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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
byjacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) writes:
China has a lot of large cities, a lot of trucking is probably just inside those areas where an electric truck can really shine and where that lack of emissions really makes a difference.
It's still a huge country and I wonder if they rely on long haul over-the-road trucking as much as the USA does or if they offload a lot of that to rail.
byAmiMoJo ( 196126 ) writes:
Europe has long distance EV trucks, and they are just fine. 1.2MW chargers too.
China developed very large EV battery packs years before we did though. They had busses with 400kWh packs back in the mid 2010s. It's actually a little surprising that it's taken them this long to electrify trucks.
byMacMann ( 7518492 ) writes:
Europe has long distance EV trucks, and they are just fine. 1.2MW chargers too.
I have a suspicion that what Europe calls "long distance" trucking is quite different than what the USA calls "long distance" trucking. Pick a random European nation and tell me the longest drive a citizen would have to make to get to their nation's capital city. 3 hours? Maybe 4 hours? Certainly trucks can drive more than 4 hours in Europe to reach some destination but I have a suspicion this is rare given that moving cargo by water or rail would be cheaper. We have rivers and rail in the USA but with people spread so thin over such a large area there's not the same kind of volume of cargo headed in the same direction to make moving cargo by water or rail feasible.
Electric trucks are hardly a new thing. There were electric milk trucks ages ago, when milk deliveries to homes were a thing. This worked because the routes the trucks took were often short, they ran quietly which was a bonus as they'd often run their routes while people were still sleeping, and the weight of the truck batteries weren't an issue because they'd not be carrying so much milk at a time that they'd overload the road.
With a typical long haul truck it might carry something like 300 pounds/kg/whatever of diesel fuel which if electric would mean more like 3000 pounds/kg/whatever of batteries for getting anything similar in range. With short haul trucks like milk delivery or mail delivery that extra mass isn't a big deal because they just don't carry as much weight on a short distance. With long haul trucks that extra weight will impact how much cargo they can carry, and that will impact profits for having less cargo to meet road weight limits and longer stops to recharge the batteries.
Europe is very different than the USA in so many ways so comparisons on trucks, railroads, public transit, and similar matters do not follow. When any point in your nation is at most a 6 hour drive away that makes things very different than a nation where it could be a 2 day drive from one point to another, assuming no stops to sleep. To follow DOT rules on how many hours allowed driving in a day this can be 6 days than 6 hours.
I don't know how truck driving works in China but there could be some parallels with the USA given that the USA and China are of similar area. But then things could be very different given population distribution and that there's considerable restrictions on movement inside China that don't exist in the USA. That could explain why electric trucks work so well in China but continue to fail in catching on in the USA.
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byshilly ( 142940 ) writes:
To be fair, he spouts complete utter tosh about nuclear too. Is there a subject where he *doesn't* spout complete utter tosh? I've not seen it
byThe Terminator ( 300566 ) writes:
There are strict rules for driving time and mandatory breaks. All over Europe, a driver must make a 45 minute break after every 4 h driving time and there is a hard limitation on driving time per day 9 h. Furthermore there is a limitation of 40 h of worktime per week. A Daimler eActros 600 semi has an average range of 700 - 800 km. At an average speed of 80 km/h, you drive ca. 300 km in 4 hours and recharge about 250 km at 300 kW in that 45 minutes break. In most countries in western and central Europe, the
byThe Terminator ( 300566 ) writes:
Addendum:
In most european countries there is road charge for trucks on highways and most of the discount that charge for electric trucks. In Germany this charge amounts to 0.35€/km and it is discounted to zero until end of 2031.
At 200 working days per year and an average travel distance of 600 km/day, this amounts to an annual advantage of 42000€ per truck and per year compared to a diesel powered one.
bySique ( 173459 ) writes:
Your whole argument hinges on the idea that long distance trucking happens within an European country.
And that's plain wrong. Long distance trucking in Europe mainly means transporting goods from the large harbors in the Mediterranean (Genoa, Piraeus) and at the Northern Sea (Rotterdam, Hamburg) to the large industrial centers and back. Additionally, trucks are transporting raw materials, furniture and similar goods from Eastern Europe to the West and machines and machine parts to the East. This means cro
byshilly ( 142940 ) writes:
You are, of course, completely correct about all this. But he's also incorrect about driving times within European countries. The UK is hardly very big, but it'll take 7 hours on a good day to drive from Glasgow to London, nine from Aberdeen, 5 from Plymouth, 6 from Penzance, 6 from Holyhead to catch the ferry to Northern Island, etc.
These are car journey times: it'll actually take much longer in a truck, because they're subject to lower speed limits and mandatory rest breaks.
bycaseih ( 160668 ) writes:
Nope. European long haul truckers driver every bit as far as American ones do. Thousands of km. Do you understand how vast Europe really is? Watch s few of electric trucker's videos. He did a 5000 km trip recently.
byarcade ( 16638 ) writes:
> Pick a random European nation and tell me the longest drive a citizen would have to make to get to their nation's capital city.
Norway.
Driving from Hammerfest to Oslo will take you 23 hours if you drive via Finland and Sweden.
If you keep within Norway, approximately 32 hours.
●nt threshold.
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