There is this channel on YouTube named "Bruce Wilson", which I've got pushed onto my recommendation feed lately, and I've watched some of the videos:
This guy drives a Scania in the US, and it feels like he is more like a marketing stunt for Scania. He shows other truckers his one and they are all so surprised about the quality of this European truck, them getting the feeling that the US truck industry has been sleeping for decades in terms of evolution.
It should be easy for Volvo and Daimler Trucks to do the same, but I do not know why they don't do it.
> He shows other truckers his one and they are all so surprised about the quality of this European truck, them getting the feeling that the US truck industry has been sleeping for decades in terms of evolution.
As a European visiting US/Canada I once struck a conversation with a truck driver who had a really cool vintage semi, with lots of chrome and flare. I told him that I really liked the look of his truck, but that vintage trucks of that age would never be allowed on the road again in Europe, at least not for commercial jobs.
He then told me his truck was basically brand new...
Besides me making a fool of myself, I really grew an appreciation for the EU having rules about semis, especially in the noise department. Yeah, US domestic semi trucks are cool in their own way, but the constant noise of clutch fans, air brakes, 'jake' brakes, 'stack' exhaust with no of mufflers, etc. would drive me insane.
In (most of) Europe, all vehicles are subject to strict noise and emission rules, and many larger cities are now congestion zones which prohibits larger/older diesel powered vehicles from entering the city. Same for my city, where most trucks and busses are now electric. Since it happened gradually the change wasn't all that noticeable, that is until you go somewhere else and hear (and smell!) a diesel powered bus/semi drive by... We like to complain about all the 'stupid' government rules, but when you go to a place without those laws you really start to appreciate them, it truly feels like taking a step 'back' for the worse.
For some reason, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, even brand new electric trucks in the US look very vintage, with their giant chrome grill and fender flares, compared to European and Asian trucks. [1]
Maybe everyone in this thread knows this, but it hasn't been mentioned: US trucks are all cab-behind-engine, and European trucks are all cab-over-engine. That's why they look so different. The US style supposedly has some benefits in maintenance and maybe efficiency, but the European style works much better in cities with narrow streets and tight turns.
"In contrast, European regulations are much stricter regarding the dimensions of trucks. In European Union member countries, trucks cannot exceed 18.75 meters in length, which prioritizes the maximum use of available space for cargo. Manufacturers resort to solutions such as the use of smaller cabs and flat bodies to comply with these regulations while still maintaining cargo capacity."
That's part of the reason, but it doesn't explain the use of chrome, rectangular or round headlights instead of molded headlights that integrate into the bodywork, and many other design elements that have remained virtually unchanged since the 1970s. I think a lot of it is just that Americans like the look.
TBH, that's Peterbuilt's design language. My guess is that the parent poster was talking about the 589. That's what I think of when I think about tractor-trailers.
https://www.peterbilt.com/trucks/on-highway/589
If you compare, say, the Peterbilt 579 and 589, you'll find that the former is way more modern looking and aerodynamic and the latter is very classic and old school looking. The 579 is also vastly more fuel efficient. I'm fairly certain that the classic design of the 589 is entirely for aesthetic reasons rather than for part interchangeability.
This might be completely wrong, since my understanding is based very much off of Truck Simulator games, but isn’t one of the reasons aerodynamics as well? The US is huge, and trips can take several days at high speeds, so aerodynamic improvements can save quite a bit of money, whereas EU is smaller, the trucks do not go at large speeds for as long and have to navigate tiny city streets, thus being more compact is an advantage there.
Look into truck speed limits in the EU. They are absurdly low. It's common to see trucks in America going 75 mph for comparison. A typical governor is 80 mph.
Most EU trucks are GOVERNED to 56 mph.
American trucks are high performance racing machines by comparison.
> American trucks are high performance racing machines by comparison.
Only when you look at governed speed. If I remember the aforementioned Bruce Wilson videos correctly, his imported truck has something like 120 horsepower more than the local counterparts.
