* What happens when a wheel seal goes? Do I have to remove all that ridiculous plastic on #2,3 axels??
* What happens when a tire blows? Is it going to destroy all that plastic and take out a few more tires in the process?
* Why all the glass? I've spend entire days replacing windshields for a 12 or so truck shop which generally come in two (drivers and passengers), the Tesla semi would require a crane and expensive replacements.
* Why is there no bumper or frame attachment points? Bumpers save the truck from damage, no one wants to buy $xxxxx front end, lights, etc when a deer in the bushes jumps into the middle of the road.
Honestly from my point of view it seems Tesla tried to apply personal EV to a semi. Did they do any research from tractor shops or mechanics? There is a HUGE reason tractor/trailers are easy to service.
1. it makes changing a tire more complicated, and time is money, the longer it takes to change a blown tire the higher the penalties
2. when a semi tire goes, it goes hard, as GP noted with this arrangement the cowling will probably shatter, requiring a replacement (not just a replacement tire) and the pieces taking out other tire. If the cowling does not break, it will funnel bits of tire straight into the next tires, blowing all of them.
If a truck tire blows, it sometimes hits nearby cars and causes accidents, or just hits a motorcycle driver, cyclist or pedestrian and causes an instant death.
These covers could be useful, if they were made for containment. Requires something like kevlar that can stretch and absorb the impact.
From what I've seen tires don't really blow as in pieces everywhere but tear then slap around, retreads when they blow tend to remove all the tread which is why you see half a tread on the side of the road sometimes. Containment isn't really too much of an issue IMO. Even thick (3/8) aluminum fenders get destroyed.
When a rear tire blew on my campervan, in addition to having to replace the tire, the blowout caused many thousands of Euros worth of damage to the bodywork.
I would think mechanics are going to become fewer and fewer as less mechanical bits exist on the electric vehicles. Tires, alignment, electrical. Those will be you're bread+butter services.
This dismissive attitude of a domain expert's opinion while taking Musk's/Tesla's word on revolutionary claims that they don't even have a working prototype of yet is a perfect example of why the court of public opinion is slowly starting to turn on Silicon Valley
The "domain expert" is doubting that Tesla consulted with any domain experts, after Tesla showed domain experts and waved at a bunch of launch customers sitting in the audience at the event. No one's looking insightful at the moment.
They do have a working prototype; it's in the video.
Also, your comment is ironically pretty dismissive.
As an expert, do you think that the sporadic time/money cost of changing a tire could offset a significant reduction in fuel cost or trip time? How expensive would a tire change have to be to outweigh, say, a (conservative) 30% reduction in fuel cost?
Why do you say it is a fraction of the cost to operate? Because the advert says so? I'll wait for concerns like the parent's to be weighed in before reaching any conclusion.
He's a software developer which makes his opinion on any topic worth a lot more than regular people, for example mechanics who fix trucks for a living. Is this your first day on HN?
Combustion engines need lots and lots and lots of little extra bits to hit the (still very bad) efficiency numbers they have. Every extra moving part is another thing you're paying the mechanic to check, repair or replace. Good for the mechanic, bad for your trucking operation.
Electric motors are brutally simple. So first that means they break down less often, second it means they're less complicated for the mechanic to figure out what the problem is.
And that's before the straight to technical advantages. Take braking. In a normal truck you turn speed into heat by rubbing brake pads. This gradually destroys the pads, so they're a consumable. But an electric truck turns much of the speed back into electricity instead. The pads get much less wear, you replace them less often.
Unless the conversion from speed to electricity is more efficient than to heat, shouldn't the degradation rate be the same? Or is the heat causing most of the degrading?
Braking force in EV is from magnetic fields in the engine pushing electricity back into the battery. Magnets and copper wires do not degrade when used.
Pad brakes in EVs are only used when braking HARD, as in emergency stop. They degrade less because they are not used much.
And the 99.9% of time when the truck is running with all tires intact, that fiddly piece of plastic gives, say, extra 5% of fuel efficiency. Even if it requires a complete replacement every time a tire blows, it may be worth having.
He states that they have spent a lot of time talking to truckers and truck companies. I would guess they believe that with an electric drive train repairs and maintenance will be an order of magnitude lower (not sure how that works for tires and wheels). Body damage should also be much lower with automatic breaking and other features of enhanced autopilot. As Musk said, broken glass is a big cost for trucking as you can drive with a broken windshield. They think they have a super glass that is "nuclear blast" proof.
Over the last centuries there were a number of truck and bus manufacturers who tried the single/middle seat design. It was never a seller for any of those.
If you take someone with you, you don't want to sit him/her to sit behind you. You want them to sit next to you. If you are on the road in the city, you have often colleagues with you, like in a moving company and alike. Such trucks are used in construction work where things damage easily because someone else crashes in your truck. No assistant in your truck will prevent that.
Honestly, it seems they may have talked to some friends or their delivery companies, but not with companies from the industry.
Because of economics of scale, you design one versatile truck chassis. That can then be easily modified like longer vs. shorter for the super structure, the driver cabin is modified in size so that you have a sleeping possibility or not and all those things.
Just take a look, the very same long haul truck is also used by the construction workers. Only the the cabin is a little bit shorter.
That's true when you're big already like Iveco or Caterpillar, but when you're trying to enter a new market it makes sense to cater to a specific subset of the market.
I wouldn't be surprised if the next version included more seats (rearranged towards the cabin center because the driver no longer has to drive), or zero seats (because the driver* no longer has to drive).
Definitely feels like an intentional step towards "don't worry, Tesla will be driving these for you soon anyway".
Tires, wheels, suspension, bearings, steering, brakes and drive axles (one from each electric motor to its wheel) will be the same as a regular truck, maintenance-wise.
The maintenance reduction basically only related to the motor itself. And, supposedly the "nuclear blast proof" windshield. A collision with a deer probably be much, much more expensive compared to a truck with a safari grill or plow mounted for safety.
Brakes in trucks are already using regenerative braking for about 20 years right now and its called retarder. Because conventional braking is too expansive.
I took an interest in this and looked up "retarder" on Wikipedia and it mentions engine braking (and exhaust braking), hydraulic retarders and electric retarders which are eddy current brakes more commonly used in the railways. Which one are you referring to?
According to the article, most commonly these are not used for regenerative braking, the energy is wasted as heat instead.
Eddy current brakes can be used for regenerative braking if there's an electric drive train (and high power electronics to handle it) but more typically the energy is just wasted as heat in a cooled resistor grid.
Mechanical/hydraulic braking can be used to spool up a flywheel and this was used in Formula 1 in late 2000's (now they use electrical regenerative braking instead).
Which of these techniques is commonly used in trucks?
Sorry, for not checking Wikipedia. Because I work in the industry as an electrical engineer defining standards, and owning a historic truck myself just for fun, because I can.
Originally, it is right that retarders were introduced to just having a non-destructive brake by just wasting the energy. That was around the 1980s. This was just to save maintenance cost as brakes were a big part of that costs.
The trucking industry is about costs and every little penny you can safe. So, years ago it started: Why do we waste that energy and do not re-charge the battery with that, because that reduces load from the generator and that will reduces fuel consumption?
Retarders have a huge impact in costs when your are counting miles. Retarders are having the disadvantage you can't brake to full stop with them. That's why they never worked in cars, because they are always additional to conventional brakes. So they add complexity and weight, both of which you want to reduce in cars.
What fraction of the energy recovered by braking is actually stored? I would have thought the battery on a non-electric or non-hybrid truck would be far too small. Surely the battery gets topped off and then the extra power is dumped as heat right?
Is the energy from braking really so small that it can't even fully charge the starter battery?
Honest questions. I figured that since regenerative braking in cars seems to double fuel efficiency, that order of half the power used to accelerate was recovered and I would have thought that was a very large amount of power to store.
Or is it because of the nature of long-haul trips? I know hybrids have much less advantage on the highway, maybe for long-haul trips the ratio of energy lost as air friction to energy lost in braking is vastly different.
> What fraction of the energy recovered by braking is actually stored? I would have thought the battery on a non-electric or non-hybrid truck would be far too small. Surely the battery gets topped off and then the extra power is dumped as heat right?
It is always the question of what type of truck you are running. Do you just have storage goods, or do you have goods that need refrigeration? In the later you need energy to power that. As your truck does not know in advance what kind of trailer will be towed (connected, what is the right word?) the truck needs to be prepared.
Yes, extra power is dumped. But that is true for any kind of vehicle.
> Or is it because of the nature of long-haul trips? I know hybrids have much less advantage on the highway, maybe for long-haul trips the ratio of energy lost as air friction to energy lost in braking is vastly different.
Actually, Hybrid is very good concept for long-haul. Because on highways you can do coasting (sailing as we say in German) very efficient when you are in cruise control. Because with all the little hills up and down at the same speed, hybrid takes its full advantage.
There will always be situations where you can no longer recover energy, fully electric or hybrid. Your battery could be full, or overheating. At that point, you have to waste the energy.
I believe the normal way to handle this scenario is to just fall back to mechanical braking.
Why do most/all electric and hybrid cars have regenerative braking while ICE cars don't? It's because, as the GP said, the battery would be quickly topped up and extra energy wasted. Only electric vehicles doing frequent stops/downhills can make productive use of regenerative braking.
