3 ms·

Semis/tractor-trailers are still a problem. Sure, they can make them run off batteries, but you have to forgo a lot of cargo capacity to do so, which makes the

by bumby 3y ago

Semis/tractor-trailers are still a problem. Sure, they can make them run off batteries, but you have to forgo a lot of cargo capacity to do so, which makes the economics tough.

QuarterReptile 3y ago
No discussion of battery trucks can go very far without reaching the conclusion that more freight must travel by rail. That's a correct conclusion, but for the same reasons it has never carried the day in the US for 75 years, that transition will continue to not happen.
- bumby 3y ago
  I think you're right, but wouldn't this still necessitate freight to travel by truck from rail centers to population centers? That's how a lot of the system currently operates in the US, no?
  - QuarterReptile 3y ago
    There should be no population center without a rail center. I don't deny that last-mile would still be on roads, but that's very different from the present state of affairs. My lazy googling suggests that 40% of freight movement is via rail in US. I can't find a full breakout, but the same site goes on to claim rail is only 1.7% of GHG, which means most of the rest is traveling by road, since waterborne freight is generally more efficient than rail.
    - bumby 3y ago
      You do know we’re not starting with a blank slate, so how do you close that gap? Forced migration?
- amoshebb 3y ago
  I've always dreamed of trolley-bus like wires strung along interstates paired with robotic self-attaching trolley-poles. In my head, semi-trucks (and maybe all cars?) only need 50-100 miles or so of range for low-speed (where batteries shine) warehouse/ports/downtown deliveries (or garage-charged commutes?). Almost every trip I've ever taken beyond ~20 miles included at least some portion on a highway. Electric interstates could allow NY to LA in one shot and pulling off the highway with 100 miles to make the round-trip to wherever a load needed to be dropped off. If attaching and detaching was automatic, there would be no need to electrify onramps or intersections or underpasses or anything expensive, just find the cheapest, straightest, easiest to electrify 80% of roads and slap up wires there.
  - QuarterReptile 3y ago
    When you say trolley, are you suggesting auto-coupling rail? Or was that meant to be paved roads? If paved roads, then you're forgetting the enormous wear that heavy vehicles put on road surfaces (which would get much worse as labor costs were taken away as a downward pressure on road freight volume.) If rail, then I think you could see some version of that as a logical upgrade to a high-utilization rail network in a high-trust society with a strong safety culture. I see the US becoming lower-, not higher-, trust.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  We can't really build useful railways any more, though. Towns and cities are too large and too dense and too insanely expensive in terms of property prices to get new lines into or even close to. (This might be less of a problem for freight compared to moving people, but many lines are mixed freight/passenger use, aren't they?)
  - QuarterReptile 3y ago
    You're explaining why we don't build useful rail. It seems like there's a really easy first place to look in every major city. Find the biggest interstate, discriminating also by straightness and grade, pick one direction, and start building rail. Divide the other side up into two directions. There are very few places that wouldn't be left with >2 lanes of freeway for each direction, even after halving the right of way. For the few exceptions, they'd have to think a little harder. In reality, such a series of actions could only exist in a society that got seriously focused on moving away from private auto, and that means density would increasingly be in style. As soon as the NIMBY floodgates came down, property prices would plummet in all but the smallest cores of desirable areas, since it would be readily apparent that you can't build all expensive areas to the level of intensity that justifies insane land values seen in sprawling cities. Again, we could, but I recognize that we don't. Let's just not say that we can't.