6 ms·

I wonder what the longer-term solution is for this? More trucks? Exchangeable batteries? Faster charging?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
All of the above. Must Run trucks should probably be gas turbine hybrids, that can burn anything for fuel (diesel, biodiesel, Jet A, etc), versus full electric. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/06/07/mack-trucks-to-demonstrate-wrightspeed-turbine-plug-in-hybrid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/06/07/mack-t...
- jollyllama 4y ago
  This technology has been talked about lately in the context of Abrams tanks which could potentially be used in Ukraine. Doesn't it burn a lot more fuel?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Yes! But that might be a penalty you’re willing to make versus long turnaround times, especially if you’re in NYC vs a harsh military theater and fueling infra is solved. The truck doesn’t care if the battery slab is pulled and replaced with another battery or a hybrid powertrain, it just cares it has enough power to accelerate and decelerate. https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/r40x15/why_are_gas_turbine_engines_so_rare_in_tanks/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/r40x15/why_are_...
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >ust Run trucks should probably be gas turbine hybrids, that can burn anything for fuel (diesel, biodiesel, Jet A, etc), versus full electric. That's just high tech engineer fantasy though. Turbine is great for steady loads and terrible for cyclical loads which is what a garbage truck does all day. Electrical is great for cyclical but batteries just don't support the energy density to do it all day. You can theoretically bridge the gap real well with a hybrid system but it's only theoretical because in the real world other people's money is not actually an unlimited resource and you're not getting a turbine into anything cheaply. There's a reason you only see them in vehicles that are already fantastically expensive (tanks) and benefit greatly from some of the specific performance attributes. It would be really cool though... Right now the trucks can do 1/3 of what they need with the batteries they have. Commercial vehicles like this are very much constrained by weight. The "nearly free" and shovel ready solution is to just raise the weight limit for the vehicles in question so they can pack on the other 2/3 of the batteries they need and let them roll around at 120k+ all day like concrete trucks. Sure you'll get a little more wear and tear on stuff but this solution doesn't require an unforeseen technology (battery) or economic (turbines) breakthrough.
  - landemva 4y ago
    Rather than running excess weight on roads, they could also deploy the shovel ready solution of liquid fuel and internal combustion engines.
  - MisterTea 4y ago
    > Turbine is great for steady loads and terrible for cyclical loads which is what a garbage truck does all day. Right. This would certainly apply to the mechanically coupled turbine truck prototypes from the 70's. But if its driving a generator then you can let batteries or capacitors handle the cyclic loads of acceleration and have a computer throttle the turbine according to the overall demand.
ericmay 4y ago
Yea just better tech. It’s not a big deal. And it’s all in progress. News just likes to make headlines about anything new so you get scared about it.
- legitster 4y ago
  I dunno, "we've made things worse but someone will come along and make it better" is not exactly confidence inspiring. Especially given the amount of wasted money/resources you will generate along the way.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    Not great framing because nobody made electric vehicles worse, they started off at a certain level of performance and then they'll just improve from there. Now you could say well we made snow plowing worse, and of course in this specific example you'd be right, but you'd be ignoring longer time horizons and not really comparing or accounting for the impact of negative externalities. An easy way to think about it is if you uninstalled an existing window and had tarp on it for a few days while you installed a more energy efficient window. You wouldn't say "things are worse now!", you'd recognize that you're making a change which is better over the long term.
    - itsyaboi 4y ago
      A more apt analogy would be if you removed the existing window without having ordered a new one or found a contractor to install it.
      - ericmay 4y ago
        That's not a good analogy because in this case the snow plows still plow so some snow is still removed. To use your analogy then they would have sold existing plow-capable trucks and not had any to plow, but that wasn't the case.
        4y ago
IronWolve 4y ago
Swappable batteries is how some countries are migrating to ev for motorcycle/scooter taxis, just swap batteries and keep moving passengers. The cost savings seems to be worth it, read that its about 75% savings against fuel costs. The easy solutions will go first, working its way up with better tech and design. I think car/fleet size batteries isn't really feasible with swapping batteries. Small scooter batteries seems like a no brainer.
- legitster 4y ago
  I don't know about this. I don't think battery swapping scales up very well. Firstly, I know someone who works on Daimler's electric trucks and he assures me that their electric powertrains are EXTREMELY dangerous just from the amount of power represented. Union operators have expressed negative interest in connecting/disconnecting the batteries outside of the factory. Secondly, the economics - the battery pack on a Tesla already represents over half of the materials and manufacturing cost. And it's the only scarce thing about EVs. If you are a fleet operator and have to maintain a bank of batteries to charge, you may as well just buy the bodies to go with. So I would guess that in an EV fleet future where the cost of batteries has dropped significantly, you will probably see the size of the fleets increase as operating costs drop.
  - IronWolve 4y ago
    Its already being used at the scooter level, scales fine there for small applications where batteries are as easy to replace as filling the tank of gas.
    - asdff 4y ago
      It scales well there because you can hold a scooter battery with your hand.
  - landemva 4y ago
    > you will probably see the size of the fleets increase This is already happening with municipal bus and school bus fleets. The bus count is over-provisioned to allow for the longer electric 'refueling' times. As fleet managers understand, when a vehicle is being refueled it is out of service.
legitster 4y ago
Solid state batteries show promise. But honestly for a set or requirements like this, just using traditional fuel + paying for carbon sequestration would probably be a cheaper option.
gee_totes 4y ago
Heated streets?
- nine_k 4y ago
  It's ultimately heating the atmosphere above them. I heard this planed had some trouble with thermal balance recently, things were getting too hot. In seriousness, heating streets with abundant solar energy harvested nearby would be reasonable. But sunshine in winter months is not as intense, and you'd have to build, as usual, a huge battery to keep the energy for the night. (When this is solved, more problems would get solved along the way than just de-snowing streets.)