Potential energy lost by a truck going 10 m (vertically) downhill: 40 000 kg * g * 10 m = 4e6 J.
Capacity of car starter battery: 40 Ah * 12V = 400 Wh = 1e6 J. Let's guess a truck battery has 4 times the capacity of a car battery, so 4e6 J to full charge.
That's just down one small hill and all subsequent braking energy for the entire trip is wasted.
To drive the point home, a Swiss company is working on a mining truck that will be a net generator of electricity - it goes up the mountain empty, but when it goes down it is full of heavy ore, and regenerative breaking charges the batteries more than was used to climb the mountain. The extra 10kWh can then be fed back into the grid.
... Also because electric regenerative braking requires a battery and electric motor (for propulsion, the starter is useless for this). Once you fit regenerative braking into an ICE vehicle it becomes a hybrid vehicle, leaving no ICE vehicles with regenerative braking. :)
(I don't think you would call a vehicle with mechanical KERS system a "hybrid", although it technically is as there are multiple propulsion systems in the vehicle.)
Firefighter here. I wouldn't be especially worried about the glass. Hitting it with a hammer isn't all that impressive (take a hammer to your driver's side window... I bet you'll be surprised how ineffective it is).
Strong glass doesn't necessary has to be hard to remove glass. Those are two different things.
Pressing a mechanical button or two should easily disassemble the glass gracefully. At the same while the glass is fixed it should ideally be immune to damage.
Doesn't really matter, it is just marketing. I guess somewhere through the design phase they did some calculations on how much force it can take and checked it against silly things for Musk to say.
The only point is that it's stronger than normal glass, which is backed up with the video comparing the two different types of glass in a more realistic scenario.
You should probably watch the actual reveal, it's already on YouTube. The glass was already addressed and he gave it a specific focus. Even claiming it can withstand an atomic blast.
Tempered glass is particularly vulnerable from sharp, hard objects. This is the idea behind "ninja rocks" : pieces of broken spark plug ceramic that are used by criminals to break side windows of cars.
I'm not saying that Tesla windshields are vulnerable from that, in fact, most windshields aren't. However it shows that resisting a blow from a hammer that is neither sharp nor hard is not a conclusive test.
Worth noting that while side and back windows are tempered, windshields are typically laminated.
The difference is in how they break. Laminated glass will generally crack, but otherwise stick together, while tempered glass will shatter, but into less-sharp pieces (to minimize the hazard of broken glass).
I don't know how much of this matters, but it stands to reason that what works on a side window might not be the same as what works on a windshield.
Are you sure? I saw a YouTube drop test video and the iPhone X survived multiple drops from head height (~66") onto concrete without breaking, but the iPhone 8 shattered.
I think that's because you have multiple factors with thin smartphone glass. The harder it gets, the more brittle it becomes. You probably won't be able to cut into it even with a pretty sharp knife, but if you were to drop it at the right angle it'd shard into a billion tiny pieces.
I have no idea how automotive glass differs, but I imagine the difference in weight and thickness requirements does impact things a lot.
This reminds me of the unfolding problem of sun roof explosions.
lets not compare iphonex to Elon Musk's glass. I know nothing about glass, but, I trust the guy with a company called spaceX on his portfolio to make my glass right.
It’s glass - it’a not pixie dust doped adamantium.
Metals arent particularly strong. Glass, plastics, etc are all stronger (yield strength). But boy are they ductile, and very tough. Iron can take, literally, an infinite number of loading cycle.
You can make ceramics, glass, etc better but the overall performance package of iron is very hard to beat.
If I were to dismiss SpaceX as 1950s technology with modern electronics and engine technology the soviets mastered in the 60s would you be annoyed?
So why dismiss the truck manufacturing industry? Semis are very thought out solutions for their domain.
My problem was comparing the iphone that has a $1,000 price point to the new glass of the semi. I'm not comparing anything to truck manufacturing industry. I presume that that it also costs more than an iPhone. So what's your point?
It's not bootlicking. It's just common sense when you factor in cost, thickness and experience with durability. You know, re-entering the atmosphere and not burning up. I don't trust apple's marketing about iphone durability because I have broken several. This is a new product, and already you're comparing it to a smartphone that costs $1,000 and $250 to manufacture?
The iphone:
1. lower price point than the truck
2. has to be slim, and lightweight. Many restrictions.
the semi:
1. costs much more than an iphone, which we're to assume accounts for the expensive windshield.
2. the windshield can be as thick as your attitude.
Bow before your your betters, prole. Also, be sure to protest Thanksgiving and Columbus Day as racist by working - nothing says antiestablishment like free labor.
Well, the glass is "thermonuclear explosionproof," whatever that's supposed to mean. They are claiming it will never need replacing. Musk did dwell on that for quite a while in his talk.
If you check out the reveal, you'll see that it doesn't have those ridiculous covers, nor does it have near zero clearance between the cab and trailer which would prevent articulation, and nor does it have near zero ground clearance.
In the middle of the presentation, Elon mentioned that people were asking for a Pickup truck so they built a smaller version of a pickup truck. The one you linked to is that. They aren't taking orders for it.
He showed a video of it in action. Note that Tesla is already pretty good at glass due to their huge glass windshield-roofs on the X and 3, and the solar roof.
Right - I was going to ask if I took an American truck mechanic to Europe and stood him by a highway, he’d look at all the trucks and say ‘those will never work, the windshields are too big and the engine’s inaccessible and all those fairing panels look fragile.’
I believe the main reason for why European trucks look soi different is regulations. European trucks have a length limit that covers the tractor as well as the trailer. Because you want to maximize the cargo space, the tractor is made as short as possible and gets this very un-aerodynamic shape. The truck in essence gets the shape that best fills in all permitted space. In addition they don't have plows or similar that make them take less damage in collisions because Europeans instead minimize the damage to people hit by the truck. Given the US doesn't have those regulations you really need different trucks and one truck won't work in the other market.
Just to clarify, cab-over trucks are still being used today in the US, though most new ones are smaller cargo-sized. From time to time, I've seen existing COE trucks used; but mostly for private farm use (as they're not nearly as popular as they once were here, and are getting long in the tooth).
The engine sticks out in front the driver cabin. They also don't have barriers on the side that keep passage cars from getting under and being hit at head height
A lot of this is probably in order to get a 0.36 Cd Drag coefficient! Also having a lot of glass probably increases the view which in turn increases the security!
I feel like the drag coefficient bit was sort of gimmicky since the projection of the front face is so large on a semi. At 0.36, it's somewhere between a Nissan Cube and Ford Transit
Because likely in a few years (less than 5 maybe?) these things will be driving themselves and if they get non-operational damage they'll just drive themselves to the nearest tesla maintenance center to get repaired.
Call me a fanboy, but something tells me that the guy who built a revolutionary space program from scratch while successfully running a revolutionary auto company, probably has some ability to think things through pretty comprehensively from all angles and plan effectively for what's needed.
Do you think you've just pointed out something that never occurred to him? Do you think if you could share your comments with him, he would stop and stare at you blankly and say "Shit. You're right."
You haven't just deflated the plan behind this entire, multi-year undertaking with your 5-minute analysis, as if you know more than all the engineers working at Tesla. The tone you're taking is just ridiculous.
You're a fanboy. Being good in one industry doesn't mean you can plan for entire other industries and magically determine their domain knowledge or change the way that industry does its business.
I generally like what Musk is doing and think that Tesla is doing pretty great work, but he's not perfect and the pain points people are discussing in these threads are in no way unfounded. It's better to listen to the feedback and concerns in order to improve, rather than just fellating God-Engineer Musk and proclaiming his infallibility.
If I owe you $500, and I give you $450, does that mean I paid back the loan?
The consequence of not living up to an expectation depends on what's riding on that expectation. For a company trying to live up to a valuation higher than companies producing orders of magnitude more vehicles, I think it matters.
I'd say someone who buys robots and operates them manually by men and claims "air resistance" is the biggest challenge in robotics because they should move so fast you can't see them, looks to me as not very sophisticated. But I don't operate robots.
"It's like if you can see the robot move, it's too slow. We should be caring about air friction like things moving so fast. You should need a strobe light to see it"
He wasn't saying that air resistance is currently a problem. The current problem is that the robots don't move fast enough for air resistance to be a problem. He's basically pushing the question 'Going faster is obviously good. What happens if we go really really fast?'
Additionally, these trucks come with a one million mile warranty. I don't know how many millions of miles a conventional truck is expected to last, but with a Tesla truck, the maintenance costs should be fairly low, at least the first million miles.
It wasn't really from scratch though was it, he hired out people who had already worked with space projects. None of the tech is really new (yet). We used to have the same types of rockets in the past.
Amongst Model 3 fiasco Solarcity too currently has issues.
It's incredible how you trivialize SpaceX achievements. I get it that you probably hate Elon Musk for whatever reason. But you should really calibrate your bias filter.
Tesla makes cars. We've known how to make cars for a while now - even electric cars. What was critical for Tesla was the vision: to see that we were approaching a tipping point where battery technology and cost would make a fully- (and only-) electric car feasible, and the strength of mind and purpose to ignore and/or out-think peoples' legacy objections and misgivings - e.g. with the Supercharger network. There are some Musk-ian details that are advances, such as the single integrated computer system, but that's a relatively small part of the whole.
