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Electric Mandates Have California Truckers Charging Overtime

3 points by sam345 3y ago

sam345 3y ago
No paywall: https://archive.is/lip17 https://archive.is/lip17 >A second haul started around noon—and that was it for the day. In a diesel truck, Mr. Ramos said, he could have made six hauls. But even the second one required another visit to the charging station—33 miles out of his way, and another hour and a half of charging. A diesel semi can fuel up in 15 minutes and then drive 1,000 miles—a round trip from Los Angeles to Reno, Nev.—before needing to refuel. How is this going to work exactly? 2/3 less hauls And that's before the mandate. We had logistic issues with far less trucking problems than that.
- ggm 3y ago
  Batteryswap fixes this and is a great niche for trucking
  - defrost 3y ago
    Weirdly hydrogen may even have a place in city to city established route bulk trucking if pilot exercises like these: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-29/planned-hydrogen-fuel-cell-freight-highway-adelaide-to-melbourne/103250276 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-29/planned-hydrogen-fuel... pan out.
- defrost 3y ago
  California has nowhere near enough chargers to service the number of electric semi trucks that will soon be on the road. Mr. Stanley can’t risk a truck running out of battery; getting towed only 10 miles costs $600. Class actions, or the threat of them, force California to install more chargers so that truckers can abide by the mandate as it rolls out and spreads. This is literally an article about issues faced by early adopters, not a blueprint for problems that will be locked in forever .. unless, of course, the US no longer has any ability to adapt and change.
  - fargle 3y ago
    that's not how class actions or any other lawsuit works. and who do you think that hypothetical class is going to sue? when the government enacts some legislation or a new regulation that doesn't work, your recourse is to vote them out. if you are in the minority, your next recourse is to go somewhere else or quit. you can't sue edison, the port, the trucking company (etc.) for not fixing a broken mandate to your satisfaction. and you can't legislatively or via lawsuit force an industry to do something that doesn't make economic sense. they'll just quit/leave/avoid/die instead. what needs to happen is for the infrastructure and other significant problems to be solved and then it will organically slowly displace an older "worse" technology. the point to the article is that we ain't there yet.
vegetablepotpie 3y ago
It’s easy to blame EV trucks for lower income and more hours spent by truckers for less product moved, they’re new and different from what the trucking industry has dealt with. But these issues are also driven by calcified incentive structures built up by decades over the assumption that you can fuel a truck in 15 minutes and go 1,000 miles. For example, the commission truckers earn when they make a delivery incentivizes faster delivery. This incentive structure makes no sense when time is spent charging. Assuming no technological changes, the trucking industry, state of California, and vendors can do things like install chargers at delivery points, pay workers a consistent wage, give truckers more freedom in what they can do during charging, provide more accommodations in trucks, purchase more trucks, hire more workers, adjust schedules, have more robust grid hookups for charging stations, charge customers more for denser loads, give customers discounts for having charging infrastructure. And yes, this is expensive, but so are natural disasters and our society doesn’t have significant problems paying to recover from those.

3 points by sam345 3y ago

No paywall: https://archive.is/lip17 https://archive.is/lip17 >A second haul started around noon—and that was it for the day. In a diesel truck, Mr. Ramos said, he could have made six hauls. But even the second one required another visit to the charging station—33 miles out of his way, and another hour and a half of charging. A diesel semi can fuel up in 15 minutes and then drive 1,000 miles—a round trip from Los Angeles to Reno, Nev.—before needing to refuel. How is this going to work exactly? 2/3 less hauls And that's before the mandate. We had logistic issues with far less trucking problems than that.

ggm 3y ago
Batteryswap fixes this and is a great niche for trucking
- defrost 3y ago
  Weirdly hydrogen may even have a place in city to city established route bulk trucking if pilot exercises like these: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-29/planned-hydrogen-fuel-cell-freight-highway-adelaide-to-melbourne/103250276 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-29/planned-hydrogen-fuel... pan out.
defrost 3y ago
California has nowhere near enough chargers to service the number of electric semi trucks that will soon be on the road. Mr. Stanley can’t risk a truck running out of battery; getting towed only 10 miles costs $600. Class actions, or the threat of them, force California to install more chargers so that truckers can abide by the mandate as it rolls out and spreads. This is literally an article about issues faced by early adopters, not a blueprint for problems that will be locked in forever .. unless, of course, the US no longer has any ability to adapt and change.
- fargle 3y ago
  that's not how class actions or any other lawsuit works. and who do you think that hypothetical class is going to sue? when the government enacts some legislation or a new regulation that doesn't work, your recourse is to vote them out. if you are in the minority, your next recourse is to go somewhere else or quit. you can't sue edison, the port, the trucking company (etc.) for not fixing a broken mandate to your satisfaction. and you can't legislatively or via lawsuit force an industry to do something that doesn't make economic sense. they'll just quit/leave/avoid/die instead. what needs to happen is for the infrastructure and other significant problems to be solved and then it will organically slowly displace an older "worse" technology. the point to the article is that we ain't there yet.

vegetablepotpie 3y ago

It’s easy to blame EV trucks for lower income and more hours spent by truckers for less product moved, they’re new and different from what the trucking industry has dealt with. But these issues are also driven by calcified incentive structures built up by decades over the assumption that you can fuel a truck in 15 minutes and go 1,000 miles. For example, the commission truckers earn when they make a delivery incentivizes faster delivery. This incentive structure makes no sense when time is spent charging. Assuming no technological changes, the trucking industry, state of California, and vendors can do things like install chargers at delivery points, pay workers a consistent wage, give truckers more freedom in what they can do during charging, provide more accommodations in trucks, purchase more trucks, hire more workers, adjust schedules, have more robust grid hookups for charging stations, charge customers more for denser loads, give customers discounts for having charging infrastructure. And yes, this is expensive, but so are natural disasters and our society doesn’t have significant problems paying to recover from those.