All of the above. Must Run trucks should probably be gas turbine hybrids, that can burn anything for fuel (diesel, biodiesel, Jet A, etc), versus full electric. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/06/07/mack-trucks-to-demonstrate-wrightspeed-turbine-plug-in-hybrid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/06/07/mack-t...

jollyllama 4y ago
This technology has been talked about lately in the context of Abrams tanks which could potentially be used in Ukraine. Doesn't it burn a lot more fuel?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Yes! But that might be a penalty you’re willing to make versus long turnaround times, especially if you’re in NYC vs a harsh military theater and fueling infra is solved. The truck doesn’t care if the battery slab is pulled and replaced with another battery or a hybrid powertrain, it just cares it has enough power to accelerate and decelerate. https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/r40x15/why_are_gas_turbine_engines_so_rare_in_tanks/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/r40x15/why_are_...
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>ust Run trucks should probably be gas turbine hybrids, that can burn anything for fuel (diesel, biodiesel, Jet A, etc), versus full electric. That's just high tech engineer fantasy though. Turbine is great for steady loads and terrible for cyclical loads which is what a garbage truck does all day. Electrical is great for cyclical but batteries just don't support the energy density to do it all day. You can theoretically bridge the gap real well with a hybrid system but it's only theoretical because in the real world other people's money is not actually an unlimited resource and you're not getting a turbine into anything cheaply. There's a reason you only see them in vehicles that are already fantastically expensive (tanks) and benefit greatly from some of the specific performance attributes. It would be really cool though... Right now the trucks can do 1/3 of what they need with the batteries they have. Commercial vehicles like this are very much constrained by weight. The "nearly free" and shovel ready solution is to just raise the weight limit for the vehicles in question so they can pack on the other 2/3 of the batteries they need and let them roll around at 120k+ all day like concrete trucks. Sure you'll get a little more wear and tear on stuff but this solution doesn't require an unforeseen technology (battery) or economic (turbines) breakthrough.
- landemva 4y ago
  Rather than running excess weight on roads, they could also deploy the shovel ready solution of liquid fuel and internal combustion engines.
- MisterTea 4y ago
  > Turbine is great for steady loads and terrible for cyclical loads which is what a garbage truck does all day. Right. This would certainly apply to the mechanically coupled turbine truck prototypes from the 70's. But if its driving a generator then you can let batteries or capacitors handle the cyclic loads of acceleration and have a computer throttle the turbine according to the overall demand.

ericmay 4y ago

Yea just better tech. It’s not a big deal. And it’s all in progress. News just likes to make headlines about anything new so you get scared about it.

legitster 4y ago
I dunno, "we've made things worse but someone will come along and make it better" is not exactly confidence inspiring. Especially given the amount of wasted money/resources you will generate along the way.
- ericmay 4y ago
  Not great framing because nobody made electric vehicles worse, they started off at a certain level of performance and then they'll just improve from there. Now you could say well we made snow plowing worse, and of course in this specific example you'd be right, but you'd be ignoring longer time horizons and not really comparing or accounting for the impact of negative externalities. An easy way to think about it is if you uninstalled an existing window and had tarp on it for a few days while you installed a more energy efficient window. You wouldn't say "things are worse now!", you'd recognize that you're making a change which is better over the long term.
  - itsyaboi 4y ago
    A more apt analogy would be if you removed the existing window without having ordered a new one or found a contractor to install it.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      That's not a good analogy because in this case the snow plows still plow so some snow is still removed. To use your analogy then they would have sold existing plow-capable trucks and not had any to plow, but that wasn't the case.
      - 4y ago

IronWolve 4y ago

Swappable batteries is how some countries are migrating to ev for motorcycle/scooter taxis, just swap batteries and keep moving passengers. The cost savings seems to be worth it, read that its about 75% savings against fuel costs. The easy solutions will go first, working its way up with better tech and design. I think car/fleet size batteries isn't really feasible with swapping batteries. Small scooter batteries seems like a no brainer.

legitster 4y ago
I don't know about this. I don't think battery swapping scales up very well. Firstly, I know someone who works on Daimler's electric trucks and he assures me that their electric powertrains are EXTREMELY dangerous just from the amount of power represented. Union operators have expressed negative interest in connecting/disconnecting the batteries outside of the factory. Secondly, the economics - the battery pack on a Tesla already represents over half of the materials and manufacturing cost. And it's the only scarce thing about EVs. If you are a fleet operator and have to maintain a bank of batteries to charge, you may as well just buy the bodies to go with. So I would guess that in an EV fleet future where the cost of batteries has dropped significantly, you will probably see the size of the fleets increase as operating costs drop.
- IronWolve 4y ago
  Its already being used at the scooter level, scales fine there for small applications where batteries are as easy to replace as filling the tank of gas.
  - asdff 4y ago
    It scales well there because you can hold a scooter battery with your hand.
- landemva 4y ago
  > you will probably see the size of the fleets increase This is already happening with municipal bus and school bus fleets. The bus count is over-provisioned to allow for the longer electric 'refueling' times. As fleet managers understand, when a vehicle is being refueled it is out of service.

legitster 4y ago

Solid state batteries show promise. But honestly for a set or requirements like this, just using traditional fuel + paying for carbon sequestration would probably be a cheaper option.

gee_totes 4y ago

Heated streets?

nine_k 4y ago
It's ultimately heating the atmosphere above them. I heard this planed had some trouble with thermal balance recently, things were getting too hot. In seriousness, heating streets with abundant solar energy harvested nearby would be reasonable. But sunshine in winter months is not as intense, and you'd have to build, as usual, a huge battery to keep the energy for the night. (When this is solved, more problems would get solved along the way than just de-snowing streets.)