You are reading a single comment by @Dibble and its replies. Click here to read the full conversation.
  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The infrastructure would have to be capable of transferring massive current and the truck would have to be able to manage the waste heat.

    These are not insurmountable problems, 1MW is not a lot of electrical power and the engine cooling system on a diesel truck has to dump about 100kW of waste heat. The challenges fall within the realm of economics, not physics.

    ETA: At the moment, trucks have a very low duty cycle due to mostly being driven by one human per tractor unit. In future world, it wouldn't matter if charging were relatively slow, because the robot would still be able to get 75% duty cycle by never sleeping.

About

Avatar for Dibble @Dibble started