In contrast, yes, SpaceX (just!) makes rockets, and yes, we've known how to make rockets for a long time. But they have done some things that the rest of the rocket industry haven't even got close to. Firstly, they've revolutionised the process and cost of producing a rocket in this class, by insourcing so much of it, and rethinking the necessary components and technology. Secondly, they've taken the concept of re-use and made it orders of magnitude cheaper (versus, what, the Shuttle?) than before, to the extent that it has/will completely turn the industry on its head. And the techniques and technology they've pioneered to facilitate this --not least the ability to land a 70m rocket upright on a robot barge floating out at sea-- are genuinely, truly revolutionary.
You are totally wrong about SpaceX. SpaceX is totally revolutionary and they have already achieved a huge amount of remarkable stuff that most people did not think was possible.
Lots of stuff has been test or tried before, but bringing things from idea to production ready with the efficiency required and cheap production is fantastically impressive.
You can claim 'it is not basic research' or whatever, but the reality is that they are pushing the envelop on so many topics at the same time that they are leafing all competition in the dust.
Private spaceflight has a long history of pretty computer graphics, small scale prototypes and broke millionaires. Musk made it happen, and made it pay. Also, nobody at all before them, and nobody else even now can land the boosters on orbital-class spacecraft intact.
This isn't an agreement with the parents comment about Tesla but re-usable rockets weren't invented by SpaceX. The idea existed for a while and various projects got to different stages. Including a functional 'McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X'.
The project got taken over by NASA and the budget cut before being axed. You really do sound a bit too fanatical and should probably question more instead of accepting companies as entirely revolutionary.
Yes, because it is incredibly hard to bring reusable rockets from concept to full execution.
The idea has been arouns for a long time and there have ben dozens of attempts of course, just as flying cars, autonomous cars, real A.I, space elevators.
Concept an execution are vastly different animals, it is at least 1000 times more difficult to achieve resuable rockets than to have the idea and at least 100 times more difficult than to try it.
It really isn't a working program if it's never going to have enough payload capacity to lift its own fuel to orbit. It's a shiny prototype of computer controlled autonomous stabilized flight, like SpaceX Grasshopper. But that's about it.
To answer your deleted question, there would be no point in listing their achievements for you because you're obviously determined to ignore them, and having them listed for you won't change that.
Would be interesting to know how large proportion of trucks were in the 4% largest trucking companies. If that turns out to be a large quantity, then the 96% figure no longer seems that big.
I'd bet those fairings are needed to get the low cD, and that without them the economics are nearly as competitive. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt on having designed for blow outs as that seems rather basic.
I get the concern, I know a truck driver, damage occurs very often and is difficult to prevent even by the best of drivers. But perhaps bumpers are less necessary when the thing is full of sensors and stops the truck before something is hit? Doesn't prevent damage from thirds of course.
Anyone else find it odd they don't talk about the battery?
500 miles of range at 2kwh a mile is a 1000kwh battery which is 10 model S batteries.
Model S battery weighs 1,200 lbs lets assume they somehow improved on that by 20-30% so this is a 10,000 lb battery. Not sure how much the motors weigh, the Tesla motor and inverter are about 350lbs so lets say another 1000lbs.
A Diesel engine, transmission and fuel for 500 miles is about 5,000 lbs.
So I guess they made up 6,000 lbs in lightwieght materials? Or does it have less carry capacity since the trucks can't weigh more than 80k total?
Then there is the cost of the battery. Tesla is currently saying thier cost are below $190/kwh. At $180 that battery is $180,000 dollars cost! They must be counting on the Gigafactory getting it down to $100 kwh, still $100k cost just for the battery. The battery cost is as much as a new Semi's price.
The Megacharger is 400 miles in 30 minutes, that would be a 1.6 megawatt charger. They have to be built out across the country.
I am pretty impressed, I honestly didn't think they would do a megawatt battery. 500 miles is what you need minimum for "long haul" or a solid days driving even though most diesel semis have 1000 mile+ ranges.
Just not sure how the economics work out, but I hope it does.
> A Diesel engine, transmission and fuel for 500 miles is about 5,000 lbs.
You often end up carrying more fuel than you need so you can buy it in cheaper places. And then there’s the whole art of timing your fuel stops around the weigh stations...
> still $100k cost just for the battery. The battery cost is as much as a new Semi's price.
That’s not that crazy if they can actually deliver on the operating cost savings they’re claiming. Big if though.
At 7 lbs a gallon for diesel most semis can carry 200 gallons so add an extra 1000lbs if you like, the Tesla still has to make up 5000 lbs while having 1/3rd the range.
Timing stops for megachargers will be a whole lot more difficult than truck stops until they are as ubiquitous. If you have to use a plain old supercharger your talking 8-10 hours for a charge, don't even bother with a normal plug of any kind.
That's with a megacharger not a supercharger, there are no megachargers deployed anywhere yet. Megachargers are 1600 kilowatts vs 120 kilwoatts for a supercharger.
A charging station with 10 megachargers going at the same time will draw as much power as a small city of say 10,000 homes.
Is that possible? Assuming 500 miles of range at 2kwh a mile is a 1000kwh battery, charged over 30 minutes, is 2 megawatts, if the voltage is the same as the supercharger (480V) requires 4000 amps...
Yeah no doubt, there are a ton of unanswered questions here. If they can't retrofit their existing chargers to "mega" status that would pretty severely limit the usefulness of this product.
At least the weight will be (measurably) consistent no matter how much charge is in the battery. That said, they still weigh more than diesel so I assume they'll pay more at the scales.
> they still weigh more than diesel so I assume they'll pay more at the scales
I'm not sure what you mean here. In the US, scales are used to ensure compliance with axle load limits, not to determine any costs.
In any case, since they don't need the weight of a diesel engine, transmission, fuel tanks, or emissions systems I'm not sure how the weight balance will work out.
What's required for a sleeper cab? We got some shots of the interior and it looked easily big enough to add a bed or the like. With a battery that big heating overnight should be practically free.
If you take the Model S and scale it up then people have said the battery is half the cost of the car, and therefore the battery alone is roughly the cost of a normal car. I don't think it would be suprising if the same is true for the semi.
There's at least one rural delivery man who bought a Tesla Model S and paid for it by using the mileage payments he gets for his job. So as long as your route fits, the same kind of high up front cost being amortised over time applies. The more miles you drive the better the economics works due to lower fuel/maintenance costs.
Non-Tesla companies are making pretty much the same pitch in regards to battery busses, again targetting fleet managers who have the spreadsheets in place already to plan and manage this kind of expenditure.
A relative is super gung ho for electric buses. The evangelist / champion at an energy company. His vacations are scheduled around various unveiling events, so he can get pics. Kinda reminds me of train enthusiasts.
Any way. Per what cousin tells me, I think short haul urban centric anything is ripe for electric vehicles. Delivery trucks, buses big and small, service vehicles. Maybe even tow trucks (wreckers).
And what's the cost of those busses plus charging infrastructure and the risk of new technology versus overhead power lines like what's deployed throughout much of San Francisco, for example?
My commute is ~25 miles one way. In my Leaf, going 65+ mph, I usually burn 25-35 miles off the charge. If I'm in stop-and-go traffic half the way I usually burn 10-15 miles for the same trip.
I've taken quite a few trips where I arrived at my destination with the same amount of battery as when I left. I've yet to arrive with more charge but maybe one day...
That’s probably due more to the aerodynamic drag of doing >65mph than it is the regen braking in stop-and-go traffic. Mileage efficiency takes a big drop in our Leaf above 60mph.
EDIT: as a side note, efficiency takes a big drop in your ICE vehicle, too, I just notice it more in the Leaf with its gee-whiz telemetry.
For buses it is very effective, since they stop every few blocks, whether the stop signal is red or not. It also makes for a huge saving on brake repair and replacement, which you can imagine is a big expense for buses.
Also city buses usually drive under 200 miles a day and then sit overnight so you can have relatively small batteries. All in all, it is hard to think of a type of vehicle where battery power makes more economic sense, and gives you more advantages over ICE.
It depends a lot on how you're driving. Numbers as high as 70% have been published, but I believe that requires the deceleration profile to be ideal, and that might not be the most comfortable one for passengers.
I think your price estimate for the battery isn't too far off. If you scoll down on the page they estimate annual fuel savings to be $200,000. They then mention a two year payback period.
This seems to imply a sticker price of around $400K.
I am trying to figure out how they get 2 year payback.
"On a 100-mile route, the Tesla Semi will average $1.26 per mile when operating costs are factored in to $1.51 for diesel trucks."
That 25 cents a mile savings, average trucker does 45,000 miles a year, 100,000 on the top end for long haul. Even at 100k a year that's an 8 year payback right?
No, the "payback period" isn't the time to pay off the total cost of the vehicle. It's the time to pay off the difference between the Tesla and the competition.
Here's how you do the calculation:
- Diesel semi: $125k
- Tesla semi: $200k ($75k more expensive)
- Miles driven per year: 150,000 (~8 hours per day at 50mph. Rotating shifts mean these trucks don't take weekends.)
- Net savings per mile: $0.25
- Savings per year: $0.25 * 150,000 = $37,500
- Break-even vs. cost of diesel: $75,000 / $37,500 = 2 years
So after two years you have more money than if you'd bought a diesel semi. That's what it means.
