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I'd like to remind people that heavy trucks that make fairly regular and predictable journeys between fixed points with fairly rigid timing constraints lend the

• darksaints 6y ago
  The theoretical limit of energy density for lithium batteries is already too low to be economically viable for most trucking applications. I also don't know that hydrogen is the answer, but it almost assuredly is not going to be batteries for anything that isn't for local deliveries only.
  • shafyy 6y ago
    Elon: Hold my beer!
  • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > theoretical limit of energy density for lithium batteries is already too low to be economically viable for most trucking applications Curious to see a source for this.
  • xxpor 6y ago
    Economic viability can be massaged through subsidies or taxes, if the break even point isn't too far away from the current point.
    • EricE 6y ago
      >Economic viability can be massaged through subsidies or taxes Wow - we have subsidies than can alter the laws of physics? Neat! Why didn't we deploy that before now!
      • xxpor 6y ago
        No, but just think about an extreme case. What if there was a tax on any liquid hydrocarbon based fuel of $1000/gal starting 1/1/2023? What would the reaction be? Obviously truckers would want to buy something so they didn't have to drive a diesel truck any more. If battery powered trucks were more expensive per lb*mi than the diesel at the old price, the switch would cause general prices for goods to go up, granted, but the case for non-diesel trucks would be there because it wouldn't go up enough to cause the demand for trucks to collapse.
        • bluGill 6y ago
          The reaction would be the political party that passed that tax would lose overwhelmingly by a landslide in the election. If you want to do some form of tax that is large enough to make a difference you first need to make the alternative to paying that tax viable enough that people will switch. Hydrocarbons are massively more energy dense than any other practical fuel. (nuclear is of course more energy dense, but not currently practical for trucks) If you want to get rid of them, then you need an alternative that works well enough for people to actually switch. There are a number of them, but batteries are not one, and never will be.
  • Robotbeat 6y ago
    That’s not true. 500 mile range semi trucks are feasible with careful engineering. That’s long enough where drivers have to stop for regulator rest anyway. See: https://selenianboondocks.com/2017/11/tesla-semi-part-1/ https://selenianboondocks.com/2017/11/tesla-semi-part-1/ More for lithium sulfur.
    • darksaints 6y ago
      What are the chances of a Tesla megacharger exactly at the closest exit when you hit your 8 hour mark, and also not being used by any other trucks? Real life usage requires buffers.
      • Robotbeat 6y ago
        This really isn’t a problem. 8 hour is the MAXIMUM you can legally drive at a time. 11 hours is the daily maximum driving time total. So as long as there’s a mega charger between your 3rd and 8th hour, you’re fine. Then charge overnight slower. Lithium sulfur (or a smaller load) enables no need to charge during the day at all. Could go the full 11 hours driving each day and charge at mere Supercharger (or CCS) speeds overnight.
• skystarman 6y ago
  I worked in the commercial trucking EV space for a little bit and I don't know anyone in the commercial trucking industry that genuinely thinks batteries will be the solution for long-haul, class 7 & 8 trucks. At least not in the next decade or so, if ever. Elon and Tesla will tell you otherwise but there's a reason their Semi has been delayed for 3 years now... Short haul, drayage, etc. is definitely workable with current tech. They batteries you'd need for 6-700 mile daily drives would mean you're carrying a tiny fraction of what a ICE truck could haul due to weight constraints. We are making strides in this technology but are still nowhere close. Almost everyone I've spoken to believes hydrogen is far more feasible, but it still has its own issues most importantly the massive infrastructure investment to support it.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    The only way to make electric long haul trucking work out is overhead wires. Trolley buses in some cites do this, (the latest have enough batteries to run for ~5 miles without a wire which is useful for a lot of applications) Or better yet the freight railroads need to figure out how to serve their customers better. They are already more efficient than existing trucks, and overhead wire locomotives are already on the market. The US has the best freight rail in the world - and they still lose a lot of potential customers because their operations are so customer unfriendly.
    • rightbyte 6y ago
      Wire trucks are tested in Germany and Sweden that I know off. I too think that it might actually be really viable to avoid tons of batteries - unless there is some technical issues I am unawere off.
    • 7952 6y ago
      An inductive system under the road surface would seem easier to install and would work better with different vehicle sizes. Suspending lines across a multi lane highway would need a lot of structures.
      • 6y ago
• bluGill 6y ago
  We can actually predict when batteries will hit the wall. Chemical laws are known well enough to put a limit. We use lithium batteries for reasons related to physical rules like electro-negativity (I'm too long from my chemistry to do more than throw out the right terms). The periodic table of the elements puts a limit on how much power different chemical reactions can produce. We can thus calculate a theoretical max battery beyond which nothing is possible. In the real world that maximum might need atoms that are unstable (more energy released by atomic decay), but we can ignore that for the theory. I don't remember enough chemistry to do the above calculations. Someone does though, and they tell me that batteries won't get more than 4x smaller (I of course can't verify this claim - perhaps someone else can).
