipside is already happening "while we wait". Some of those artisanal shops are standardizing their own tools and producing their own kits, and speeding up their processes and building on economies of scale to get those things cheaper, and if the manufacturers won't officially support it, the aftermarket will, as it often does.
  - Syonyk 6y ago
    > We have the technology to do EV conversions... "We" do? If you know of any, please, share. I know a lot of people out here who own trucks who would absolutely love a reasonably priced ($20k or so?) conversion kit for a truck that would leave you with 100 miles or so of range with a 10k lb construction trailer (fully enclosed) or similar. I'm aware of the old electric Rangers one can find on rare occasions (swap their lead for lithium and you have a truck, though not one that can either haul much or tow much). I know of a couple more or less DIY conversion kits for vehicles (EVWest has some nice ones, $5k-$10k before you add a battery, for light VWs), but a 200hp class motor alone for a retrofit is close to $10k, and that's before controllers, battery pack, anything. But in general, I'm really not sure converting existing trucks is the right option, because how you build a truck for an ICE is probably not how you build a truck for electric drivetrains. If you just replace the input to the transmission with an electric motor, you end up with quite poor drivetrain efficiency - there's a lot of stuff spinning that you wouldn't use for a pure electric drivetrain, but if you're going to swap out pieces you don't need (transmission, maybe the transfer case - a motor hung on the front and rear differential, geared properly, makes a compelling argument), costs start going up again. And then there's the mass and weight of the battery pack. You could put a pack in the bed without too much trouble, but... whoops, you've just lost your access to a 5th wheel or gooseneck hitch, or you've got a lot of the bed not used for battery space. There's room under the hood, but it's weirdly shaped space, typically. I would love an electric pickup that could handle around town work, but even if I start with a free truck body, I'm likely $40k away from a useful conversion, and that's with me doing the work myself. And I still wouldn't get that much use out of it, because I couldn't do any longer hauling with it (the bulk of my trips in trip count are about 40 mile round trips to the home improvement store, but the few longer trips I take, often with 5k-8k lb of trailer back there, make up a good fraction of the miles). For that cost, I could buy a very nice used diesel truck, and still have a ton of money left over for other projects, carbon offsets, nice charity donations, a bunch of public EV charging stations, or whatever else I wanted to do. The problem is that competent electric pickups have been "coming soon now" for most of a decade. Via Motors was announcing extended range electric pickups on Chevy gliders back in 2012 or so - and they've since pivoted a few times and not delivered any of those things (at least that I'm aware of, and certainly not in any meaningful numbers). A 50 mile range on battery with a good trailer, then a gas or diesel range extender, with a big split phase inverter built in, would sell like hotcakes to construction companies - you can haul your trailer to the jobsite, power the jobsite before the power company gets around to running lines without the small generators otherwise used for that, recharge at night, and pay a fraction the operating costs of a diesel you'd otherwise use for that. Think $0.05-$0.10/mi (depending on power costs) vs $0.25-$0.30/mi, plus generator costs. That adds up in a hurry. But nobody sells one. I've no idea why. So diesel it is. Gassers are fine for infrequent towing, but their lifespan is an awful lot shorter if you use them for it regularly for towing. I'm aware the Cybertruck is "coming soon now," and that it's rated for 14k lbs, but as I've stated elsewhere in this sidetrack, you have to be somewhat insane to hang 14k lbs on a receiver mount (I'm actually not even sure that's permitted everywhere). That much tongue weight (1000+ lbs, perhaps even 2000 lbs for high speed stability) really needs to be on or slightly forward of the rear axle for combo stability. There's a big difference between "It can move it on flat ground" and "It can safely tow it long distances in somewhat adverse conditions." A ~6000 lb truck, with 14k hanging on the receiver, is (IMO) an unsafe combination. All of the above skips the legal problems with radically changing a vehicle (which an EV conversion is) and ensuring it's legal and certified for road operation. Hobby conversions and low volume conversions tend to fall between the cracks, but anything of a scale to matter would have to solve those problems, and they're far from trivial. Anyway, if I'm missing something, please, let me know. But what you're arguing "should exist," as far as I know, "Doesn't exist, and won't exist."

