5 ms·

Self-Powered Trailers Promise Leaner Freight Runs

68 points by rbanffy 4mo ago

raulandrisan 4mo ago
I think a cool application is that someone with a remote control could park these or manipulate them in the logistics park while the tractor trucks can immediately pick a different trailer and leave
- WindyTree 4mo ago
  AI could largely do that.
- Animats 4mo ago
  That adds a lot of complexity. You'd need a steerable axle somewhere, for starters. The usual tool for this is a mini-truck called a "yard goat".[1] There are also forklift attachments for this job. [1] https://www.totalwarehouse.com/lonestar-battery-powered-tractor/ https://www.totalwarehouse.com/lonestar-battery-powered-trac...
- blitzar 4mo ago
  You could join lots of these together, put them onto a pair of parallel metal beams and move them between major hubs.
  - fragmede 4mo ago
    C'mon. That's so stupid! It'll never work. You'd have to put so much metal in the ground. Way too expensive! It'll never happen. What if the ground isn't flat? Huh? Did you think of that? Or if there are any curves? Metal beams are straight, so there's just no way it'd work.
WindyTree 4mo ago
In the US, commercial trailers are used like these crappy sheds, you go get one and the ABS unit is gone, the only thing worth stealing. For any company where this doesn’t hold it’s a big deal. The bigger deal is really RV trailers. You power assist, with simple motors controlled by pulling, and you can pull a huge one with ANY car, you don’t need truck, just modified mirrors. Plus the RV trailer benefits from slow self movement and power wall when disconnected. Total off grid tiny home.
- _blk 4mo ago
  In practice it's of course not so simple. Every truck that passes you (or that you pass) will suck you right in if your tow vehicle isn't heavy enough or you don't have good enough grip. Also, (RV/drum) trailer brakes suck so hard that you really want a vehicle with some additional stopping power other than regular brakes (heavy duty transmission, big engine, and diesel exhaust or compression brake). E-brakes work well so there the e-assist trailer has a real advantage if it can do that but you'll have to get used to the feeling of being pulled back rather than leading the stop... So evy 6.7l diesel I tow a big RV and e-assistance would be very welcome but costs likely drastically reduce the attractiveness of such a system for an RV. For a trailer that's constantly on the road I can definitely see a use case but it's not to be towed by a (comparatively) tiny car
  - ourmandave 4mo ago
    Or flip the narrative and put the steering wheel in the RV trailer and tow your tiny car behind it! Wait...
    - xattt 4mo ago
      Obligatory VW trailer assist ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvZuSxibyYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvZuSxibyYE
    - WindyTree 3mo ago
      lol! Good point: Really it’s the integrated vehicle components that make motorhomes cost so much more than towables. In trucking, the triples trailers don’t have front axles, they’re added through converter dollies. That’s really all you need to make this work, a motorized steerable converter dolly and you can use it with any existing trailer. It only needs to be able to steer, maybe through combining different wheel speeds. they are basically moving trailers already this way with robot Dollies in China. Realistically you can digitally tow the trailer at that point, you don’t even need the connection, just the promise the trailer following your tracks and staying close behind.
  - ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
1ncorrect 4mo ago
These paired with Janus Electric[0] conversions would make a hell of a road train. [0]: https://januselectric.com/ https://januselectric.com/
just_some_user 4mo ago
Cool, but I don’t see the real benefit. Electronic trucks already work quite well, start at around 150k (vs. 150k for a retrofitted e trailer), and are afaik mostly limited by the charging infrastructure. If you now add a an electronic trailer to your diesel truck, you now also have to care about charging. Yes, in Europe the legally required rest periods can already be used for efficient charging, but this is not an benefiting exclusiv to the trailers, but for general electronic trucking.
- sandworm101 4mo ago
  Charging time. A truck/driver doesnt remain stopped. It drops a trailer and picks up another. And a truck needs charging on the open road where there just are not any charging stations. But a trailer remains parked at a loading bay for hours, a commercial facility where installing chargers makes sense. A trailer therefore has more oppertunity to charge than a truck. And if a company wanted to, parking a trailer to let it charge is far cheaper than paying a truck/driver to sit around.
  - crote 4mo ago
    But that's the thing: you already have to pay a driver to sit around! In Europe there's (simplified) a mandatory 45-minute rest break after 4.5 hours of driving. Similarly, there's a mandatory 11-hour rest period after the daily maximum of 10 hours of driving. And it is very strictly enforced, with every commercial truck having been equipped with a sealed and certified data logger, plenty of random checks by traffic police, and heavy fines for any kind of violation. If the truck is already sitting idle ~half of the time due to driver rest requirements, why not take that opportunity to charge it as well? Similarly, if you are building the usual highway-side rest stop with truck parking, a petrol station, and a restaurant, why not add a charging station as well? It can even do double-duty as rapid car charger!
    - wongarsu 4mo ago
      In Europe (at least in Germany) we already have a lack of truck parking spots along many routes. And that's with parking spots that are just a bit of Asphalt and maybe a portapotty, or big asphalt parking lots attached to a rest stop If we had enough chargers that any trucker could pull into a truck stop at their prescribed rest period and find a free charger, electrifying trucks would indeed be a no-brainer. But in the world we currently live in we don't have enough chargers to make that reliable. We barely have enough non-electified parking spots, and in your world they would all have to be electrified as well. It's a mix of a chicken-and-egg problem on the commercial side and a lack of will on the government side But there is never a lack of will from the government to try all kinds of pilot programs that look cool but are mostly caused by the need to somehow sidestep the lack of sufficient charging infrastructure
bob1029 4mo ago