  • Scoundreller 6y ago
    Electrode potentials are what you’re probably thinking about. Lithium is at one end, but we could work on the other end to get the greatest difference. It’s a relative scale. Hydrogen was just chosen as 0, but that’s an arbitrary choice. Looking forward to lithium-fluoride or lithium-gold batteries. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrode-potential-d_482.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrode-potential-d_482...
    • consp 6y ago
      Thank you for this info. Now I realize why I heard some chatter about lithium bromide batteries a while back. Probably the "easier" to work with and cheaper instead of gold/chlorine/fluorine.
      • marcosdumay 6y ago
        Sodium-bromide in particular looks like a cheap, highly available, easy to handle pair that can fill every one of those niches that don't really care about energy density. But current batteries use metal compounds, where the metal itself is never completely oxidized or reduced. Those are much easier to design, as you can simply place an ion exchange membrane separating the poles. AFAIK, nobody has any idea how a metal-halogen battery would work.
• kingsuper20 6y ago
  >I would bet my money on internet comments being wrong when it comes to predicting the future of heavy industry on a timeline longer than a couple quarters. You're probably right, although I'd probably go short on hydrogen in trucks. It seems hard to store, transport, requires a new infrastructure, etc. I expect they'll use this new fangled technology called 'diesel'. I'm surprised when I don't hear more about the lower hanging fruit. The fact that Fedex/UPS haven't gone wholesale into electric is telling at this point, I expect they'll do it when some spreadsheet shows 10 cents in savings companywide. The champions for electric trucks should push for trash pickup, route sales, local delivery, etc. and not bother with long haul for now. You could argue that a good place for hydrogen would be non-electric trains. When the bugs get worked out of that perhaps long distance trucking might have a chance. edit: as an aside, I can see where large scale fleet decisions might be held back by fear of technology change. You'd sure hate to buy thousands of trucks only to have them made obsolete by some sort of large underlying change in design that's a no-brainer. It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't a certain braking effect on vehicle purchases generally because of the advances in EVs. There's a righteous fear in being an early adopter.
  • LeanderK 6y ago
    I think quite a few countries will tighten their environmental regulations so that some solution will have to be found. Trucks running on Dieses crowding the highways will face strong opposition. The industry has to move somewhere. Germany might gain it's first green-party led government this year and they are racking up wins in a lot of countries in europe. I even see the rise of smaller "greener than green" parties here in southern germany. This might change the regulatory environment/taxes enough to fuel change. I don't think Volvo and Daimler make uniformed bets, so there must be some reasoning behind it.
    • kingsuper20 6y ago
      > I don't think Volvo and Daimler make uniformed bets, so there must be some reasoning behind it. It's probably fair to contrast the EU vs. the USA for this. Given the geographic and political differences, I can see where a European market for trucks might be sufficient for the manufacturers to fund development efforts. I should have been clear that I was thinking primarily of the US, living here and all. It would be interesting to have a better overview on freight handling in the rest of the world. China tends to be left out of these discussions and I can't imagine wide swathes of Asia or Africa changing anytime soon.
• dv_dt 6y ago
  I think EV shipping trucks are much more viable a use for automated rapid battery swaps. Extend front cab a bit, put a big rectangle of a battery module behind, or under an expanded sleeper space. If all it takes is rolling through an automated bay for x min to swap out to a new charged pack then you really don't need some superbattery (or hydrogen).
  • fulafel 6y ago
    Or while we're at it, a standard energy module that could be a battery, hydrogen fuel cell + tank, or something else.
    • dv_dt 6y ago
      Well maybe, I wonder about the cost efficiencies of multiple fuel cells in modules (usually they're pretty expensive because of the use of costly metals like palladium/platinum). Moving the cell out of the module obviously makes for a dedicated battery truck or dedicated hydrogen truck, but modular automatic liquid fuel let alone hydrogen links I would imagine is hard to keep reliable vs an electrical interface.
      • fulafel 6y ago
        But you don't need to sit them on the shelf recharging, so you don't need to have many extra hydrogen modules (vs your fleet size). So, compared to dedicated hydrogen powered trucks, you'd maybe end up having 110 modules for every 100 trucks, for a modest increase in those costly fuel cells. Maybe the swapping/charging stations could support both kinds and would prefer to give you charged battery modules, but if running behind in the charging, would switch to giving out hydrogen modules. Or maybe only some routes would have hydrogen equipped cargo stations at both endpoints, so the trucks would get different kinds of modules depending on the route - making a gradual rollout of hydrogen fueling infra easy.
  • thescriptkiddie 6y ago
    You could also avoid the need to deal with large batteries by having the truck draw power from an overhead wire. For bonus points you could put the whole thing on rails, eliminating the need for the truck driver.