by ak217 6y ago

Syonyk 6y ago

Destroying nearly-new trucks for emissions reasons is a pretty questionable use of funding (and, yes, a 12 year old truck is still quite new) - and you're not going to be able to get away with a token few thousand dollars to encourage people to scrap them. A decently maintained heavy road engine (tractor trailer) is a million+ mile motor, easily. A medium truck engine (think your typical toolbox work trucks, tow trucks, International boom trucks, etc) will do 300k-500k miles, and depending on how much the truck is used, that may be 20-30 years of operation. Same for the light diesels - they tend to have a practical service life of decades. My 24 year old truck is starting to be a little bit more rare on the roads out here, but I still see plenty... If you know what to listen for, you can identify a lot of diesels by sound - and the International T444E (mid-90s design, the Ford 7.3 Powerstroke is that engine with a few tweaks) has a very distinctive snap at idle from the single shot injectors. There are still an awful lot of those on the road, and the youngest of them is almost 20 years old. "Destroying 30-50% of the diesel fleet on the road" is not something I'd be particularly excited about - especially since new vehicle production isn't particularly environmentally friendly either. If you're specifically focused on the PM emissions, there may be ways to retrofit those older engines (at the cost of likely a substantial increase in fuel burn from the backpressure), but if you're going to hold them to the newer NOx standards, there's just no way to do it. They don't have the injection pressure and EGR systems in place to do it. As of right now, they'd just be replaced with new diesels, because there are no electrics meaningfully on the market that solve the problems a large diesel engine solves right now. Plenty have been announced, very few are actually shipping, and of those announced, everyone is silent on their towing capabilities (I don't care if you can tow 15k lbs on a receiver mount, that kind of trailer weight should be on a gooseneck or 5th wheel hitch, and everyone is really, really silent on how their announced electric trucks fit either of those). I also very much dislike "Cash for Clunkers" type programs in that they're one of the most nastily regressive programs one can possibly create. That program ruined the bottom end of the used car market for most of a decade, and permanently destroyed a lot of vehicles of a particularly easy to maintain and cheap to operate era (low pressure single point throttle body injection, not a ton of luxury features). It was a nice little handout to the next couple tiers up, but if you were operating in the "$100 car" realm (which were a thing at the time, I've owned 4 sub-$400 cars in the 2000-2010 era), it was absolutely devastating to your ability to find cheap cars. That sort of effective floor on vehicle prices for a while, followed by the hollowing out of anything below that price in the market... eh. Let's not do that again. As far as coal rollers, though, the best thing that could happen is that everyone stops getting worked up about them and ignore them. They do it for the attention, and I'll suggest that it works really, really well. If you see one, get the plate, call it into your local emissions enforcement hotline if that's a thing, and move on with life. Everyone getting all wound up about them on the internet is exactly what I expect a lot of them enjoy about it anymore.

WorldMaker 6y ago
Of course just scrapping diesels on the road isn't the best/most efficient idea. We have the technology to do EV conversions, we just need to make that more cost effective. Volkswagon has talked about shipping a mass produced "crate" system that could fit into older VW vehicles' engine blocks. Though if we are talking *trucks* the big player that should be building an EV conversion kit yesterday is Ford, who still seem to act like EV is a passing fad they can just dip their toes in and not get serious about.
- kelnos 6y ago
  Right, but the parent's point is that these things do not actually exist. VW "talking" about doing something or Ford "should" have done something does not describe things that are actually available on the market today, regardless of whether or not the technology is within our capabilities.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    They do exist in small shops that are doing EV conversions every day (and have been for years). The thing missing is mass production to drive costs down from it being an artisanal thing with used Tesla and pinball machine parts to being a reliable mini-industry. Those artisanal projects are on the market though, and have been for some time. They have a market price, it's just that that price isn't as cheap as we would all like it to be, hence the emphasis on mass production being a currently unfilled need and that it is on at least one manufacturer's stated roadmap and should have been on at least one other's. The flipside is already happening "while we wait". Some of those artisanal shops are standardizing their own tools and producing their own kits, and speeding up their processes and building on economies of scale to get those things cheaper, and if the manufacturers won't officially support it, the aftermarket will, as it often does.
