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Exactly. This is what people keep underestimating. The way we currently generate power is expensive and inefficient. A lot of what we do is energy intensive. Wh
by jillesvangurp 2y ago
Exactly. This is what people keep underestimating. The way we currently generate power is expensive and inefficient. A lot of what we do is energy intensive. Which means it requires a lot of money to do.
Transport is a good example. A long distance truck can take up to 300 gallons of diesel. It will drive quite far on that. But that's over 1000$. A well utilized truck goes through well over 100K$ of fuel per year. That's a lot of money.
Enter electric trucks. Yes they have range limitations (depending on their battery size). But they don't use up 100K $ worth of electricity per year burning over 1M $ of fuel over it's lifespan. Not to mention all the maintenance and parts associated with keeping diesel engines going.
Solar/wind/battery power has essentially no marginal cost. Electric trucks powered by that still have some marginal cost but it's a lot lower than that of a diesel truck. And even at current grid prices (typically determined by the cost of fossil fuels), it's probably earning itself back. What happens when diesel trucks follow the same cost curve that EVs went through? You don't need to be a genius to figure out that there are going to be a lot of truckers and trucking companies that can't afford to stick with diesel for very long when everybody starts decimating their fuel expenses.
That's just trucks. The same kind of economics are happening across pretty much every sector that can feasibly be electrified. It's not all happening at once. But probably in hind sight in a few decades it will have happened very quickly. One moment everybody was mostly burning diesel, petrol, methane, and coal and a few short decades later all of that is gone because it became way too costly to continue doing any of that.
- abfan1127 2y agoFor OTR trucks, you have to factor in the battery degradation. A OTR truck easily gets to 1 million miles on an engine. Often times significantly more, and then its only a rebuild, not a replacement. While electricity is much cheaper than diesel, battery replacement cost amortization is a real thing to include in the accounting. I haven't done an OTR, but I did do amortization for a Ford Lightning. While a "battery fill up" is $2-3. The replacement battery is $30k iirc. That's $3000/yr in costs assuming 10 year lifetime. At that rate, its $62/wk in battery amortization. So, you're really spending $62+3/wk in "energy". That's still less than a tank ($90-100 at current prices), but the savings is significantly less than originally anticipated.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoA LiFePo4 battery gets > 750,000 miles. That's what people are going to be putting into high mileage trucks. Nobody is going to put a $30K battery into a Ford Lightning. After 10 years that battery is probably $3K. If it isn't and you're unhappy with the ~80% battery capacity it has after 10 years of usage, you sell it on to somebody who is happy with ~80%. You don't spend more than the truck is worth replacing the battery.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoBingo. At this point the biggest cost to owning EV (in NZ) now is taxes and insurance, not fuel and maintenance.
- thescriptkiddie 2y agothis is more of a problem with trucking in general than with electric vehicles. shipping goods long distances by road is just inherently wasteful of both material and labor.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoRail is not scaled to do transport of consumer goods, and is not scalable to a higher level in North America. What are those who don't live on the coasts supposed to do, do you think?
- thescriptkiddie 2y agoidk maybe ask switzerland, or the united states before 1980
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoNeither of these would be illuminating. Switzerland's like the size of Rhode Island. And the United States prior to 1980 had much the same rail as today... not much was added at any point in the latter half of the 20th century. Rail at best connects major cities, and a few minor ones. It is largely at capacity for the industries it serves, and moving retail freight to big box stores simply isn't possible. There are no knobs to turn or levers to pull to change that.