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      I actually think density would go out of style in that scenario. IF the time and cost of commuting were drastically reduced, many people would prefer a suburban lifestyle. This reminds me of many high GDP parts of Europe where there are towns of 500-1000 people every few km, connected by rail and busses.
      - QuarterReptile 3y ago
        I don't think the time of commuting seems to change much: people just re-equilibrate and reconfigure to use the newly saved time/distance. But, yes, you would expect to see significant clustering. Nonetheless, the most effective clustering since the advent of indoor plumbing is the cluster of clusters, the city, and I doubt that would change. The connectivity is just so much better than a lineal expansion of small towns along a corridor.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Replace 2T of engine + fuel with 5T of battery. Regulations allow an 82T limit for electric trucks compared with 80T for diesel trucks. So there's only a ~1T difference in cargo capacity, which is at most 2%.
- bumby 3y ago
  Now do it with volume. Plus, aren't you forgetting that electric vehicles need an motor too? Also, I think you mean 80k lbs, not 80 tons? And it's the range + time that's a killer. Recharging time would likely be a deal breaker even if you could get the same cargo capacity. FWIW, I agree that electric trucking is the future, just disagree how close we are to that as a reality. My main gripe is how the problem tends to get oversimplified in people's assessment. "All you gotta do is.." is usually a red flag when talking about complicated problems. I'd argue that if it were simple, it would have been done already.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    You're right. It's a 5% hit, not a 2% hit. Trucks spend a lot of time loading, unloading and on mandatory driver rest breaks. Charging can and will be done during those times. The biggest expense in a trucking operation is diesel. Trucking has cut-throat margins. Once electrification starts in the industry, everyone will switch quickly, or go bankrupt. Some routes will be hard to electrify, but the cost savings on the rest will be worth a lot more than a little bit of inconvenience. It's not easy, but the savings will incentivize overcoming the obstacles.
    - bumby 3y ago
      You are right about the costs and margins. However, a large portion of the cost disparity is because diesel fuel costs incorporate a lot of taxes to fund road maintenance. The electric costs do not, and I suspect that will have to change. Road maintenance funds will have to come from somewhere, and most states are reluctant to take from other tax areas.
      - 3y ago
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Are we that convinced that only tractor-trailers work well for overland freight? Even if you insist that big-box retailers represent the peak of retail capitalism, is it so difficult to imagine that these might be placed along a central corridor with rail running along the back, each store able to pluck the intermodals off the flatbed car, and load empties back onto it? Spaced out so that every business could unload at the same time? Everyone's always bitching about cars and how they've made things awful. But how much traffic/carbon/misery would we eliminate if freight were taken off the highways?
- bumby 3y ago
  Some places do that type of design, but we're not starting from a blank slate. Urban sprawl has meant most people are not near a rail corridor, meaning your design would mean most people now have to live far from retail distribution. Freight patterns are symptoms of housing in many cases.