I have a hard time seeing this adopted in many markets due to overall system complexity and weird new edge cases. Trailers are supposed to be pretty dumb. This is what makes them valuable from a logistical perspective. If we hyper focus on reducing the carbon footprint of each specific shipment we may find we created an overall increase in aggregate once the higher order and deferred consequences come to bear.
jnovacho 4mo ago
This trailer saves 7000l of diesel per year. Assuming 40l/100km, with this trailer you can go ~17.000 km more, which is 11-17% more, for the same fuel cost. Or ~12-15k EUR in fuel savings per year (assuming 1.8EUR/l). With 13+ years ROI (electricity is not free) is this really beneficial?
- wodenokoto 4mo ago
  Maybe you shouldn’t throw out your new trailer, but it looks like a good deal for expanding a fleet. Remember that all signs point towards more CO2 fees and higher gas prices in the coming years
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    I'm not seeing any sign of CO2 fees increasing in the USA. If anything, they'll be federally outlawed.
    - bluGill 4mo ago
      Not in the next 3 year. However there are more elections coming up. And other things changing. For that matter even if the US does nothing, other countries doing something will forced changes. Petro cars are so cheap in the US (they are not exactly cheap) in large part because the design costs are amortized over so many buyers, when the rest of the world isn't buying them that drives up costs in the US. Meanwhile I'm not the only US driver who has discovered how much cheaper a EV is, so even without CO2 fees things are changing - just slowly.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- mschuster91 4mo ago
  > With 13+ years ROI (electricity is not free) is this really beneficial? Regenerative and solar electricity is free, and regen braking additionally saves wear and tear on brake pads. The real benefit I think is when stuff like tax codes, carbon credits and government subsidies come into play and ROI goes down significantly. Or when the next war hits and diesel actually hits and bypasses the 2.50€/l mark.
SonOfKyuss 4mo ago
It’s an interesting idea. A company called Hyliion https://www.hyliion.com/ https://www.hyliion.com/ tried something similar here in the US about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to have success in the market and ended up pivoting to power generation for data centers.
Gabrys1 4mo ago
Even a version without AC charging (just solar + regen) with a smaller battery seems like a good deal
- sneak 4mo ago
  The amount of solar power available to the square area on top of a trailer is negligible compared to the energy required to haul it long distances. Regen braking would probably only be worth it in some limited circumstances.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fragmede 4mo ago
    What's your math on regen braking only being worth it. in limited circumstances?
  - RetroTechie 4mo ago
    "Pavel Gilman, vice president of sales and marketing at Nivalis, breaks down where those savings come from: roughly 30 to 35 percent from the electric axle during braking and deceleration, 11 to 15 percent from the rooftop solar panels, and the remainder (roughly half) from grid charging during parking stops." 11..15% Is not the bulk of the energy. But it's significantly more than "negligible". Note that this trailer could be expected to be on the road most of the time. Which may not even be the common case: demand for goods varies a lot, so I'd expect that a lot of logistics companies aren't fully booked all the time. Maybe have a few drivers/trucks on the road, and a bunch of trailers on a parking lot doing nothing. In that scenario: need a trailer? Use whichever one is charged up furthest, while at a loading dock top it up (grid power/in-building storage) to whatever is needed to complete the trip, off it goes. Also for US-based naysayers: Europe is a very different environment than the US. Most long hauls aren't that long, and there's a lot of [industrial zone local distribution center] <-> inner city traffic. Read: lots of start-stop, low speed cornering & wait time.
glasffordd 4mo ago
[dead]
shrubble 4mo ago
The placement of the Krone pack in the photo at link, makes me laugh: it would never survive in the USA, given the way truck drivers drive and the bumps and curbs etc. that trucks drive over. It would be ripped off or at least heavily damaged within 50K miles.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
  So, what you're saying is, we should be preventing shitty drivers from operating 40-tonne lorries?
- bluGill 4mo ago
  Maybe some truck drivers. However there are also a lot of trailers in the US that hang even lower than this appears to. The most common situation is trailers have a lot of space between the floor and the ground - so a forklift can drive all the way in. However some trailers - those used for house moving for example - have much lower floors. They have more space inside which is good for lighter things you are putting on the trailer by hand.
clintonbush 4mo ago
It'd be nice if researchers compared the impact on environment of disposing of the batteries (toxic metals, chemicals, other components) with the impact on the environment of the truck burning fossil fuels. In the end, what's the net benefit? Maybe it's great, I don't know. I feel we're getting a very one-sided assessment, though.
- actionfromafar 4mo ago
  CO2 increasing is a pretty one-sided and horrible effect, too. It's by far the dominant problem.
  - iterateoften 4mo ago
    OP is asking about the environment impact of manufacturing this. Like the whole supply chain for these trailers produce CO2 for each trailer it outputs. I had a similar thought as my city replaced 500,000 curb side recycling bins because of the color. How many years of my personal environmental savings did that operation cost? They had people flown in from the other side of the country for months just to offload the bins from the trailers. At what point does the second and third order side effects action offset the benefits.
- torpfactory 4mo ago
  These are old talking points from the fossil fuel industry. The batteries themselves will be recycled to recover their valuable minerals. The process will certainly require care to avoid localized pollution. Compare that with burning fossil fuels- baked into their design is emission of heat trapping gasses which systemically affect the entire planet. It’s clear we need to stop burning fossil fuels lest we overheat the earth.
  - jazzyjackson 4mo ago
    It is not a given that recycling lithium will be economical, if it’s more expensive than manufacturing new why bother?
nativeit 4mo ago
Brave new world for the kinds of people who steal catalytic converters and the copper off air conditioners!
jordiburgos 4mo ago
It saves 7000 L of diesel on one year, but what is it compared to the spending in total? What is the percentage of saving?