- Syonyk 6y ago
  > We have the technology to do EV conversions... "We" do? If you know of any, please, share. I know a lot of people out here who own trucks who would absolutely love a reasonably priced ($20k or so?) conversion kit for a truck that would leave you with 100 miles or so of range with a 10k lb construction trailer (fully enclosed) or similar. I'm aware of the old electric Rangers one can find on rare occasions (swap their lead for lithium and you have a truck, though not one that can either haul much or tow much). I know of a couple more or less DIY conversion kits for vehicles (EVWest has some nice ones, $5k-$10k before you add a battery, for light VWs), but a 200hp class motor alone for a retrofit is close to $10k, and that's before controllers, battery pack, anything. But in general, I'm really not sure converting existing trucks is the right option, because how you build a truck for an ICE is probably not how you build a truck for electric drivetrains. If you just replace the input to the transmission with an electric motor, you end up with quite poor drivetrain efficiency - there's a lot of stuff spinning that you wouldn't use for a pure electric drivetrain, but if you're going to swap out pieces you don't need (transmission, maybe the transfer case - a motor hung on the front and rear differential, geared properly, makes a compelling argument), costs start going up again. And then there's the mass and weight of the battery pack. You could put a pack in the bed without too much trouble, but... whoops, you've just lost your access to a 5th wheel or gooseneck hitch, or you've got a lot of the bed not used for battery space. There's room under the hood, but it's weirdly shaped space, typically. I would love an electric pickup that could handle around town work, but even if I start with a free truck body, I'm likely $40k away from a useful conversion, and that's with me doing the work myself. And I still wouldn't get that much use out of it, because I couldn't do any longer hauling with it (the bulk of my trips in trip count are about 40 mile round trips to the home improvement store, but the few longer trips I take, often with 5k-8k lb of trailer back there, make up a good fraction of the miles). For that cost, I could buy a very nice used diesel truck, and still have a ton of money left over for other projects, carbon offsets, nice charity donations, a bunch of public EV charging stations, or whatever else I wanted to do. The problem is that competent electric pickups have been "coming soon now" for most of a decade. Via Motors was announcing extended range electric pickups on Chevy gliders back in 2012 or so - and they've since pivoted a few times and not delivered any of those things (at least that I'm aware of, and certainly not in any meaningful numbers). A 50 mile range on battery with a good trailer, then a gas or diesel range extender, with a big split phase inverter built in, would sell like hotcakes to construction companies - you can haul your trailer to the jobsite, power the jobsite before the power company gets around to running lines without the small generators otherwise used for that, recharge at night, and pay a fraction the operating costs of a diesel you'd otherwise use for that. Think $0.05-$0.10/mi (depending on power costs) vs $0.25-$0.30/mi, plus generator costs. That adds up in a hurry. But nobody sells one. I've no idea why. So diesel it is. Gassers are fine for infrequent towing, but their lifespan is an awful lot shorter if you use them for it regularly for towing. I'm aware the Cybertruck is "coming soon now," and that it's rated for 14k lbs, but as I've stated elsewhere in this sidetrack, you have to be somewhat insane to hang 14k lbs on a receiver mount (I'm actually not even sure that's permitted everywhere). That much tongue weight (1000+ lbs, perhaps even 2000 lbs for high speed stability) really needs to be on or slightly forward of the rear axle for combo stability. There's a big difference between "It can move it on flat ground" and "It can safely tow it long distances in somewhat adverse conditions." A ~6000 lb truck, with 14k hanging on the receiver, is (IMO) an unsafe combination. All of the above skips the legal problems with radically changing a vehicle (which an EV conversion is) and ensuring it's legal and certified for road operation. Hobby conversions and low volume conversions tend to fall between the cracks, but anything of a scale to matter would have to solve those problems, and they're far from trivial. Anyway, if I'm missing something, please, let me know. But what you're arguing "should exist," as far as I know, "Doesn't exist, and won't exist."