by bumby 3y ago

Semis/tractor-trailers are still a problem. Sure, they can make them run off batteries, but you have to forgo a lot of cargo capacity to do so, which makes the economics tough.

QuarterReptile 3y ago

No discussion of battery trucks can go very far without reaching the conclusion that more freight must travel by rail. That's a correct conclusion, but for the same reasons it has never carried the day in the US for 75 years, that transition will continue to not happen.

bumby 3y ago
I think you're right, but wouldn't this still necessitate freight to travel by truck from rail centers to population centers? That's how a lot of the system currently operates in the US, no?
- QuarterReptile 3y ago
  There should be no population center without a rail center. I don't deny that last-mile would still be on roads, but that's very different from the present state of affairs. My lazy googling suggests that 40% of freight movement is via rail in US. I can't find a full breakout, but the same site goes on to claim rail is only 1.7% of GHG, which means most of the rest is traveling by road, since waterborne freight is generally more efficient than rail.
  - bumby 3y ago
    You do know we’re not starting with a blank slate, so how do you close that gap? Forced migration?
amoshebb 3y ago
I've always dreamed of trolley-bus like wires strung along interstates paired with robotic self-attaching trolley-poles. In my head, semi-trucks (and maybe all cars?) only need 50-100 miles or so of range for low-speed (where batteries shine) warehouse/ports/downtown deliveries (or garage-charged commutes?). Almost every trip I've ever taken beyond ~20 miles included at least some portion on a highway. Electric interstates could allow NY to LA in one shot and pulling off the highway with 100 miles to make the round-trip to wherever a load needed to be dropped off. If attaching and detaching was automatic, there would be no need to electrify onramps or intersections or underpasses or anything expensive, just find the cheapest, straightest, easiest to electrify 80% of roads and slap up wires there.
- QuarterReptile 3y ago
  When you say trolley, are you suggesting auto-coupling rail? Or was that meant to be paved roads? If paved roads, then you're forgetting the enormous wear that heavy vehicles put on road surfaces (which would get much worse as labor costs were taken away as a downward pressure on road freight volume.) If rail, then I think you could see some version of that as a logical upgrade to a high-utilization rail network in a high-trust society with a strong safety culture. I see the US becoming lower-, not higher-, trust.
bluescrn 3y ago
We can't really build useful railways any more, though. Towns and cities are too large and too dense and too insanely expensive in terms of property prices to get new lines into or even close to. (This might be less of a problem for freight compared to moving people, but many lines are mixed freight/passenger use, aren't they?)
- QuarterReptile 3y ago
  You're explaining why we don't build useful rail. It seems like there's a really easy first place to look in every major city. Find the biggest interstate, discriminating also by straightness and grade, pick one direction, and start building rail. Divide the other side up into two directions. There are very few places that wouldn't be left with >2 lanes of freeway for each direction, even after halving the right of way. For the few exceptions, they'd have to think a little harder. In reality, such a series of actions could only exist in a society that got seriously focused on moving away from private auto, and that means density would increasingly be in style. As soon as the NIMBY floodgates came down, property prices would plummet in all but the smallest cores of desirable areas, since it would be readily apparent that you can't build all expensive areas to the level of intensity that justifies insane land values seen in sprawling cities. Again, we could, but I recognize that we don't. Let's just not say that we can't.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I actually think density would go out of style in that scenario. IF the time and cost of commuting were drastically reduced, many people would prefer a suburban lifestyle. This reminds me of many high GDP parts of Europe where there are towns of 500-1000 people every few km, connected by rail and busses.
    - QuarterReptile 3y ago
      I don't think the time of commuting seems to change much: people just re-equilibrate and reconfigure to use the newly saved time/distance. But, yes, you would expect to see significant clustering. Nonetheless, the most effective clustering since the advent of indoor plumbing is the cluster of clusters, the city, and I doubt that would change. The connectivity is just so much better than a lineal expansion of small towns along a corridor.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Replace 2T of engine + fuel with 5T of battery. Regulations allow an 82T limit for electric trucks compared with 80T for diesel trucks. So there's only a ~1T difference in cargo capacity, which is at most 2%.

bumby 3y ago
Now do it with volume. Plus, aren't you forgetting that electric vehicles need an motor too? Also, I think you mean 80k lbs, not 80 tons? And it's the range + time that's a killer. Recharging time would likely be a deal breaker even if you could get the same cargo capacity. FWIW, I agree that electric trucking is the future, just disagree how close we are to that as a reality. My main gripe is how the problem tends to get oversimplified in people's assessment. "All you gotta do is.." is usually a red flag when talking about complicated problems. I'd argue that if it were simple, it would have been done already.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  You're right. It's a 5% hit, not a 2% hit. Trucks spend a lot of time loading, unloading and on mandatory driver rest breaks. Charging can and will be done during those times. The biggest expense in a trucking operation is diesel. Trucking has cut-throat margins. Once electrification starts in the industry, everyone will switch quickly, or go bankrupt. Some routes will be hard to electrify, but the cost savings on the rest will be worth a lot more than a little bit of inconvenience. It's not easy, but the savings will incentivize overcoming the obstacles.
  - bumby 3y ago
    You are right about the costs and margins. However, a large portion of the cost disparity is because diesel fuel costs incorporate a lot of taxes to fund road maintenance. The electric costs do not, and I suspect that will have to change. Road maintenance funds will have to come from somewhere, and most states are reluctant to take from other tax areas.
    - 3y ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Are we that convinced that only tractor-trailers work well for overland freight? Even if you insist that big-box retailers represent the peak of retail capitalism, is it so difficult to imagine that these might be placed along a central corridor with rail running along the back, each store able to pluck the intermodals off the flatbed car, and load empties back onto it? Spaced out so that every business could unload at the same time? Everyone's always bitching about cars and how they've made things awful. But how much traffic/carbon/misery would we eliminate if freight were taken off the highways?

bumby 3y ago
Some places do that type of design, but we're not starting from a blank slate. Urban sprawl has meant most people are not near a rail corridor, meaning your design would mean most people now have to live far from retail distribution. Freight patterns are symptoms of housing in many cases.