68 points by rbanffy 4mo ago

I think a cool application is that someone with a remote control could park these or manipulate them in the logistics park while the tractor trucks can immediately pick a different trailer and leave

WindyTree 4mo ago
AI could largely do that.
Animats 4mo ago
That adds a lot of complexity. You'd need a steerable axle somewhere, for starters. The usual tool for this is a mini-truck called a "yard goat".[1] There are also forklift attachments for this job. [1] https://www.totalwarehouse.com/lonestar-battery-powered-tractor/ https://www.totalwarehouse.com/lonestar-battery-powered-trac...
blitzar 4mo ago
You could join lots of these together, put them onto a pair of parallel metal beams and move them between major hubs.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  C'mon. That's so stupid! It'll never work. You'd have to put so much metal in the ground. Way too expensive! It'll never happen. What if the ground isn't flat? Huh? Did you think of that? Or if there are any curves? Metal beams are straight, so there's just no way it'd work.

WindyTree 4mo ago

In the US, commercial trailers are used like these crappy sheds, you go get one and the ABS unit is gone, the only thing worth stealing. For any company where this doesn’t hold it’s a big deal. The bigger deal is really RV trailers. You power assist, with simple motors controlled by pulling, and you can pull a huge one with ANY car, you don’t need truck, just modified mirrors. Plus the RV trailer benefits from slow self movement and power wall when disconnected. Total off grid tiny home.