Based on the "With fewer systems to maintain..." precursor to that factoid, I imagine they're also factoring in repairs and maintenance. In the reveal event, Musk said e.g. you'd never have to replace brake pads, a drive train, the windshield, etc.
Also, I'm totally out of my element here (family does trucking but I don't) but 45K miles/year seems like a super low estimate for someone who drives full time. Taking a look at this thread [1], it seems unreliable per month, but people seem to be talking about doing 3K/week or 10-12K/month like it's nothing (as long as your employers have the hours to give).
I assumed their cost per mile included maintenance which is pretty standard to do.
To do 2 year payback would be 400k miles a year, which is impossible without nearly 24/7 driving, which could be possible with automation but unlikely they are figuring that.
Those truckers you linked are saying 10,000 a month is realistic without pushing it for long haul OTR so that 120k a year still at least 7 year payback.
The TCO includes the cost of the lease, so it already includes payback of the upfront cost. If you're not leasing it, your cost per mile without considering upfront cost is much better than even the TCO calculation shows, so you can "payback" relatively quickly. If you lease it, you can take advantage of the lower cost of operations immediately.
The Roadster was announced with a 200kwh battery, which is twice the capacity of the best Model S. Yet the Roadster is much smaller, and the 0-60/quarter mile times indicate that it is much lighter.
So, we can conclude that Tesla is accounting for some real technology optimization in their batteries over the next 4 years, which I'm sure the Semi will see as well.
Not sure how realistic the whole Tesla releases are. They are definitely inspirational. One thing we know for sure is they have a great prototyping/photoshop/After effects team
I have been wanting to know this as well. With both the roadster and the truck, the battery seems to be quite a bit more advanced than what we have seen previously. The car is smaller than a model 3 but has a battery that is more than twice the capacity of what they said was possible before.
It will be fascinating to find out what is actually behind these vehicles. On a pure specs basis, it sounds incredible.
What about the Supercharger network? Fewer highways make it logistically easier to plan for well-positioned charging stations so they can produce smaller batteries that have to be charged more frequently. And the Semi could always hook on a battery trailer for longer hauls.
It's bizarre that the Semi has way less attention than the Roadster on HN.
The Roadster is a $250k car for people with money to burn. It doesn't seem to drastically change the equation from a Rimac Concept One with six-year newer battery and motor tech and savings from volume and automation. The Roadster is the shiny thing that sells less sexy vehicles.
The Semi has the potential to change an entire industry if executed right. They don't need to be perfect if the cost savings are real and reliability is high. We'll see if they get practical details correct and whether production models arrive within 2-3 years of target-- a common Tesla worry. But I feel this has more margin potential than the Model 3 at this stage in Tesla's development.
It may possibly be because the Roadster was a surprise reveal, while the Semi was expected to arrive this year anyways.
Regardless, I am really looking forward to seeing the Semi's on Highways, although I believe that a main roadblock to it will be the lack of Tesla charging stations across the country. Semi trucks drive throughout the US on all major highways, and they have to coordinate their routes according to where the Weighing stations are in each state. Having to add super-charging stations to their routes will certainly complicate their routes, so it should be a bigger priority for Tesla to address those first.
Correction: It is a $200k car. The $250k is for a "Founder's Series" which is really just one of the first 1,000 cars out of the factory.
Still a car for people with money to burn, though. I was hoping to be able to get one, but the price is slightly over my budget. I might be settling with a Nissan GT-R.
Unlike their cars, if they want to be successful they will need to release factory service manuals and sell parts to repair them. It's not going to be acceptable to send it to some far away service center to be repaired, at least for small outfits that heavily use all their equipment. When a critical piece of equipment is down, the mechanic is going to be working through the night hacking it together, possibly waiting on parts that are being overnighted. Diesel mechanics tend to be ridiculously intelligent and very resourceful.
> Because the days of a service manual and a backyard shed are over
They really aren't, as much as the manufacturers like to tell you they are.
Sure, the sheer amount of sensors/vacuum systems/electronics/etc make it look too complex for the layman, but as long as you've got an OBD scanner and a laptop, you can make quick work of most things. The biggest issue is manufacturers currently having an obsession with inverse torx head bolts in unusual and frustrating places (i.e. pull the top end off the engine using only a 10mm, 14mm and 17mm, and then juuuust at the last step, there's a sudden 6.5mm inverse torx bit needed to be fetched from Narnia.). But you can always get parts.
Electric cars will be just the same - in fact, I think they'll be easier for the home electrician to work on. Most of the modular manufacturer-specific parts can be interchanged for other components (inverters, batteries, etc). It won't look as neat and clean, but considering that electric cars are fundamentally less complex than internal combustion engines I don't think people will struggle.
And I don't think anything sold in the US today, not to the Department of Defense, has anything that poses "an immediate and extreme health and safety hazard".
Most modern domestic smoke detectors are now photoelectric, rather than ionization based.
Not only do they not contain toxic Americum 241, photoelectric smoke detectors are also both more sensitive to real fires and less prone to false alarms.
(The later is actually really important, as people will often disable smoke detectors in response to a false alarm - and then forget about them)
We had a kitchen smoke detector in college that was kept swaddled in plastic wrap at all times because it went off every. time. we tried to cook something. Absolutely a safety hazard, yeah.
I'm mostly thinking of high-voltage capacitors. Basically, if sticking a screwdriver in the wrong place could maim or kill you, I'm okay with having security screws there. Otherwise, no.
I don't know, an electric car seems like it would contain a few items you don't want to be poking at if you don't know what you're doing. Security screws could a pretty good job of keeping the casual DIYer from electrocuting himself, essentially a "can't open this? Maybe you shouldn't."
I don't think they're talking about a backyard shed. More like a distribution business with a fleet of 50 trucks, a well-equipped garage and a full-time mechanic.
I have a journeyman in mechanics, tractor/trailers are much easier to work on than most personal vehicles due to the amount of room there is. They are also quite easy to repair, very similar to a computer as in hard drive is bad, replace it, injectors bad, replace it.
Tesla will be selling into a very complicated industry. You think enterprise sales of software are hard, just wait.
Tesla say their system includes all the functions necessary. I haven't seen a list but I doubt it. Even if they do it will literally take enterprise integration projects to hook them up to the largely bespoke systems used by existing trucking company backends.
I don't know if the timing is right, but I think what you have to understand here is that all of this is the beginning of the end for the trucking company as you know it.
So if Tesla has trucks, and is developing self-driving capability, and the trucking industry is a mishmash of legacy systems, what pieces does Musk need to just go into the trucking business direct?
This is a huge question. It depends on so many things. We can make assumptions on viable strategies given Tesla's finances and past behavior. But that still leaves us with a lot of solution space.
First you have to accept that the trucking industry is conservative. The mom and pop distributors, the big guys, everyone. The people who own, lease and operate the trucks. There are all sorts of legislative hurdles to deal with.
I think a winning strategy is to start with city or county distributors. Lease out trucks at _very_ competitive rates. Do this with an agreement that your backend (accounting, maintenance, inventory) systems will replace _everything_ at the distributor. At first you'll probably have to compromise on this and integrate some things.
On top of that you pretty much have to integrate your onboard sensors/telematics with consumable manufacturers. Unless you're going to manufacture your own tires and such too.
I was thinking more along the lines of Musk setting up a trucking company with a fleet consisting of autonomous Tesla trucks. Obviously not something that can be done right now, but given the push towards self-driving vehicles, and things like Amazon's delivery drones, I'm wondering if the current trucking industry is really Tesla's target market in the long term.
> It's not going to be acceptable to send it to some far away service center to be repaired, at least for small outfits that heavily use all their equipment.
Hmmm. Doesn't Tesla usually offer a loaner car while a Tesla is in for repairs? If they did the same thing with semis, would shipping companies accept it?
So sort of a subscription model for trucks? You buy (or more likely rent) "a truck" and Tesla supplies you with "a truck" but it's not necessarily always the same truck?
If the math works there — could now or over time — then once L5 hits imagine the possibilities. L5 trucks towing broken L5 trucks with a third taking the cargo. I missed the video, but I’d bet huge that needed tech is probably prototyped already, at least in the elonoggin. Well done Elon!
Still kinda giddy about the Roadster, too. Guilty — can’t get enough of Elon’s disruption (personal life aside) —- sue me or grab the pitchforks.. i’ll serve you lemonade. :)
This is true only if your product is designed to tinker. Or you generally have to replace plug and play parts.
When desktops came along many people wondered if they could be serviced as easily as TVs. The answer turns out to be simple, they don't have to be. If the repair + component costs turn out to be in the same ball park as replacing the plug and play part, you don't have to service individual PCBs. To give you a example, recently I had a broken Dell Monitor. Got it fixed in 20 mins at a local service store. Apparently the technician simply removed the whole PCB and put a new one in its place. And there were only 3-4 such PCBs.
You only need to be as intelligent as the abstract interface allows you to be.
You might be pleased to learn that much of the sparsely-populated area of the US does its Tesla car repairs -- including minor stuff like replacing the engine -- with teams of 2 workers and a van -- and 4 hours for that engine swap.
Now imagine how that might work out for the truck industry.
