5 ms·

> Musk needs to come back to earth. OTR (over the road, long hauls of 1800 miles) is a non-starter and will never work with current technology. professional dri

by takeda 2y ago

> Musk needs to come back to earth. OTR (over the road, long hauls of 1800 miles) is a non-starter and will never work with current technology. professional drivers can not lose 30 minutes every 400 miles on these routes to charge, they will miss all their drop times. Would it help if instead of charging, do what you do with a toy car - replace the batteries? They could then charge and be ready for the next truck.

kristjansson 2y ago
Keep in mind even the battery in a Model S is half a ton, and integrated into the frame of the car...
- saalweachter 2y ago
  I mean, technically you could swap out the entire cab every time it needed to be charged. The goal is to get the trailer to the destination, not the cab. There are several problems with that, you end up with a lot more idle equipment than just the battery pack, you've got to either be constantly switching drivers or drivers have to be constantly switching cabs, you need facilities to swap trailers and charge cabs, etc etc etc. But tractor trailers already have a convenient modularity built in, is all I'm saying.
  - kristjansson 2y ago
    Tesla-semi-as-pony-express would be interesting, but isn't really compatible with _selling_ the actual truck as a product; no one wants to swap _their_ truck with someone else's, except the guys with above-average wear on their truck. The same dynamic limits battery swaps.
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  What about this? https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event Or maybe those weren't production cars?
  - somerandomqaguy 2y ago
    NIO is the only car maker I know of that does battery swapping. Tesla's AFAIK were only a tech demo.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    That event was over a decade ago. Those were not production cars, and production at Tesla has moved away from this model and into "structural packs" where the battery pack is major structural component of the frame. Also, that demo was pretty much there to get some tax subsidies or something. They built the system to comply with the minimum to qualify, and once they got the money they didn't do anything else with it. Those cars weren't really production at all.
cogman10 2y ago
That'd work, but then the question is who owns and operates the switch out operation? Tesla won't want to because they won't want to deal with dead batteries. The trucking companies won't want to because they don't want to deal with dead batteries and the cost to own/operate such specific infra for just their trucks.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  By dead batteries do you mean batteries that just need to be recharged, or damaged batteries that can’t be recharged? The former seems like part of the service, you deal with dead batteries by charging them up and then putting them in the next truck. The latter is… trickier.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    The trickier problem. Especially since batteries don't (typically) just end up damaged but rather degrade over time. One day the battery can hold 96% of it's original capacity, the next 90%. It's a natural and uneven process for batteries.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      True! A battery that is unusable for trucking could still have a lot of value in a context where the energy density is less important. Infrastructure, for example. But making sure the incentives and ownership are calibrated correctly to make sure they get put into hands where they are useful might be a big problem.
  - potatolicious 2y ago
    There's also the concern of who owns the batteries and who's responsible for their maintenance. There are lots of states of battery between "good for 100% of rated range" and "dead, doesn't work at all" A trucking company presumably would not be happy if they stopped at a swap spot and got a battery that's only good for the next 200 mi because of normal battery degradation. There's also now the problem of who owns the batteries that come off a truck - if the battery swap station is a generic service provider, that suggests that some battery network actually owns the packs themselves - does that mean that the swap station needs to keep that battery around until another participating truck company contracted with the owner of the pack comes around? That seems very complicated. Or maybe the swap station is the owner of the packs (think gas station chains) - in which case they can put the battery on any truck that comes next... but that means duplicative swap stations for every battery chain out there. There's only so much land accessible to highways... so even more complicated that way. The "pull the battery out and charge it" part of the idea is oddly enough the simplest. The logistics and chain of responsibility is far more difficult.

by takeda 2y ago

kristjansson 2y ago

Keep in mind even the battery in a Model S is half a ton, and integrated into the frame of the car...

saalweachter 2y ago
I mean, technically you could swap out the entire cab every time it needed to be charged. The goal is to get the trailer to the destination, not the cab. There are several problems with that, you end up with a lot more idle equipment than just the battery pack, you've got to either be constantly switching drivers or drivers have to be constantly switching cabs, you need facilities to swap trailers and charge cabs, etc etc etc. But tractor trailers already have a convenient modularity built in, is all I'm saying.
- kristjansson 2y ago
  Tesla-semi-as-pony-express would be interesting, but isn't really compatible with _selling_ the actual truck as a product; no one wants to swap _their_ truck with someone else's, except the guys with above-average wear on their truck. The same dynamic limits battery swaps.
Rebelgecko 2y ago
What about this? https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event Or maybe those weren't production cars?
- somerandomqaguy 2y ago
  NIO is the only car maker I know of that does battery swapping. Tesla's AFAIK were only a tech demo.
- vel0city 2y ago
  That event was over a decade ago. Those were not production cars, and production at Tesla has moved away from this model and into "structural packs" where the battery pack is major structural component of the frame. Also, that demo was pretty much there to get some tax subsidies or something. They built the system to comply with the minimum to qualify, and once they got the money they didn't do anything else with it. Those cars weren't really production at all.

cogman10 2y ago

That'd work, but then the question is who owns and operates the switch out operation? Tesla won't want to because they won't want to deal with dead batteries. The trucking companies won't want to because they don't want to deal with dead batteries and the cost to own/operate such specific infra for just their trucks.

bee_rider 2y ago
By dead batteries do you mean batteries that just need to be recharged, or damaged batteries that can’t be recharged? The former seems like part of the service, you deal with dead batteries by charging them up and then putting them in the next truck. The latter is… trickier.
- cogman10 2y ago
  The trickier problem. Especially since batteries don't (typically) just end up damaged but rather degrade over time. One day the battery can hold 96% of it's original capacity, the next 90%. It's a natural and uneven process for batteries.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    True! A battery that is unusable for trucking could still have a lot of value in a context where the energy density is less important. Infrastructure, for example. But making sure the incentives and ownership are calibrated correctly to make sure they get put into hands where they are useful might be a big problem.
- potatolicious 2y ago
  There's also the concern of who owns the batteries and who's responsible for their maintenance. There are lots of states of battery between "good for 100% of rated range" and "dead, doesn't work at all" A trucking company presumably would not be happy if they stopped at a swap spot and got a battery that's only good for the next 200 mi because of normal battery degradation. There's also now the problem of who owns the batteries that come off a truck - if the battery swap station is a generic service provider, that suggests that some battery network actually owns the packs themselves - does that mean that the swap station needs to keep that battery around until another participating truck company contracted with the owner of the pack comes around? That seems very complicated. Or maybe the swap station is the owner of the packs (think gas station chains) - in which case they can put the battery on any truck that comes next... but that means duplicative swap stations for every battery chain out there. There's only so much land accessible to highways... so even more complicated that way. The "pull the battery out and charge it" part of the idea is oddly enough the simplest. The logistics and chain of responsibility is far more difficult.