_blk 4mo ago
In practice it's of course not so simple. Every truck that passes you (or that you pass) will suck you right in if your tow vehicle isn't heavy enough or you don't have good enough grip. Also, (RV/drum) trailer brakes suck so hard that you really want a vehicle with some additional stopping power other than regular brakes (heavy duty transmission, big engine, and diesel exhaust or compression brake). E-brakes work well so there the e-assist trailer has a real advantage if it can do that but you'll have to get used to the feeling of being pulled back rather than leading the stop... So evy 6.7l diesel I tow a big RV and e-assistance would be very welcome but costs likely drastically reduce the attractiveness of such a system for an RV. For a trailer that's constantly on the road I can definitely see a use case but it's not to be towed by a (comparatively) tiny car
- ourmandave 4mo ago
  Or flip the narrative and put the steering wheel in the RV trailer and tow your tiny car behind it! Wait...
  - xattt 4mo ago
    Obligatory VW trailer assist ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvZuSxibyYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvZuSxibyYE
  - WindyTree 3mo ago
    lol! Good point: Really it’s the integrated vehicle components that make motorhomes cost so much more than towables. In trucking, the triples trailers don’t have front axles, they’re added through converter dollies. That’s really all you need to make this work, a motorized steerable converter dolly and you can use it with any existing trailer. It only needs to be able to steer, maybe through combining different wheel speeds. they are basically moving trailers already this way with robot Dollies in China. Realistically you can digitally tow the trailer at that point, you don’t even need the connection, just the promise the trailer following your tracks and staying close behind.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo ago

1ncorrect 4mo ago

These paired with Janus Electric[0] conversions would make a hell of a road train. [0]: https://januselectric.com/ https://januselectric.com/

just_some_user 4mo ago

Cool, but I don’t see the real benefit. Electronic trucks already work quite well, start at around 150k (vs. 150k for a retrofitted e trailer), and are afaik mostly limited by the charging infrastructure. If you now add a an electronic trailer to your diesel truck, you now also have to care about charging. Yes, in Europe the legally required rest periods can already be used for efficient charging, but this is not an benefiting exclusiv to the trailers, but for general electronic trucking.

sandworm101 4mo ago
Charging time. A truck/driver doesnt remain stopped. It drops a trailer and picks up another. And a truck needs charging on the open road where there just are not any charging stations. But a trailer remains parked at a loading bay for hours, a commercial facility where installing chargers makes sense. A trailer therefore has more oppertunity to charge than a truck. And if a company wanted to, parking a trailer to let it charge is far cheaper than paying a truck/driver to sit around.
- crote 4mo ago
  But that's the thing: you already have to pay a driver to sit around! In Europe there's (simplified) a mandatory 45-minute rest break after 4.5 hours of driving. Similarly, there's a mandatory 11-hour rest period after the daily maximum of 10 hours of driving. And it is very strictly enforced, with every commercial truck having been equipped with a sealed and certified data logger, plenty of random checks by traffic police, and heavy fines for any kind of violation. If the truck is already sitting idle ~half of the time due to driver rest requirements, why not take that opportunity to charge it as well? Similarly, if you are building the usual highway-side rest stop with truck parking, a petrol station, and a restaurant, why not add a charging station as well? It can even do double-duty as rapid car charger!
  - wongarsu 4mo ago
    In Europe (at least in Germany) we already have a lack of truck parking spots along many routes. And that's with parking spots that are just a bit of Asphalt and maybe a portapotty, or big asphalt parking lots attached to a rest stop If we had enough chargers that any trucker could pull into a truck stop at their prescribed rest period and find a free charger, electrifying trucks would indeed be a no-brainer. But in the world we currently live in we don't have enough chargers to make that reliable. We barely have enough non-electified parking spots, and in your world they would all have to be electrified as well. It's a mix of a chicken-and-egg problem on the commercial side and a lack of will on the government side But there is never a lack of will from the government to try all kinds of pilot programs that look cool but are mostly caused by the need to somehow sidestep the lack of sufficient charging infrastructure

bob1029 4mo ago

I have a hard time seeing this adopted in many markets due to overall system complexity and weird new edge cases. Trailers are supposed to be pretty dumb. This is what makes them valuable from a logistical perspective. If we hyper focus on reducing the carbon footprint of each specific shipment we may find we created an overall increase in aggregate once the higher order and deferred consequences come to bear.

jnovacho 4mo ago

This trailer saves 7000l of diesel per year. Assuming 40l/100km, with this trailer you can go ~17.000 km more, which is 11-17% more, for the same fuel cost. Or ~12-15k EUR in fuel savings per year (assuming 1.8EUR/l). With 13+ years ROI (electricity is not free) is this really beneficial?

wodenokoto 4mo ago
Maybe you shouldn’t throw out your new trailer, but it looks like a good deal for expanding a fleet. Remember that all signs point towards more CO2 fees and higher gas prices in the coming years
- inigyou 4mo ago
  I'm not seeing any sign of CO2 fees increasing in the USA. If anything, they'll be federally outlawed.
  - bluGill 4mo ago
    Not in the next 3 year. However there are more elections coming up. And other things changing. For that matter even if the US does nothing, other countries doing something will forced changes. Petro cars are so cheap in the US (they are not exactly cheap) in large part because the design costs are amortized over so many buyers, when the rest of the world isn't buying them that drives up costs in the US. Meanwhile I'm not the only US driver who has discovered how much cheaper a EV is, so even without CO2 fees things are changing - just slowly.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 4mo ago
> With 13+ years ROI (electricity is not free) is this really beneficial? Regenerative and solar electricity is free, and regen braking additionally saves wear and tear on brake pads. The real benefit I think is when stuff like tax codes, carbon credits and government subsidies come into play and ROI goes down significantly. Or when the next war hits and diesel actually hits and bypasses the 2.50€/l mark.