Don't have any particularly good story. They are just really good at understanding and fixing anything mechanical using the most basic of tools. I actually think that the type of brain that makes you good at programming is similar to being a good mechanic.
Yep. I've found that my troubleshooting methodology and being able to break down complex systems is equally transferable in between software and mechanics. I think that systems and software people are the "modern" mechanics of the world. It explains a lot as to why my father and grandfather were both mechanics and tradesmen, and I'm now a systems guy.
Absolutely, trouble shooting requires abstract thought and following long logical chains as to why something is failing. Cars are complex systems just like software can be, good knowledge of many different domains inside your main discipline is required to put the pieces together. I have always found good mechanics to be really switched on individuals.
>Diesel mechanics tend to be ridiculously intelligent and very resourceful.
I was just saying about maybe the driver being in the picture isn't something Tesla is going for. A prime argument Tesla has was about eventually eliminating the need for so many drivers. "If not that, then what else?" was what I wanted to say.
EDIT: They seem to have a range of 500 miles. Which is 1/3 the range of normal diesel semi's.
EU will like these huge windshields, because of the pedestrian safety.
"Contrary to passenger cars, there are currently no direct vision requirements for trucks. Direct vision – what you can see with your own eyes – has a number of benefits compared to indirect vision (mirrors and camera’s). To measure direct vision the Commission should use a standardised methodology."
I'm a product manager at a telematics company. I've talked to a lot of folks in the long haul trucking space, from drivers to back office folks to service managers. I'll be surprised if this truck catches on. The trucking industry has a huge urge to do everything themselves, all the big guys have full service garages in their many yards across the country. This truck seems essentially unserviceable by anyone other than Tesla, which will be a showstopper for many of the big guys at least for a while.
I will say that I'm impressed by their charging numbers if they can hit them though. Fuel is a huge concern for carriers, they reroute to save a cent on the gallon constantly. Getting enough super chargers in place will be key for these things.
Also, as a side thought: they could have had a much more impactful reveal by having one of the big carrier's trailers hitched to that thing. Makes me wonder how much they even went and talked to their potential customers, especially drivers, who are very...particular...about their machines.
"The big guys won't go for it. Therefore, it won't succeed". That's a recipe for somebody who isn't a "big guy" to start their business literally this instant, and outcompete the "big guys" in five years because they were able to throw off the shackles of tradition and learn from the past as well as embracing current technology.
The harsh truth is that most times it _does_ work out for the "big guys".
5 years is a lot of time for the "big guy"-compliant suppliers like Daimler to catch up (I can't personally evaluate if there is even a lot of catching up to do, as Tesla tries to present). Especially in low-margin industries like transportation that are also highly dependent on overall market strength, the odds are stacked very much in favor of big players that are able to position themselves for slow and stable growth. Close-to-worst scenario for the big guys is that a new player gains a significant market share and they have to purchase them for a big premium.
It also seems that you underestimate the willingness to embrace new technologies in the trucking industry, which they have ingrained to survive in a low-margin industry. They won't like it not because it is any kind of innovation, but because they would be giving away significant control. The big guys are so resilient and successful because they try to have a hold of the supply-chain as much as possible, to be more independent of outside forces, which is exactly the same game Tesla (and Apple, etc.) are playing with their manufacturing partners.
I am generally not a Tesla fan, but I'm impressed by this truck. I think you're focusing on the wrong end of things here. In fact, your later objection answers your first!
The drivers and service managers can be as skeptical as they want to be. The company owners can replace those drivers or service managers.
The big dogs care about the bottom line, and their employees have felt the pinch all along. This will be no different.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a lobbying battle that ensues after these types of vehicles become available. With transport and shipping being such large targets in regards to emissions, banning or phasing out fossil fuels will make electric semis inevitable.
I guess the question then would be how quickly the current manufacturers can supply an offering. Manufacturers with existing business relationships and greater domain knowledge would be in a much better market position than Tesla. Being first may not help them here.
Tesla has to design and develop an entire truck, existing manufacturers just have to develop the drivetrain and plonk it in established product lines with the kinks of semi transport already ironed out.
> I wouldn't be surprised if there is a lobbying battle that ensues after these types of vehicles become available. With transport and shipping being such large targets in regards to emissions, banning or phasing out fossil fuels will make electric semis inevitable.
In Europe maybe, but the USA are still their main market, and the way things are going right now, regulations probably won't develop in their favor in the important timeframe.
Yep, big rigs are just a couple of tires and brakes. No glass, shocks, computer systems, hitches, cabling for trailers, lights, body pieces, or anything else.
I get what you are saying, but do remember Elon made a huge point of saying they are going for massive reliability, and have a 1,000,000 mile warranty on this thing.
Do you think other semi-truck producers don't engineer for "massive reliability"? They do, and even then all kinds of parts break from time to time, as that is inevitable for physical machines in use. Unless Tesla packages their vehicles with a force-field generator and an "anti-wear-and-tear"-machine to prevent all malfunctions, I don't see how they would make significant leaps in anything other than the drivetrain. Predictive maintenance, which is already a thing in modern trucks also eases the problem of wear and tear failures.
The "unbreakable" glass felt mainly like a marketing gimmick, and I'll believe it when I see it. Also, keep in mind that two years in the future, when the truck comes out, "unbreakable" glass might very realistically be a feature competitors have caught up on.
I understand and don't disagree with what you are saying, but it is worth remembering the Tesla has an order of magnitude (or two) less moving parts than any of those existing big rigs. There are simply much, much less parts to wear out.
> Also, keep in mind that two years in the future, when the truck comes out, "unbreakable" glass might very realistically be a feature competitors have caught up on.
We're not discussing what competitors are doing. We're discussing how much maintenance the Tesla will need, which has nothing to do with competitors products.
If you want to have a discussion about if the Tesla is competitive, that's a whole nother thing
Big rigs are some of the most reliable machines in the world, they regularly rack up millions of miles while in service. And they take a hell of a beating while doing it.
All the other manufacturers have been "going for massive reliability" for decades.
I've been making the point that fuel duty and car taxes (if your country has them) need to be removed and road pricing brought in.
Price per litre of diesel in the USA is about $0.75 vs $1.64 in the UK. Given that Tesla stated that the truck would pay for itself within 2 years ($200,000 in diesel savings), we're talking 11 months in the UK.
The implication is that eHGVs will radically reduce the tax revenue of countries that have focused on fuel duty creating a significant problem for road maintenance.
Dynamic road pricing, based not only on time of day, but also vehicle type, is probably the only way forward.
Like what happened after every American "big tax cut". Reduction in income instantly exposed massive waste in government, and the tax cuts were found to be deficit-neutral! /s
Can someone with more experience in the field talk about the pricing of the Tesla semi relative to other semis? Musk said it was cheaper to operate from day one, is that not amortizing purchase price into each mile? Seems a little too good to be true.
I like Elon Musk's presentation. It is nothing like Steve Jobs or any other CEO presentation. It seems like an enthusiast telling other the features and how cool it is. Also enjoyed the part that he told the audience to break the barriers and come and see it.
It seems like it will require a $5000 deposit (with a $50,000 "full deposit") and the truck will cost between $200,000 and $250,000, according to the page source.
Well shoot, if they can deliver full self driving capabilities, can I just buy one of these to live in instead of a house, cruising the freeways endlessly?
Huh, that’s pretty interesting. I guess if it’s smooth enough, doesn’t even need to spend all night cruising, can just get you to a campsite an hour out of town.
They have always known that the first few months of production were going to be "production hell" for the model 3. While the model 3 production has been worse than they hoped for (elon musk always underestimates timelines so if you know how his companies normally operate, it's normal) but a 3 month delay for a massive hardware engineering project is not end of the world.
And they have electrical hook up point for times when they are stationary. If you think it through, the time a refridgerated container spends actually connected to the truck is not all that big. It will spend more time in a port or on a ship, or even stationary at the departure point or destination.
All of the reefers I've seen have electrical hookups to power them when on ship/land and they have their own diesel powered generators to power them whilst attached to a truck.
There a a couple main reasons they have the diesel powered generator whilst attached to the truck:
1. Efficiency of the generator (truck companies don't want to spend more on fuel)
2. The truck is often stopped with the engine off (rest periods etc)
So in the short term attaching a refridgerated container to a Tesla semi wouldn't need and change in operation. In the longer term I guess it's possible that these containers will replace generators with battery pack to remove that emmission source, but they're likely to still be built into the container for the same reason outline above.
Merging into freeways is always a problem and a hazard to everyone involved. Quick acceleration makes highway safer. More pulling power also means less slow trucks on grades and less jams around them.
It is of course irrelevant for the bright future where are no human drivers.
For quantifying discrete objects, you should use "fewer", not "less". "Less" is used for aggregates, continuous media, and numeric values. So, "fewer people", but "less water".
You needn't do this. Some random bloke thought it'd be a good idea years ago, wrote it down in a book. A certain type of pedant says to themselves, oh somebody wrote it down in a book - that's the rule them. Nope.
You can't use fewer in some places, but the insistence that if you can use it then you must is an zombie rule. If "less" sounds right it's fine.
May have been a joke but 20 seconds is still really slow. I had a van that took 13 seconds on paper (although I never actually verified that) and the contents we never in danger of being tossed around.