• kackerd 6y ago
  The other difference between trucks and cars is that power/weight isn't really important for the latter, and hugely important for the former. If there's an improvement that allows you to carry 5% more weight in your car, that doesn't matter much. Most of the engine's energy is being used transporting the engine around, and the weight of passengers and luggage is not an operative constraint. For trucks it matters a lot, because they just became 5% more efficient.
  • nostromo 6y ago
    Crazy idea: don't store hydrogen as a liquid but as a gas. Hydrogen is lighter than air, so you've just reduced the fuel requirements by making the semi lighter than it otherwise would be. Or just go to the logical conclusion: make semis blimps that use hydrogen to both float and as a fuel source.
    • xxpor 6y ago
      ... you're aware a variation of this was tried a century ago, yes?
      • nostromo 6y ago
        Yes, but tech has improved a tad since then. In every flight you take, the wings are filled with highly combustable materials, and yet we find ways to keep them from exploding. The same is true for all those batteries in electric cars, and of course gasoline.
        • xxpor 6y ago
          Jet A is really not that combustible; it's very close to diesel/kerosene. If you take a lit match and drop it in a bucket of Jet A, nothing would happen, it'd just burn out. It's way safer than gasoline. It's combustible only when turned into a fine mist. On the other hand, H2 would have exploded just from the spark of lighting the match.
          • 6y ago
• EricE 6y ago
  Batteries already hit the wall with trucks; otherwise the industry would be all over them. It's highly more likely that hydrogen infrastructure could be built out faster than battery technology could improve for batteries to be effective for trucking. Hydrogen's biggest benefit is you can quickly tank your vehicle up on energy - as fast as with liquid fuel. Also hydrogen fuel cells haven even less maintenance than battery powered EVs, and while fuel cells do require some maintenance they don't require wholesale replacement like battery packs do. Batteries degrade even faster when under heavy use - and freight puts big demands on a drivetrain. And for those proposing battery swapping - where you going to get the batteries from? We can barely keep up with EV car demand and EVs are far from ubiquitous. These are serious issues: batteries just don't scale - on multiple fronts.
• xkjkls 6y ago
  > What are the odds batteries hit a wall before they're viable in heavy trucks? I dunno but certainly not zero. Lithium Ion battery costs have improved tremendously over the past few decades, but energy density has not improved at nearly the same rate. Energy density is the primary problem with electric trucking, because it significantly reduces the payload a truck can provide for a given range. I would be skeptical of electric heavy trucks without a real breakthrough in energy density.
• nonameiguess 6y ago
  California tried to do it for everyone. Arnold famously had an all hydrogen fleet of personal Hummers back in 2004. The state had plans for a "hydrogen superhighway." I think they're up to about 8,000 vehicles on the road now nearly 20 years later, but that is nearly 100% of hydrogen vehicles in the entire US. I think the actual state-owned fleets mostly switched to LNG by now. Who knows if it'll maybe be feasible soon for long haul trucking? Hydrogen cells started dropping enough in price to at least be feasible as a luxury good maybe a decade ago. This place seems optimistic? https://blog.ballard.com/fuel-cell-price-drop https://blog.ballard.com/fuel-cell-price-drop Any experts in chemistry or industry have any idea how plausible those projections are? It's a vendor, so I take it with a grain of salt. A hydrogen city bus is still more than double the cost of a diesel bus, even before thinking about the need to refuel it.
• slver 6y ago
  There are solutions we haven't tried that will quickly extend the range of an electric truck, like: swap the batteries, don't change them.
• m463 6y ago
  I was thinking why not CNG - it's readily available and will probably be the root source of hydrogen in these schemes... But then - it's not carbon neutral.
  • deleted 6y ago
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• Black101 6y ago
  > I wouldn't bet my money on hydrogen being the way of the future but I would bet my money on internet comments being wrong Exactly what I was thinking when I was reading your comment...
• trhway 6y ago
  >Batteries are getting better and look promising but all new tech does that until it hits a wall between metal-air batteries and hydrogen, i think metal-air is just better density/utility-wise and have higher chances technology-wise. And infrastructure-wise it would be just a continuation of the ongoing electrification transformation whereis hydrogen means totally new buildout for not much gain if any.
• nickik 6y ago
  Yes, but you can make the same argument about anything. Why not methanol. Why not battery swapping. The question is how expensive is the initial investment and how expensive are the operating cost. Hydrogen trucks will be more expensive, the fuel is more expensive and the operation is more expensive. > What are the odds batteries hit a wall before they're viable in heavy trucks? I dunno but certainly not zero. 0% as current batteries can already cover the majority of the current heavy trucking market.
• 8note 6y ago
  Regular and predictable journeys between fixed points with rigid timing constraints sounds a lot like a train to me.