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Originally Posted by nitrohorse
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That's 500 miles on a good day I suppose. And what is the curb weight of a Tesla? Maybe around 4500 pounds? So a class A diesel truck's GVW is 80K pounds with the tractor accounting for 18-20K pounds. I'm wondering just how much battery is going to be needed to move a load of that weight at highway speeds and just how far that battery is going to hold up under that kind of load.
And obviously the terrain is going to come into play for say, driving through Colorado on I-70, tackling those 11K foot elevations in the extremely rural areas, even as a solo rig.
Personally, I think we are light years away from this becoming a reality, at least from a commercial truck point of view. Otherwise it appears we will need at least twice the number of trucks to do the job that are being done by the number we run today. And with the shortage of drivers/trucks we are currently experiencing, that is just not going to be happening. Seriously, we don't have enough places to park as it is with the number of trucks on the road right now.
And have you ever seen the number of trucks refueling at a truck stop and how jammed these places get? We can usually get fueled in about 15-20 minutes after we wait in line for a bit. I don't see this being possible with plugging in a charging cord. Oh, and that fueling time counts against the DOT/FMCSA clock that the drivers have to adhere to.
And articles like this one don't help the case for alternative fueled commercial trucks:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...emi-truck-demo
I think these states that have jumped on the EV wagon and made commitments like outlawing diesel fuel sales or diesel truck sales by a certain date have gotten ahead of the technology. WAY ahead!
Maybe these scientist should look at the concept of just "beaming" objects and people from one location to another, like they did on the Starship Enterprise. Then we wouldn't need cars or trucks, right?!
