Tesla is fast

I am amazed at how quickly they are building Superchargers. My home town Frederick, MD had a bank of 8 chargers which would often be more than half full. Given the sharing of each charger between two "hoses", this means someone is not getting the most rapid charge rate. About 200 yards away they installed another bank of eight, 250 kW charging units.

A spot I sometimes charge on my way to the airport in Laural, MD, now has three stations of Superchargers while it used to have only one! Again, all the new ones are 250 kW with no sharing which will charge each car as quickly as possible.

It's funny to watch Larkin rage against the light. As BEVs take over transportation, when do you think Larkin will throw in the towel and acknowledge BEVs are the better solution? In many ways, they are the Jetson mobile doing everything but fly. Actually, I seem to recall the Jetson mobile leaving a trail of exhaust. I guess they weren't all that forward thinking.

More FUD. Usually you post real information. What bee is up your bonnet about BEV trucks?

Biggest problem is to maintain the current truck/driver model, where they are driving 8 to 10 hours of the same truck. In that case, we might need upward of 10,000 pounds of batteries. However, there are always shorter hauls where they can decouple the drivers with trucks/trailers, or go with hybrid diesel/EV.

Glad you read the part about needing starting torque and freight trains.

Long ago I toured general motor's EMD locomotive factory in IL. It was a fascinating plant with largest of all machine tools. They eventually shifted new production to Kansas and Canada, then the company got sold a bunch of times. I think the Canadian plant is gone now too. GM's vehicles are trash, but their giant diesel engines are spot on.

EVs all about tax credits and climate nonsense. Absent those, there wouldn't be any.

What happened to the Tesla semi? I'd think that truck drivers are too smart to buy into that.

bitrex snipped-for-privacy@example.net wrote in news:5pN5K.130148$ snipped-for-privacy@fx08.iad:

There is an 8500HP funny car that launches to 100MPH in 0.8 sec.

Those DD1s ran off about 600 volts DC, at the time the wire diameter for the rotor & stator field coils must've been pretty large, too.

Maybe they were designed by bus-people, or Budd forgot a bunch of what it learned about RDC design in the time between 1945 and 1975...

large wheels avoided a gear between the slow steam engine, fast spinning bearings, and large wheels also have more traction

look like this train has about a 4:1 gearing between the motor and wheels

Drivers can only be on duty for 8 hours before being required to take a 30-minute break. They can only drive for 11 hours total before having to take a much longer time off. In a 30 minute break, charging can restore some 70-80% of the initial range. Call it 75%, so 11 hours of driving can extend to 175% of the initial range. 11 hr x 65 mph = 715 miles requires a vehicle range of over 400 miles. That's not a stretch in any way. Tesla is planning 300 and 500 mile versions. I can't tell you the weight of those batteries, but Tesla is saying they will not have to give up significantly on the payload capacity, "less than 1 ton", according to Musk.

Batteries are improving all the time. A couple of automakers are saying in three or so years they will be offering solid state batteries with better performance. There's no reason to think electric semi trucks are in any way not happening.

Hucksters are particularly skilled at fooling others. Some people are uniquely good at fooling themselves. lol

Yeah, to make that work, the motor has to be smaller or the gears are larger than the wheels. Or you use a large motor and the connecting rod.

EU rules are more restrictive, a minimum of 45 minutes rest every 4.5 hours and a maximum of 9 hours driving per day

Many years ago some guys from a car magazine tried making a dragster out of a mail jeep and an electric motor, DC commutator I believe. They had a little trouble with the commutator I believe, but the ultimate problem was they used a cog belt drive, and kept shredding the belts! I guess no one tried doing any math to see what the forces would be.

A 45 minute break will get you a 90% charge if the supply can provide adequate current. That's a slam dunk! The EU also gives a 2 tonne weight extension for BEVs. In the US it's only 1 ton.

We can only guess. Current Tesla battery is around 1/2 ton for vehicle weight of 3 to 4 tons. A fully loaded semi could weight 20 to 25 tons. I think it would be several tons of batteries.

Read the link I sent. Standard prime movers are being retrofitted (in under a week!) with electric drive motors and quick-swap batteries. The trucks aren't limited by the geometry or aesthetics of a passenger car, so standardised interchangable batteries are easily achievable.

The batteries are rented, so the owner just pays for the power+depreciation. Battery exchange/charging stations are being installed every few 100km along major highways.

Clifford Heath

Lol! Sometimes you truly amaze me.

I'm interested, but not enough to read through the fluff. Can you provide the pertinent facts? Are they talking about rechargeable batteries or primary cells, like aluminum-air?