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It doesn't matter if there's only one charging station every 50 miles, they'll give you a route that has you stopping where they are.

Charge time doesn't matter because you already have mandatory breaks, and if you pull a lot of grades, you'll actually make better time because that thing has a thousand horse power unit.

10 years ago, EVs were experimental slop subsidized by greenies, now it's production stuff being bought by bean-counters.
The thing is they're expensive, say like $250k.

But if you're getting 8 MPG with your diesel and an electric gets 2 kWh/mile, if you're paying 20 cents per kWh then that's $3.20 per 8 miles, so you're saving like $3 per 8 miles.

If you're averaging 500 miles per day, you're saving $187/day.

Your driver's $300/day and you're gonna amortize that truck over 5 years, so that's costing you about $166 per working day (lets figure the truck is moving 300 days out of a year).

Now you take that and you look at maintenance and repair on these DEF/DPF shits and at the end of the day it just makes sense.

The sad story is gonna be for all the owner-operators who are driving their 1990s detroit diesel with no emissions, and they're gonna get fucked over on fuel and the big companies are gonna eat their lunch on freight rates.
> charging infrastructure hasnt been proven

It's not like you have to prove that the chargers will work, like as if they might mysteriously not start up and we need physicists to figure out why...

It's just a question of whether there are enough of them on the routes you want and if the price of power at the chargers is economical.

Now there's a lot of short haul shit, and for that they're just gonna charge it at the warehouse. Long distance you have to actually find the chargers and confirm the price of power and so on, but this is classic work for an office worker at a large trucking company.

If you're small, you go on trucking dot com and you find a contract and bid. If you're big, you know your main routes, you know basically how many trucks are gonna go over interstate 5 (for example) in a year, so you're gonna put electrics where there ARE chargers and where you're doing a lot of driving.

Like I said, this was theoretical 10 years ago, at this point it's pretty much inevitable...
With cars, the math is different.

I have a diesel car and I have no reason to buy anything else. That's because the amount I drive is very little so fuel cost is marginal compared to amortization of the vehicle.

A lot of people did buy electrics, they're like 90% in Norway, but that's more a lifestyle purchase, like buying a Harley Davidson. Norwegians are rich enough they can throw down for a Tesla.

But in China, EVs are 20% of trucking, and 50% of cars so it's not like something needs to be proven at this point...

@Evil_Bender @cjd @medievalwars The fundamental flaw with EV tech, as I see it, is EVs solve no problems while introducing a whole host of new ones.

Here's the rub: The elites really REALLY want EV tech bc muh climate change. We're going to have to deal with it for now.

Long term, I bet we see EV box trucks making deliveries in cities. Think of something like an electric F-350. But eventually everyone will see the hype for what it is and that's hype.

> EVs solve no problems while introducing a whole host of new ones

If you're Europe or China, they solve a big problem: You need dollars to buy gas and if you try to work around that, the US get bitchy

> Long term, I bet we see EV box trucks making deliveries in cities.

My wife bought a phone and the guy who delivered it was in an electric van, and we're not city at all.

> But eventually everyone will see the hype for what it is and that's hype.

It was hype up until 2019 - which was the last year "muh climate" was a thing. Ever since then it's been 😷 💉 and then 🇺🇦 , 🇵🇸 , etc. Even Greta had to get a new job.

But then 2020 was the first year that EVs actually started getting traction, see chart. Everybody who trades in when their warrantee expires doesn't care about reliability or repairability, if the price difference between gas and power is bigger than the price difference of the car, they just buy the EV.
Hybrids have really weird economics. All of the big OEMs went all-in on hybrids a decade ago and they all got buttfucked by Tesla because they were building two drivetrains and Elon was only building one.

And as battery costs came down, everything they had done got blown to shit.

There are SOME places where hybrids could make sense, but I don't know if anybody has a stomach to go into them right now - outside of niche bespoke players like Edison.

The problem is, it takes you 5-10 years to do the engineering and release the product, build a market, fix the issues that arise, and so on - and while you were doing that, battery prices fall by 50% and suddenly your idea doesn't even make sense on paper...
Correct, I'm basically describing a corner case that is much closer in application to a vocational truck role (heavy towed loads, medium distances, limited/nonexistent charging availability)

This is a very different use space than guy that commutes to work 30-40 miles over mostly flat pavement, an ideal place to have a simple EV.

Yeah, super tricky b/c right now the Tesla semi long range version is 500 miles. Battery nerd shit that's in the lab now may be able to double that, so anyone who is trying to do a hybrid is racing the battery industry, and that a race that a lot of people tried and lost.

Current commercial (cheap) cells are like 180 kw/kg so if you're trying to hit 500kwh (which is WAY more than any EV has currently), that's gonna be 6111lb. An F350 will handle 8000 so ... you have just about a ton left.

I'd probably go for 200Kwh and it'd be 2444lb which would give about 2.7 tons of capacity.

F150 lightning only has 130kwh so even 200 is being reasonably generous.
My question was a volume one rather than a weight one though 6111lb added to a pickup probably exceeds the axle weights. A full size longbed scales around 6000lbs empty with a gross weight rating of 11-12k depending on the year and axles.

My number is based on 38KWh/gallon * 38 gallons @ 35% mechanical conversion = ~500
Nothing is as energy dense as diesel fuel, and gasoline is pretty close.

We MIGHT have batteries that are denser, in like 20-30 years, never say never, but for now energy density is The Tradeoff...

The battery I looked at is an EVE MB31 which is 0.00258 cubic meters of volume and holds 1kWh, so like 1/2 cubic meter for 200kWh. IMO it'll fit between under the hood and all of the space in the frame once the driveshaft and exhaust is gone. The real issue is weight.

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