There is also issue of highway funds. Tax on fuel goes into roads maintanence. There is no current mechanism in US to tax electric vehicles. I wonder if Tesla culculated non-yet-existing taxes into operational casts.
He mentions that the mega chargers will all be solar powered. I don't know how this will be possible as the user base grows. The amount of energy needed for even a small fleet will be huge.
In the year to 2017-Aug, total US solar generation was 72.1 TWh, amounting to 1.80% of total US electricity (predicted to reach 5% by 2022; in 2016 US solar capacity almost doubled from the year before).
Tesla semi consumption: < 2 kWh/mi
One charge: 500 miles => < 1 MWh
There are about 2 million semi trucks in the US (tractor trailers). Assume that each semi fully charges once a day, 300 days a year.
The conversion of all of the country's semis to Tesla vehicles powered with solar generation requires under 600 TWh a year, eight times current US solar level; still only 15% of current total US electricity generation. Likely within 10 years, or sooner.
One note, your second claim is not entirely true - while land vehicles are a ways from being feasible to power with photovoltaics (although I would have to do the math for trains, which may be close), we already have primarily [1] and exclusively [2] solar-powered aircraft.
Those aircraft limp along at a tenth the speed of a typical commercial flight. That's the main reason I said "effectively". I mean, there are useless pure-solar cars too.
Trains might be closer but when single locomotives are measured in megawatts I'm not very confident.
Going with a weight of 20 lbs/m^2, that's only 600 lbs - less than 1% of the fully-loaded weight.
It's fairly likely one could get well below that mass using some of the more experimental solar panel designs (such as those in use for solar aircraft), but it would probably not be cost-efficient .
So a charging station will need what, 10 hectares of land for the solar? Either that or 10 kW of grid interactive solar for marketing purposes, while absorbing the bulk of the electricity from the grid.
Does anyone with some technical knowledge of batteries and solar panels know whether it would be possible to put solar panels on top of the trailer and charge the battery that way?
The form is not checked, you can enter any arbitrary nonsense and it will let you through. I recommend using an @example.com address which won't be routed.
That seems reasonable for a box truck or similar. I'm skeptical about a semi though. I'm sure there are some use cases, just not convinced it's a significant percentage.
It also rules out consecutive/night shifts with a second driver.
> It also rules out consecutive/night shifts with a second driver.
One of the things we're learning about electrical vehicles is that they do lead to a culture change in the way people operate them.
Trucker culture currently... blows. They often eat bad food, subsist on caffeine and often other stimulants, work excruciatingly long hours, and often have or cause accidents due to those long hours. They're away from home and their families for weeks of a month. They sit in unergonomic conditions and often sleep in cramped quarters aboard their trucks. Truck drivers in India are often seen as very low class people because of this kind of living situation.
One of the biggest cultural changes happening in truck driving in India are companies switching to relaying cargo - a driver may only go 100-300 miles from home, dropping off or switching their trailer for one heading back the opposite direction, and hauling back home for the night, where the next person goes the next distance, and so on. That allows the driver to have a somewhat normal home life outside of trucking. And as it happens, relay trucking is perfect for an electrically powered system, as it forces truckers to adopt the saner living situation by having to recharge after a run. So, not only healthier, it's safer for everyone on the road and better for the environment.
> Trucker culture currently... blows. They often eat bad food, subsist on caffeine and often other stimulants, work excruciatingly long hours, and often have or cause accidents due to those long hours. They're away from home and their families for weeks of a month. They sit in unergonomic conditions and often sleep in cramped quarters aboard their trucks. Truck drivers in India are often seen as very low class people because of this kind of living situation.
In the US, this depends entirely on the company culture. Where I worked, our road drivers were home every night. In the extreme minority of cases where there wasn't a service center close enough to drive to in <4 hours, we had drivers from each end meet in the middle, exchange trailers, and go back home.
Other carriers, especially those with mostly contractors and owner/operators, don't take this approach.
> That seems reasonable for a box truck or similar. I'm skeptical about a semi though. I'm sure there are some use cases, just not convinced it's a significant percentage.
TL;DR: pickup and delivery trucks don't go very far each day and pull lighter loads. There are more pickup and delivery trucks than long-haul trucks.
Full version:
I worked for the largest LTL carrier in the country for almost a decade, in process improvement. I'm not a trucker by any means but I do feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the business processes in that industry.
There are two types of trailers typically used in the US: 53', which are generally used to move things directly from point A to point B, and 28' - "pups" - which are typically used to move things that have to go through intermediate steps. Correspondingly, the freight market is divided into "truckload"/"TL" and "less-than-truckload"/"LTL" carriers.
Truckload carriers often drop off 53' trailers at customer locations. Customers fill them up, and the carrier picks them up and takes them to their destination. They also use pups for this purpose, but 53' trailers are more efficient due to the larger capacity.
Less-than-truckload carriers pick up and deliver things that are usually on pallets. Drivers run a delivery route in the morning and a pickup route in the afternoon, pulling a single pup. They bring their pup back to the terminal where its unloaded and shipments are loaded according to their destination.
LTL carriers differ substantially from TL carriers because they have to handle customer shipments, moving them from trailer to trailer. The general flow here is Pickup -> Terminal -> Hub -> Terminal -> Delivery. Shipments going long distances may move through multiple hubs over several days, each of which may handle the shipments to more efficiently use trailer capacity.
The process improvement part of LTL that I worked in was trying to reduce loss and damages by reducing the number of times a shipment is touched. If a terminal in California has a pup full of shipments that are destined for a single terminal in North Carolina, then that trailer should never be opened until it gets to North Carolina. If half of it is destined for Utah and half for North Carolina, then the Utah stuff should be in the back, and when the trailer gets to Salt Lake City the Utah stuff should be unloaded, more North Carolina stuff put on to fill it, and it shouldn't be opened again from that point to destination.
Whew. That's a lot of background information. I wrote all of that to say - for LTL carriers, most P&D trucks don't travel long distances in a single day, and are usually pulling half the load of a long-haul truck. From an operations standpoint I see no reason why the Tesla truck wouldn't be suitable for that role.
Is a center seating position common for truck drivers?
It looks amazing, but it is different enough from my normal consumer driving experience as to make the entire product a non-starter if it were in a consumer car. I've developed decades of training and muscle memory sitting on the left side of the car.
I wonder if there will be a measurable impact on accident rates.
I live in Australia. It took about 2 days to get totally comfortable driving on the opposite side when I visited the US. I don't think it'll matter that much.
I've been back and forth from Australia to the US enough times that it takes about five minutes for my brain to adjust to driving on the other side of the road each time.
That said, my brain takes the cue from looking at what side the wheel is on (I just keep the side with myself on it close to the centre line). If I got off the plane and into a McLaren F1 then I'd probably have real problems (thankfully Avis doesn't carry twenty-year-old supercars).
I doubt accident rates will be impacted that much.
When you fly to a country that drives on the other side of the road from you and then rent a car, you are sitting on the other side of the car entirely.
It takes a couple of hours at worse to get used to it for a manual transmission, automatics are even easier.
It was, actually, because the McLaren F1 you are referring to was produced until 1998. Also those cars are changing hands for well over 10 million USD nowadays, so I'd hardly call is a 'consumer' car.
:/ The centre driving location, not sure if that is a terrible idea for pedestrian and bicycle safety. Or the opposite as closer to the other side. Guess time will tell if a lot gets squashed against fences like bikers often do in London.
What's the axle pressure compared to traditional semis?
Semis are going to be less and less popular in the EU when more countries add fees for distance driven which is proportional to wear, which is twice for a semi compared to a non-semi.
Even if they sell 5 of them it will be a success I think.
Tesla will gather a lot of (electric) truck data no one has. And at the time countries decide to ban polluting trucks Tesla will release an upgraded model.
Doubt it. Busses are most often used by local governments than by businesses, and most cities are less likely to spend that much money on a more expensive form of transportation.
I hope Tesla builds the next gen USPS delivery trucks to replace all of those loud little trucks that sound like a space shuttle launch between each mailbox.
Germany's biggest postal service, the Deutsche Post (ex state monopolist) searched for an electric delivery van and couldn't find one. So they bought a startup and developed their own:
A hybrid would well-suit the replacement of these. Something like the Chevy Volt that relies more on electricity for heavy stop/start type driving. It would also address your concerns. The engine could just run when needed to charge, and not be a constant oscillation through the RPM range through the neighborhood.
In US a solo driver can drive 11 hours before mandatory 10 hours break. Which, depending on route and traffic, puts you in 500-600 miles/day.
Rules around the world are about the same.
There are not enough simple parking spots around. So taking up on charging station problem is a bigger task than the truck itself.
In the presentation they suggest they are targetting customers who can get from A-B in one charge, and then charge while they are unloading/reloading the truck. Those customers actually save time on fueling.
Otherwise he states 400 miles charge in 30 minutes. So with assumed breaks every 5-6 hours for food and bathroom, and with apparently legal requirements for drivers to take breaks - it seems like it won't be an issue (so long as there are charging stations at enough locations).
mileage, how well will it be in hilly country? the run down 75 from Cincinnati, that whole route to Atlanta or nearby is one nightmare of hills till you get past Knoxville.
are their range calculations going to hold up, most truckers don't have the luxury of running across the plains or the equivalent all day. throw in they run in all weather so how much will those range numbers drop?