SonOfKyuss 4mo ago

It’s an interesting idea. A company called Hyliion https://www.hyliion.com/ https://www.hyliion.com/ tried something similar here in the US about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to have success in the market and ended up pivoting to power generation for data centers.

Gabrys1 4mo ago

Even a version without AC charging (just solar + regen) with a smaller battery seems like a good deal

sneak 4mo ago
The amount of solar power available to the square area on top of a trailer is negligible compared to the energy required to haul it long distances. Regen braking would probably only be worth it in some limited circumstances.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- fragmede 4mo ago
  What's your math on regen braking only being worth it. in limited circumstances?
- RetroTechie 4mo ago
  "Pavel Gilman, vice president of sales and marketing at Nivalis, breaks down where those savings come from: roughly 30 to 35 percent from the electric axle during braking and deceleration, 11 to 15 percent from the rooftop solar panels, and the remainder (roughly half) from grid charging during parking stops." 11..15% Is not the bulk of the energy. But it's significantly more than "negligible". Note that this trailer could be expected to be on the road most of the time. Which may not even be the common case: demand for goods varies a lot, so I'd expect that a lot of logistics companies aren't fully booked all the time. Maybe have a few drivers/trucks on the road, and a bunch of trailers on a parking lot doing nothing. In that scenario: need a trailer? Use whichever one is charged up furthest, while at a loading dock top it up (grid power/in-building storage) to whatever is needed to complete the trip, off it goes. Also for US-based naysayers: Europe is a very different environment than the US. Most long hauls aren't that long, and there's a lot of [industrial zone local distribution center] <-> inner city traffic. Read: lots of start-stop, low speed cornering & wait time.

glasffordd 4mo ago

[dead]

shrubble 4mo ago

The placement of the Krone pack in the photo at link, makes me laugh: it would never survive in the USA, given the way truck drivers drive and the bumps and curbs etc. that trucks drive over. It would be ripped off or at least heavily damaged within 50K miles.

ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
So, what you're saying is, we should be preventing shitty drivers from operating 40-tonne lorries?
bluGill 4mo ago
Maybe some truck drivers. However there are also a lot of trailers in the US that hang even lower than this appears to. The most common situation is trailers have a lot of space between the floor and the ground - so a forklift can drive all the way in. However some trailers - those used for house moving for example - have much lower floors. They have more space inside which is good for lighter things you are putting on the trailer by hand.

clintonbush 4mo ago

It'd be nice if researchers compared the impact on environment of disposing of the batteries (toxic metals, chemicals, other components) with the impact on the environment of the truck burning fossil fuels. In the end, what's the net benefit? Maybe it's great, I don't know. I feel we're getting a very one-sided assessment, though.

actionfromafar 4mo ago
CO2 increasing is a pretty one-sided and horrible effect, too. It's by far the dominant problem.
- iterateoften 4mo ago
  OP is asking about the environment impact of manufacturing this. Like the whole supply chain for these trailers produce CO2 for each trailer it outputs. I had a similar thought as my city replaced 500,000 curb side recycling bins because of the color. How many years of my personal environmental savings did that operation cost? They had people flown in from the other side of the country for months just to offload the bins from the trailers. At what point does the second and third order side effects action offset the benefits.
torpfactory 4mo ago
These are old talking points from the fossil fuel industry. The batteries themselves will be recycled to recover their valuable minerals. The process will certainly require care to avoid localized pollution. Compare that with burning fossil fuels- baked into their design is emission of heat trapping gasses which systemically affect the entire planet. It’s clear we need to stop burning fossil fuels lest we overheat the earth.
- jazzyjackson 4mo ago
  It is not a given that recycling lithium will be economical, if it’s more expensive than manufacturing new why bother?

nativeit 4mo ago

Brave new world for the kinds of people who steal catalytic converters and the copper off air conditioners!

jordiburgos 4mo ago

It saves 7000 L of diesel on one year, but what is it compared to the spending in total? What is the percentage of saving?