Re:Winnebago’s Electric Motorhome Prototype
by AtlasBarfed on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @05:47PM
(#34511710)
Part of the strong push for the highway self-driving especially in trucking is that you can utilize superhighways late at night for more truck transport, and since there is vastly less consumer traffic inter-city in the US, you COULD drive the vehicles at 40 mph rather than 55-75mph.
People bash Tesla, rightly so, for their exaggerations in timelines and AI bullshit, but one place they have generally kept to their projections is battery engineering, drivetrain efficiency, performance of the vehicles. Tesla says the car does 0-60 in 2.5 seconds? Well, it does. Tesla says the car goes XXX miles in normal temperature, wind, 65 mph? Well, it does.
Here's a teslarati story about the 500 mile trip (teslarati is about as pro-tesla as it gets, but what I care about it the route and battery levels that are there:
There are youtubes as well. Now, it is an EV land demo, so time will tell if there was a hidden fuel cell or a single-use battery. They probably played some games with tailwinds, but there are big climbs in there. And "highway speed" for a semi is different than for a car. On the climb, the Tesla probably gets to do what ICE trucks do: drive at 30-40mph even though the torque in the Tesla can handle climbs far better.
If they were in Colorado, they could be playing some games with the altitude. BEVs don't have the oxygen / thin air problems that ICEs do at altitude, and get the benefit of the reduced drag.
That was allegedly a megawatt-hour battery, aka 10x a Model S battery, probably cobalt/nickel. However, 200-230 wh/kg LFP is coming to mass production next year, and since those chemistries are far safer they don't need active cooling, they are a lot closer to NMC chemistries in overall pack density. So a 500 mile truck with NMC might be 400 miles with LFP, and that would be a big thing too.
The trucks are going to delivery with early pilot customer (PepsiCo) and while NDAs will likely about, if the truck range is total bullshit it will get out.
The GVW should be reduced by the heavier semi, but what is critical to remember is that electricity is cheaper than fuel, and with wind/solar continuing to drop in price by almost 10-20% per year, operating costs will drop. IN THEORY the BEV drivetrain has far less components and should be cheaper to maintain. Battery costs will drop substantially in the future (The Lithium and Sodium Sulfur chemistries may double the range of semis or more, or alternatively drop the weight of the semi with smaller batteries).
Rail has pretty good efficiencies with diesel-electric, maybe the sulfur chemistries will allow the trains to switch to all-electric. I am definitely NOT a hydrogen enthusiast, but hydrogen may be the way to go with trains since the refueling infrastructure is so much more concentrated. But rail may be waiting for solid state, sodium-sulfur, or lithium-sulfur technologies, which may deliver densities and cost advantages that even the mature diesel-electric locomotives can't compete with.
Anyway, safe to say that the Tesla will be at least a 300 mile functional tractor for a semi, and that's the 1.0 version. We'll see.
People bash Tesla, rightly so, for their exaggerations in timelines and AI bullshit, but one place they have generally kept to their projections is battery engineering, drivetrain efficiency, performance of the vehicles. Tesla says the car does 0-60 in 2.5 seconds? Well, it does. Tesla says the car goes XXX miles in normal temperature, wind, 65 mph? Well, it does.
Here's a teslarati story about the 500 mile trip (teslarati is about as pro-tesla as it gets, but what I care about it the route and battery levels that are there:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-semi-full-500-mile-single-ch...
There are youtubes as well. Now, it is an EV land demo, so time will tell if there was a hidden fuel cell or a single-use battery. They probably played some games with tailwinds, but there are big climbs in there. And "highway speed" for a semi is different than for a car. On the climb, the Tesla probably gets to do what ICE trucks do: drive at 30-40mph even though the torque in the Tesla can handle climbs far better.
If they were in Colorado, they could be playing some games with the altitude. BEVs don't have the oxygen / thin air problems that ICEs do at altitude, and get the benefit of the reduced drag.
That was allegedly a megawatt-hour battery, aka 10x a Model S battery, probably cobalt/nickel. However, 200-230 wh/kg LFP is coming to mass production next year, and since those chemistries are far safer they don't need active cooling, they are a lot closer to NMC chemistries in overall pack density. So a 500 mile truck with NMC might be 400 miles with LFP, and that would be a big thing too.
The trucks are going to delivery with early pilot customer (PepsiCo) and while NDAs will likely about, if the truck range is total bullshit it will get out.
The GVW should be reduced by the heavier semi, but what is critical to remember is that electricity is cheaper than fuel, and with wind/solar continuing to drop in price by almost 10-20% per year, operating costs will drop. IN THEORY the BEV drivetrain has far less components and should be cheaper to maintain. Battery costs will drop substantially in the future (The Lithium and Sodium Sulfur chemistries may double the range of semis or more, or alternatively drop the weight of the semi with smaller batteries).
Rail has pretty good efficiencies with diesel-electric, maybe the sulfur chemistries will allow the trains to switch to all-electric. I am definitely NOT a hydrogen enthusiast, but hydrogen may be the way to go with trains since the refueling infrastructure is so much more concentrated. But rail may be waiting for solid state, sodium-sulfur, or lithium-sulfur technologies, which may deliver densities and cost advantages that even the mature diesel-electric locomotives can't compete with.
Anyway, safe to say that the Tesla will be at least a 300 mile functional tractor for a semi, and that's the 1.0 version. We'll see.