3 ms·

There may be niches where it makes sense already (short haul, long/frequent stops) i.e. city delivery, city buses and similar. But more importantly, whether its

There may be niches where it makes sense already (short haul, long/frequent stops) i.e. city delivery, city buses and similar. But more importantly, whether its greenwashing today doesn't matter. Once it's demonstrably possible to do something, cities will include trucks their ICE exclusion zones, where today all ICE cars or some times only diesel cars are banned but trucks/ambulances. At that point it doesn't matter whether its twice as expensive - you either drive an electric truck or the goods can't be delivered. "Practical" doesn't just mean "reasonably cost effective compared to diesel". The possibility to run diesels in many cities will disappear before the alternatives are cost effective. That's going to drive the alternatives even faster, but it's also going to cost in the short term.

wcunning 3y ago
This is where it gets crazy though -- officially CA is requiring something like that starting in 2034, which would mean that the Port of LA/Long Beach would require like a second CA worth of electricity to charge trucks for the amount of traffic coming in and out. Everything I read about it basically claims that CA cannot actually function with this requirement, but I don't see the evidence of a future walkback...
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  I think I mostly agree that, given current trends in generation and grid investment, it is pretty unlikely that CA can meet the goals. But also, I am pretty confident that CA _won't_ just let everything completely collapse into anarchy. One of a few things will happen: 1. Trends in generation/grid investment will change such that the EV transition _can_ happen. 2. The EV mandate will get walked back before much of anything changes. 3. The EV mandate will _start_ to get implemented, slowly, begin making things terrible proportionally to how far it has progressed, then, when things reach some (pre-total collapse) level of badness, get reversed, and things will go back to normal-ish after having wasted a bunch of money and having made some things somewhat worse. 4. And, I suppose for completeness, I should include the possibility of: nothing changes, nothing gets rolled back, and the grid utterly collapses under the overwhelming burden and the CA economy goes up in smoke and fire. I do not think that last one has a significant chance of occurring. I think the most likely options are 3 and 2, followed somewhat distantly by 1, and much, _much_ more distantly by 4. If trend lines seem to point towards utter calamity, and any of the trend lines are under human control, the safe assumption is that something will change before total calamity.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  This [1] says there were 340,386 truck movements from the Port of LA. Assume all 340,386 trucks need a full charge for each delivery, and have the battery of a Tesla Semi (900kWh). That's 306347400kWh = 306GWh. Spread over the month, that's 9.87GWh per day, or 411MW. California produces around 500GWh each day, so we need a 2% increase. (Or, equivalently, a 2% decrease elsewhere.) [1] https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/452bad8c-4e16-490f-bab6-155b061866bb/POLA-Monthly-Gate-Move-Analysis https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/452bad8c-4e16-...

wcunning 3y ago

This is where it gets crazy though -- officially CA is requiring something like that starting in 2034, which would mean that the Port of LA/Long Beach would require like a second CA worth of electricity to charge trucks for the amount of traffic coming in and out. Everything I read about it basically claims that CA cannot actually function with this requirement, but I don't see the evidence of a future walkback...

MostlyStable 3y ago
I think I mostly agree that, given current trends in generation and grid investment, it is pretty unlikely that CA can meet the goals. But also, I am pretty confident that CA _won't_ just let everything completely collapse into anarchy. One of a few things will happen: 1. Trends in generation/grid investment will change such that the EV transition _can_ happen. 2. The EV mandate will get walked back before much of anything changes. 3. The EV mandate will _start_ to get implemented, slowly, begin making things terrible proportionally to how far it has progressed, then, when things reach some (pre-total collapse) level of badness, get reversed, and things will go back to normal-ish after having wasted a bunch of money and having made some things somewhat worse. 4. And, I suppose for completeness, I should include the possibility of: nothing changes, nothing gets rolled back, and the grid utterly collapses under the overwhelming burden and the CA economy goes up in smoke and fire. I do not think that last one has a significant chance of occurring. I think the most likely options are 3 and 2, followed somewhat distantly by 1, and much, _much_ more distantly by 4. If trend lines seem to point towards utter calamity, and any of the trend lines are under human control, the safe assumption is that something will change before total calamity.
Symbiote 3y ago
This [1] says there were 340,386 truck movements from the Port of LA. Assume all 340,386 trucks need a full charge for each delivery, and have the battery of a Tesla Semi (900kWh). That's 306347400kWh = 306GWh. Spread over the month, that's 9.87GWh per day, or 411MW. California produces around 500GWh each day, so we need a 2% increase. (Or, equivalently, a 2% decrease elsewhere.) [1] https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/452bad8c-4e16-490f-bab6-155b061866bb/POLA-Monthly-Gate-Move-Analysis https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/452bad8c-4e16-...