-
Is there any prospect of long distance HGVs being electrified?
It depends on the charging infrastructure. If it's always possible to recharge in the mandatory 45 minute break every 4.5 hours, the battery range needs to be about 300 miles, which is about 150 litres of diesel. At 37MJ.l-1 that's 5GJ, and at ~30% GTE for diesel and 90% efficiency for a battery/electric drive that's a battery capacity of 500kW.h or 5 Teslas (the car, not the unit of magnetic flux) Tesla's own Class 8 tractor design (that's equivalent to a 40 ton artic in Europe) has a battery capacity of 850-900kW.h
TL;DR it's feasible, but may need some relatively small changes to vehicle regulations and working practices, and some large and expensive changes to power distribution infrastructure.
gbj_tester-
Are any big countries going that way? Hydrogen cell tractor units seem to be available from the likes of Volvo. And the UK has big fleets building their own private infrastructure for bioLPG, but nobody is putting bioLPG pumps in the commercial vehicle filling stations on the motorways. There seems to be even less of an agreed strategy than there is in the private car world.
Commercial vehicle operators are free of emotional attachment to rorty engines and penis substitutes, so can't they agree the best common strategy and pool their resources?
-
Your truck has to recharge 500kwh in 45 minutes. A Tesla will start charging from 20%full at 150kw/hr as it nears 80% charge it drops to 50 at this time of year. If it’s raining you get clouds of steam from the battery. If someone else is plugged into the next charger the rate is slower.
I don’t think you will be able to get the power into your Artic fast enough.
The infrastructure would have to be capable of transferring massive current and the truck would have to be able to manage the waste heat.
nick_h.
Dibble
Is there any prospect of long distance HGVs being electrified? This tweet seems to imply that it's coming https://twitter.com/EnvDefenseFund/status/1662534387475398662. But I read something saying it can never ever happen because the batteries would have to be far too big. Only short distance things like buses and bin lorries can be EVs. There are some HGV fleets in the UK converting to bioLPG. They are building their own private filling stations for it. What's the future for the world's haulage industry?