Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2

[5030]

Mr Positive!

(I know, realistic, but still… )

Still what? I'm 72 and a cancer survivor. If I see 80, I'll be surprised.....

 

[5030]

40+ years ago I knew a propane outfit that converted all their road tractors to run on propane. They took a Cummins 903 V8 diesel engine, added a distributor, coil and machined the heads for spark plugs and they would pull like no tomorrow. They could spin the drive tires on dry pavement with the trailers (bottles) fully loaded. Nothing new tech wise there.

 

[MossRoad]

Still what? I'm 72 and a cancer survivor. If I see 80, I'll be surprised.....

I know a lot of folks that survived much longer than any of them thought. Mother in law is a 14 year liver transplant survivor. We thought she was done, but the transplant let her live.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I guess I had missed the Light-year 0 concept car.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Navistar has a sad history of product development. Built the Powerstroke for Ford until 2011. Both the 6.0L and 6.4L were such a reliability disaster that Ford built the 6.7L themselves.

Navistar is trying to buy parts off the shelf. They are not going to design and build their own electric motor, battery, or control electronics. They get away with this buying conventional ICE, transmission, and other components so it is very hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

On the other hand the Tesla Semi is home designed and built by people with a track record of doing the impossible and pushing boundaries. Tesla says their semi will consume less than 2kWh/mile at 80,000 pounds, with 300 or optional 500 mile range. This means at least 1000 kWh battery.

"440/3 (220A) can kill you or cook you in a second. Cannot imagine hooking one up in the rain... " I wonder what else might kill someone? We connect 120 kW Tesla Superchargers in the rain all the time. Even the new 250 kW. I know the 120 kW is 400VDC at 300A. No one has ever been shocked. I have written before how amazing Tesla's technology that allows common untrained idiots to make such a high power connection. Even in the rain.

440/3 at 220A is 168 kW. 90 minutes, if it was possible to charge at the 100% rate for the full 90 minutes, the Navistar is only 250 kWh.

Tesla has not published charge rates for the Semi but prototypes have been spotted using an "octopus" connected to at least 6 Superchargers at 120 kW each. A logical guess would be the 1000 kWh battery consists of (10) 100 kWh Model X/S battery assemblies. Each of which could be charged separately using (10) BCMs Tesla is already building. So with (10) 250 kW Superchargers one could be in/out pretty quickly.

But no one has said the intended use of a Tesla Semi is coast-to-coast crossings but haters like to pretend every use is the worst case. Early pre-sales have been to big distribution services where the truck goes out in the morning and returns by evening, often several times. Or out in the evening and back by morning. To local stores and back. Where they can build large charging stations at the distribution warehouse. This would be a very natural and productive use of an EV semi.

Long haul trucks spend a lot of time just sitting. That's why the truck stop parking lots are full, and then there are the deliveries.

 

[5030]

Long haul trucks spend a lot of time just sitting. That's why the truck stop parking lots are full, and then there are the deliveries.

My buddy's 50 units don't sit at all, ever unless they break down. He has teams in all of them and it's all drop and hook. Fed Ex makes all the deliveries. Hoe UPS works too.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

The issue with all of it distills down to the national grid and it's ability or inability to support the added load and presently it's not capable of it and will only get worse, not better as baseload capacity is taken off line.

EV people are living in a dream world far as I'm concerned. the reality is, as the load increases, the chance of failure also increases.

It's like catch 22. You want it, but it's not readily available.

Far as Navistar is concerned, I don't follow them at all other than my 97 F350 has a Navistar 7.3 forged rod engine that is reliable as a rock.

There is no "national grid." It would be a good idea to build one, if the Luddites in Congress would ever get out of the way and start addressing America's future.

As for supply capacity, we have to rebuild most of our generating capacity anyway. It wears out. The old system was never going to work long term.

 

[Grumpycat]

There is no "national grid." It would be a good idea to build one, if the Luddites in Congress would ever get out of the way and start addressing America's future.

I think it would be an awful idea. What if the geniuses in Washington D.C. forced all the mistakes of California and Texas on the entire nation?

 

[Citydude]

Wyoming can produce its own oil, natural gas and coal for power.

Maybe we ought to stop giving it away for penny's and reap the benefits we worked hard for.

The East and West coasts can go dark as far as I'm concerned.

 

[5030]

There is no "national grid." It would be a good idea to build one, if the Luddites in Congress would ever get out of the way and start addressing America's future.

As for supply capacity, we have to rebuild most of our generating capacity anyway. It wears out. The old system was never going to work long term.

I disagree, all power companies trade power back and forth across states and regions so far as I'm concerned, it's a national grid and most of it is marginal.