They need a huge battery to make long-haul feasible (both from a range standpoint and a charging speed standpoint) and to make the battery last longer even on short trips.
And you have less resistive losses if you use multiple motors (or, say, one large motor) than one motor (or a small motor) for the same load due to: Power loss from resistance = I^2*R (resistance increases, but current decreases proportionally for the same load, so your power loss reduces).
So if you're going for efficiency and long-haul battery life, you already need a big battery and lots of electric motor power. You can leverage that for really strong regenerative braking, which translates to extremely long brake life and further efficiency (as well as being quieter). This also means you can go faster up AND down hills (speed down hills for trucks is limited by brake heating... if you're doing regenerative braking, very little heat is generated).
Also, by using multiple model 3 motors, they can get access to economies of scale that a small-run truck usually can't, which means you can afford to spend more on putting more motor in there.
So you end up with a truck that can do 0-60 in 20s with full load due mostly to other engineering considerations.
I was wondering if the best early markets to target might be in the European Union. First of all, at least on the PR-side of things we seem to be a bit more into sustainability; more companies might want to get these just to get a good public reputation. But aside from that it might make more economic sense too.
So I tried a rough estimation.
TL;DR: I made a very, very rough estimation which suggests that if Tesla's original cost per mile number is accurate, it could be very successful in a handful of European countries, for companies that do not transport cargo internationally.
Making worst-case assumptions about the average costs at each step, switching to the Tesla Semi would be a net increase in costs of 19¢/mile on average.
Making slightly-more-lenient assumptions about electricity costs, switching would give a 28¢/mile savings on average (compared to their claimed 25¢/mile in the USA).
The best-case scenario for Tesla would be a trucking company in Norway that only delivers inside Norway, because then that number improves to somewhere between 59¢/mile to 80¢/mile.
Also, they need to give more context for the $200k+ fuel savings claim, because it seems a bit suspicious: they claim a savings of 25¢/mile, but fuel cost is only a fraction of that. So you would need to travel like a million miles before you reach that amount, which would take over two to three decades at the average distance covered by a truck each year.
I'm not an economist, and a lot of ridiculous assumptions were made in these calculation, so don't take it too seriously.
Still reading? Down the rabbit hole we go...
In the reveal video Tesla claims a cost of $1.51/mile for diesel vs $1.26/mile for their semi[0], so a 25¢/mile savings (I'm going to ignore the convoy savings for now). This assumes fuel costs of $2.50/gallon and 7¢/kwH.
Oh, BTW: the estimated average miles per year is 45k in the US[1]. So at 25¢/mile that would be $11.25k saved per truck in the US on average - which presumably includes costs saved on repairs. Again: where does that $200k+ fuel savings number come from?
Now, in Europe gas prices are (on average) much higher than the USA. What would be the price per mile here? Well, to estimate that that we must also look at how the price of electricity compares between Europe and the USA.
For diesel, I looked at globalpetrolprices.com[1][2]. It does not provide an average for all of the EU (nor prices per US state, for that matter). Truckers will often plan in such a way that they fill up in the countries on their route with lower gas prices, so let's err on the side of caution and make it $5/mile. To compare the relative difference I'll take the current average US price, which is $2.83/mile. So gas is 1.8x more expensive at the moment, on average.
Now, we do not know the MPG Tesla assumed for diesel trucks. Lets go with the worst-case comparison again, which would be 8 MPG. Increasing $2.83/gallon to $5.00/gallon, that mean be an increase of 27.12¢/mile. Making the improbably assumption that all other costs relevant to this calculation are equal, we can just add that to Tesla's number of $1.51/mile, and end up with $1.78/mile for diesel in Europe.
For electricity I looked up the official governmental statistics provided for electricity USA and European Union[3][4]. Taking the provided national averages, and converting the Euro to US dollars at the current rate of 1.00 to 1.18, I get these numbers:
USA: 12.90¢/kWh residential, 9.89¢/kWh transportation, 7.23¢/kWh industrial (August 2016 - more recent statistics exist but I figure we should compare the same time period)
Note that these numbers make Tesla's claim seem a bit fishy, since they assumed 7¢/kWh for the USA, which you don't even get with industrial scale costs.
Europe does not distinguish transportation from other sectors yet, but the worst-case scenario would be using their domestic prices compared to the USA's transportation prices. That would be about 1.5x more expensive, still not as much as diesel.
(I added industrial electricity prices because perhaps a large transportation company with a fleet of electric vehicles and their own charging stations would use so much electricity that they would need industrial energy contracts. At that point the comparison obviously gets a whole lot rosier)
We don't know how much of a factor fuel price is in the price per mile calculation of the Tesla Semi. If we take their claim of lower maintenance costs at face value, it should be a bigger portion of the total. Now, the even-worse-that-worst case scenario would be assuming it's all of it, since that would give the biggest adjustment, and that the relative difference is equal to the domestic price difference:
$1.26/mile * (15.51¢/kWh / 9.89¢/kWh) = $1.97/mile, for a net increase of 19¢/mile.
If we take the relative difference between domestic prices as our starting point, it becomes better again:
$1.26/mile * (15.51¢/kWh / 12.90¢/kWh) = $1.51/mile, for a net savings of 28¢/mile.
So, using the worst possible adjustment for diesel and electricity prices, worst MPG, and worse-than-worse price-per-mile adjustment for Tesla, the economic benefits of switching to these will still be bigger in Europe.
Now lets look at the country with (probably) the best numbers for Tesla: Norway. Despite being an oil-exporting country, it has the highest price per gallon (except Iceland), and lower price per kWh than the USA:
Keeping everything else worst-case-scenario for Tesla as before:
(6.99-2.83 $/gallon) / 8 MPG = 0.52¢/mile, for a total of $2.03/mile for diesel
$1.26 * 11.30 / 9.89 = $1.44/mile for Tesla, or 59¢/mile saved.
If we assume domestic-to-domestic, the ratio becomes 11.30/12.90. The worst case scenario here would be assuming equal percentage of price per mile as diesel:
$2.5/gallon / 8 MPG = 31.25¢/mile, or 31.25/1.51 = 20.7% of total price per mile
(($1.26 * 79.3) + ($1.26 * 20.7) * 11.30 / 12.90) / 100 = $1.23/mile, for a total of 80¢/mile saved.
... for a total of 80¢/mile saved.
Of course, a proper cost calculation would be much more complicated, since it would depend on the routes your transport company takes, where you are located, how big the company is, etc.
With so many countries I can only assume it requires more red tape to get their semi through all the required tests in Europe (even with EU-wide standards simplifying things there), but it would probably worth it for Tesla to target specific countries with higher fuel costs and lower electricity costs.
Tangent: in the process of looking this up, I discovered that fueleconomy.gov does not have a section for semi-trucks[5]. I wonder if that was blocked by the automotive industry on purpose.
Wow not just a semi truck but a new super car? I always wondered what they could do if there weren't trying to make the cars affordable to most of the population, I guess this is it.
620 mile range is disgustingly insane, I wonder how they were able to pull it off. I can't imagine cramming more batteries would help weight and speed, maybe it uses some kind of different battery technology to get that kind of power storage.
Tesla isn't really that affordable. It's more like the iPhone of electric cars: they're trying to make the best electric car everybody wants. Renault/Nissan are the ones trying to make it affordable. I read the Zoe is a best seller, although in rather too low volumes compared to ICE cars.
When you have hundreds of thousands of customers with paid reservations waiting for Model 3s, why on Earth would you spend resources launching another product line? It’s madness.
Because the "make a new product" teams and the "fix the battery manufacturing process" teams are mostly different teams. Engineers are not entirely fungible.
It's not just battery manufacturing, it's everything manufacturing. It's clear that Musk (therefore Tesla) is addicted to the rush of developing and releasing new products but are loathe to dedicate time towards the boring, iterative process of manufacturing optimization. To the point of farming out as much manufacturing as possible to third parties (Panasonic, China).
It's clear they want to be a design shop in the vein of an Apple, as opposed to an industrial manufacturer like GM/Ford/GE. I would not be surprised to see them offshore manufacturing more and more in the future (see their recent China deal).
I LOLed at this one. Supercars want lots of downforce so they don't constantly go off the road and you die. They're not built for low Cd. A Toyota Prius has 35% lower drag coefficient than a Bugatti Veyron.
It's like when the "superfruit" people go "look at this amazing berry, it has 20% more vitamin C than a lemon!" Well yeah, an orange has 70% more vitamin than a lemon. Marketing wank for the uninformed masses.
> On empty 30 min of charging will get you 400 miles.
I did a double take here. To do that we're talking ~ 1000 kWh drawn from the grid in 30 min; that's pulling 2 megawatts of power. None of the existing Supercharger installations come close to providing enough power for even one truck.
It also means that on the distribution grid, a charging station for 8 semis will need a dedicated 20 MVA 33/11 kV distribution transformer, plus 4 11kV/480V transformers. Unless you manage to keep those charging slots filled 90% of the time, that's going to be bloody expensive electricity.
There will likely be huge fields of solar cells scattered across the nation with countless trucks pouring through. There is no way this is not the future, even if Tesla doesn't pull it off. But who else is even trying?
