3 ms·

Have you seen the demo's of "truck pack" batteries being removed from prime mover, transferred to charge station, replaced with already charged truck pack, all

by defrost 6mo ago

Have you seen the demo's of "truck pack" batteries being removed from prime mover, transferred to charge station, replaced with already charged truck pack, all done with a mini fork lift? It's a 15 minute roll in / roll out kind of turn around. The game's not over and the big transport operators (eg: Rio Tinto mine fleets moving a billion tonne per annum, etc) are still doing the R&D pipeline and trialling pilots.

zdragnar 6mo ago
This has been tried before for public use and failed for all of the obvious reasons. It should get adoption from companies big enough to run their own fleets (such as the mining company mentioned) but it won't be a suitable method for a good percentage of the long haul trucks in the States. With that said, I would think chargers should be fine for a lot of those trucks if the infrastructure builds out for them. The drivers are already taking breaks every few hours by regulation, so they can top off rather than going from empty to full.
tacticus 6mo ago
Have you seen the demo of what you can get with some wires and low friction traction options :P
DonHopkins 6mo ago
I've seen Tesla's fake robots too. Maybe they can pay people who lost their jobs to DOGE to dress up in Spandex and dance like robots to replace the batteries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsNc4nEX3c4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsNc4nEX3c4
- defrost 6mo ago
  Meanwhile, in Oz (and middle earth NZ), where the boring companies actually bore km's of usable tunnel: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTRHEtfdxOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTRHEtfdxOo * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOxqhWbsk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOxqhWbsk4 and at least one other battery swap prototype are all being actively piloted. You can keep Tesla, cheer's.
masklinn 6mo ago
> It's a 15 minute roll in / roll out kind of turn around. Now you just need every gas station in the US to stock a bunch of swappable batteries for every semi brand. It's a great idea s long as you're not bound by any sort of realistic expectation.
- defrost 6mo ago
  It's a great idea, being put in practice, that's not bound by being limited to US parochial PoVs. Also, not the first industry that would rely on some level of standardisation.
  - masklinn 6mo ago
    > It's a great idea, being put in practice It's a glitzy demo which has been attempted multiple times and has failed every time (to the surprise of nobody, Tesla was one of the early demo-ers, guess where that ended up?), NIO is still losing money hand over fist and survives only thanks to the CCP keeping it afloat. > Also, not the first industry that would rely on some level of standardisation. You'd need the standardisation first. And making batteries field-replaceable with limited equipment means the battery modules need to be significantly more resilient, as well as more complex (not only do you need automatic disconnects for the electrics, but you also need to handle cooling), which translates to less capacity because you need room for all that, and it's harder to integrate structural support with the battery modules so the chassis also needs structural improvements there. The alternative is to automate the entire thing, which means even more complexity, and now the system needs to be aware of every vehicle involved. The entire thing is a staggering amount of complexity to mostly lower capabilities.
aidenn0 6mo ago
This is a non-sequitur for Tesla's Semi truck which does not support this. It's also possible to build trucks with larger batteries and faster chargers.

by defrost 6mo ago

zdragnar 6mo ago

This has been tried before for public use and failed for all of the obvious reasons. It should get adoption from companies big enough to run their own fleets (such as the mining company mentioned) but it won't be a suitable method for a good percentage of the long haul trucks in the States. With that said, I would think chargers should be fine for a lot of those trucks if the infrastructure builds out for them. The drivers are already taking breaks every few hours by regulation, so they can top off rather than going from empty to full.

tacticus 6mo ago

Have you seen the demo of what you can get with some wires and low friction traction options :P

DonHopkins 6mo ago

I've seen Tesla's fake robots too. Maybe they can pay people who lost their jobs to DOGE to dress up in Spandex and dance like robots to replace the batteries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsNc4nEX3c4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsNc4nEX3c4

defrost 6mo ago
Meanwhile, in Oz (and middle earth NZ), where the boring companies actually bore km's of usable tunnel: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTRHEtfdxOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTRHEtfdxOo * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOxqhWbsk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOxqhWbsk4 and at least one other battery swap prototype are all being actively piloted. You can keep Tesla, cheer's.

masklinn 6mo ago

> It's a 15 minute roll in / roll out kind of turn around. Now you just need every gas station in the US to stock a bunch of swappable batteries for every semi brand. It's a great idea s long as you're not bound by any sort of realistic expectation.

defrost 6mo ago
It's a great idea, being put in practice, that's not bound by being limited to US parochial PoVs. Also, not the first industry that would rely on some level of standardisation.
- masklinn 6mo ago
  > It's a great idea, being put in practice It's a glitzy demo which has been attempted multiple times and has failed every time (to the surprise of nobody, Tesla was one of the early demo-ers, guess where that ended up?), NIO is still losing money hand over fist and survives only thanks to the CCP keeping it afloat. > Also, not the first industry that would rely on some level of standardisation. You'd need the standardisation first. And making batteries field-replaceable with limited equipment means the battery modules need to be significantly more resilient, as well as more complex (not only do you need automatic disconnects for the electrics, but you also need to handle cooling), which translates to less capacity because you need room for all that, and it's harder to integrate structural support with the battery modules so the chassis also needs structural improvements there. The alternative is to automate the entire thing, which means even more complexity, and now the system needs to be aware of every vehicle involved. The entire thing is a staggering amount of complexity to mostly lower capabilities.

aidenn0 6mo ago

This is a non-sequitur for Tesla's Semi truck which does not support this. It's also possible to build trucks with larger batteries and faster chargers.