Musk stated in the presentation that they plan to use solar with on-site battery storage at these "Mega-Charger" stations and will guarantee a max electricity cost $0.07/kWh. No grid needed (my phrase, not his). Not sure if it is doable, but that is the plan.
> It also means that on the distribution grid, a charging station for 8 semis will need a dedicated 20 MVA 33/11 kV distribution transformer, plus 4 11kV/480V transformers.
FYI the 500 mile range figure is fully loaded (cargo is at maximum load for U.S. roads). They claim "80% of routes are less than 250 miles", so they say that the truck can take most routes back and forth without needing to charge.
The million miles is on the drive train. I don't remember if they mentioned the battery warranty?
IIRC the cost per mile in a convoy that they quoted was $0.83/mile.
Same enhanced auto driving features of current Teslas. Automatic breaking, etc.
EDIT1: The dash is the wheel and two screens (left and right). Supposedly their software has all the integrations drivers need, so they don't need to slap other 3rd party devices into their vehicle (which they describe as a problem for existing trucks. I have no clue one way or the other).
Most semi-trucks are filled with proprietary technologies. Then more such is layered on by fleets, leasing companies, maintenance providers, etc.
Little of it natively works together. The contractual limitations are nuts.
From what I recall technology often isn't shared between automobile and truck manufacturing companies owned by the same parent because of these restrictions.
Even if each truck is manned, the increased safety from having rear trucks tied in with the front truck might reduce insurance premiums enough to make it viable. Especially if you can give the front truck a "pilot and co-pilot" setup (or good enough AI to simulate that with human pilot and AI co-pilot).
When you think about it, tax payers subsidized the cost of fuel now. Defense spending related to the Middle East is a large petroleum fuel production externality. I wonder if we’ll reduce our defense spending once we loose our dependence on oil?
That's 10,000 Nm (aka 7375 ft-lbs) wheel torque. The hellcat has 650 ft-lbs engine torque. First gear in the hellcat is 4.71:1 and rear axle ratio of 2.62:1, which gives you 8021 ft-lb at the wheel at torque peak. In second gear, we have 5347.
So, a small car with more wheel torque than a Hellcat in 2nd gear, nice!
Generally wheel torque would be quoted in the gear that gives you a 1:1 (or close to) ratio. Hence in a lot of cars a dyno run will be done in 4th gear as higher gears are generally overdrive gears. Also your calc is missing the final drive ratio.
It might do better than 300mph if they can build tires capable of holding the car down in one piece. I’m not kidding, I do genuinely suspect that’s a possibility given the figures they announced. I’d wager that’s part of why they wouldn’t commit, because they aren’t sure what it can do yet and have been working with Michelin or Pirelli to find out.
It’s hard to comprehend 1.9 pushing a battery pack. If that thing doesn’t break 300, it’ll flirt.
This isn't anywhere near as impressive as one might think: a Veyron has a pretty bad drag coefficient because of the amount of cooling intakes it has (turns out cooling an engine producing over 1000PS takes a lot of air).
That is the reason they chose that comparison. a.) everyone thinks a Veyron must have a good coefficient b.) they know it's not that good. Basics of modern marketing (also "low fat high sugar", "low carb high fat", "organic sugar", ...)
I'm pretty sure that Musk and most of the potential buyers are aware about this. But consider this - if Roadster has exact same road performance as Veyron (accel, max speed, cornering speed etc.) while being more streamlined that makes technically superior to Veyron. Imagine a concrete brick on wheels that has the same road performance as Veyron - its engine and aux controls should be insane and deserve an award on its own, but as a complete car it would less impressive as a Veyron despite being the same on the road.
The semi is quite interesting. The presentation was a bit underwhelming, Elon was very nervous and the stuttering wasn't something I expected. To me this shows how great Steve Jobs was salesman, when he did his presentations.
Elon Musk decided that spending days or a week preparing for a presentation is not the best use of his time. At least that much time is generally what it takes to pull off a really smooth presentation. I heard that he does not script them and just does them off the top of his head.
Tim Urban has a great essay about different levels of prep people do for talks [1] which he wrote when preparing to give a Ted talk. Musk's talks are on the "Wing it" side of prep while a Ted talk is suppose to be on the "Follow an exact script - Happy-Birthday-Level memorized" level.
Considering Tesla is depending on it's image to get more money to fill the gap of it's ever deepening losses, spending days preparing a presentation is the best use of his time.
Tesla has a price-to-sale ration of nearly 6, while Nissan and GM are <0.5. So Tesla is mostly image and vision, not reality. Therefore it depends on Musks presentations with visions of a glorious future.
I don't think Elon Musk's plan is to build up Tesla as a huge pyramid scheme, cash out at the peak, and move to Mars before he gets arrested. He is running a couple of very technical companies and is down in the trenches working 80-100 hours weeks to keep them moving forward as fast as possible. Getting the Model 3 up to a production rate of 5,000 a week is what will start to prove out Tesla's current stock price, not a slick demo.
"[...] as long as 1) wealthy consumers in western
nations but also China are eager to seek indulgence
by way of green-washing and, 2) are in search of a
Steve Jobs replacement persona onto which they can
project their hopes for a gleaming future and,
3) are disillusioned with the establishment and
its leaders, the company will likely succeed to
raise cash again."
> Tesla has a price-to-sale ration of nearly 6, while Nissan and GM are <0.5. So Tesla is mostly image and vision, not reality.
The stock price is not the arbiter of whether a company is vision or reality. Nothing would change about those companies if public opinion suddenly shifted and made those ratios go the other way.
Or maybe Tesla's "image and vision" stem from its founder's tendency to completely ignore sideline commentary on non-substantive issues and focus on product.
Could it be that the stuttering is part of Musk's brand? Why try to be someone else? The Apple inspired pauses for applause at many tech reveals are cringe-worthy, e.g.
agreed. However, what elon is selling resonates with me well enough that his speech qualities don't matter to me and don't seem to matter to the crowd/most other people either.
doesn’t panasonic make tesla’s batteries? even if tesla does make their own batteries, their primary product is automobiles. are other car makers engine companies? (of course some car companies do sell their engines to other car companies, but i think the point i am making is still clear.)
I did emphasize the 'a', right? They are not a car company; not just any car company; not like any other car company on Earth (or Mars, come the day). Thank goodness, this shows in more or less all aspects of their marketing and PR.
Also, as someone says below, they're a battery company.
Does being a battery company make them more adept at streaming? gp's point was that streaming is not a Tesla core competency, not that they are particularly bad at it because they are a car company.
Yes. One requires attention to a huge number of details, to be certain that many systems work together flawlessly. The other, you can just reload if it screws up.
I really wish they'd just use Twitch. Twitch can handle tens of thousands of viewers on esports matches. I'm sure it can handle some thousands of nerds wanting to look at trucks.
Nice! Fun to imagine this with bog standard random shipping container in the back... Or will everything have to switch to shiny silver tesla shipping containers?
Asking for an email to watch? For something like this? Are they planning to spam people after to try and sell product? Some marketing manager is being a bit old company on this one.
I've just checked. 0-60 in 1.9s is only 0.3s slower than F1 record, and it seems to be below the typical one.
"Formula One race cars have been recorded to reach 0-60 as fast as 1.6 seconds, however the typical range for modern day F1 cars is between 2.1 to 2.7 seconds."
This is 1,000% an unsolved problem, with an extra helping of fuck you Google and Facebook.
I browser without cookies and generally from Asian VPNs, and as far as I can tell, nobody is remotely respecting the browser’s language. Google have also recently started showing English language search results in Thailand with archaic Thai-language dates, which is also insane.
How are they doing this without triggering a browser prompt to allow my location to be sent by browser? The result for me was very accurate. Why wouldn't all the ecommerce sites use this method? I keep denying their prompts to access my location otherwise.
Since I can't see anything except a spinning wheel on the button and "Event in progress" here are my questions for others:
What is the payload (tongue) capacity?
What is the tow (pull) capacity?
Is there any mention of being able to pull a fifth wheel?
This live stream consistently causes the first crash I’ve noticed in ages: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1418059. Yes, when you use Firefox Nightly as your browser it does just occasionally cause trouble. But mostly it’s just awesome.
It's cute. No trucking company is going to add it to it's fleet though... after thinking about SigmundA's research and coming from a family of Truckers - I can't see how this will help/work. It's just a cool thing to see and boost company image. Trucker's don't want to drive a lone. Trucker's usually have people along for a ride or a sleeper cab. Sitting in the middle would suck. I sincerely doubt this thing can haul loads of more than 12.5tons.
* What happens when a wheel seal goes? Do I have to remove all that ridiculous plastic on #2,3 axels??
* What happens when a tire blows? Is it going to destroy all that plastic and take out a few more tires in the process?
* Why all the glass? I've spend entire days replacing windshields for a 12 or so truck shop which generally come in two (drivers and passengers), the Tesla semi would require a crane and expensive replacements.
* Why is there no bumper or frame attachment points? Bumpers save the truck from damage, no one wants to buy $xxxxx front end, lights, etc when a deer in the bushes jumps into the middle of the road.
Honestly from my point of view it seems Tesla tried to apply personal EV to a semi. Did they do any research from tractor shops or mechanics? There is a HUGE reason tractor/trailers are easy to service.