Weight-wise, American trucks are limited to 80.000 lbs. The EU allows 88.000 lbs everywhere, but heavier trucks are becoming more and more common. For example, short-distance transport to and from sea ports can be 97.000 lbs, they are exploring raising the EU-wide limit to 132.000 lbs, and Finland and Sweden already allow 165.000 lbs for long-distance transport with trials for 194.000 lbs. That's over twice as much cargo per truck as in the US!
And going fast is one thing, but you need to be able to do so safely. I've heard plenty of stories of American truckers complaining about it being "impossible to stop quickly". Meanwhile in Europe things like radar-assisted emergency braking are becoming the default, and the trucks are able to stop on a dime. Kid suddenly jumps in front of a truck? No problem, they'll live [0]. The driver is going to need a new pair of pants and the trailer is going to be an absolute mess, but that kid hasn't been turned into physics!
Not as much as you'd think, though. At higher speeds you need more distance between individual vehicles, as the vehicles need significantly more time to stop. The rule-of-thumb is that you should keep a three-second gap between vehicles - which if followed would mean speed is completely unrelated to road capacity [0].
The higher speeds are also going to lead to more frequent and nastier incidents, which means more traffic jams. Once the roads get full lower speeds might even result in a higher average throughput!
The numbers you quote don't show math, and even if they did, the math is different for each vehicle airflow.
Regardless, efficiency has many properties.
Time means more labour cost + cost of spending another day on the road, plus time not shipping something else.
I sometimes, in my car, drive from Quebec to California. It can take an extra day to make this drive, if I must drive slower due to weather, traffic, or construction.
EG 60mph vs 80mph average (yes, average without stops).
A little more fuel pales in comparison to these costs.
Shouldn't the trucks be more used for "last mile" operations from the cargo trains vs going very long distances and needing to go very fast? Seems like that would be the more appropriate solution.
Interestingly, the freight train network in the US is a lot better than that of Europe and Asia. A much larger fraction of goods is delivered by train in the US at a higher efficiency.
> the freight train network in the US is a lot better than that of Europe and Asia
That depends a lot on how you look at it. The US got screwed by geography and doesn't have a lot of inland waterways. This means that rail freight is the only viable option for a lot of bulk cargo. The US is sending an awful lot of coal and grain via train, but in Europe most of that is done by river and canal.
The US also has a rather poor record quality-wise. Electrified rail basically doesn't exist, precision-scheduled railroading has made delivery times a joke, the infrastructure is crumbling, and freight trains are utterly incapable of playing nice with passenger rail. Heck, they are literally running trains which are too large to fit on the railways! It has been optimized for dirt-cheap bulk transport and as a result it isn't really capable of doing anything else.
The fact that US railways have such high tonne-miles, despite the state of the railways, says more about the complete lack of competition than it says about the railways.
Cargo shipping is a mix of all modes. Rail has a lot of good things going for it, but capacity is limited, routes are limited, speeds are limited, and trains are fairly inflexible.
Trucks can be used for a lot more things. They might not be ideal for long distance routes, but they're often used for them. Dock to dock time is often going to be far less with long haul trucking than truck to local train depot, rail to remote train depot, truck to remote dock.
It's also much harder to build rail capacity than road capacity; certainly that'a a function of our government, but someone with one container to move has to work within the environment.
Trucking also feels like it has more agency. If your truck fails, you can send another to pick up the load; if your train fails, you're at the mercy of the railroad. If there's disruptive weather in the path, a truck can drive around it; almost always a train will have to stay on its route, and may need to stop for the weather to clear. If the shipment needs to be recalled, the truck can turn around; you might be able to get your load off the train, but maybe not?
I have no specialized knowledge in this, but I don’t think that cost efficiency is the primary reason for using trucks over trains. Because, if it was, rail with last mile by truck would probably win. Rail has a very low cost per mile by weight rate. But, it can be slow. Particularly when you consider that there are only a few routes across the country (across the Rockies), and trucks can go directly from point A to point B without needing to connect to a rail hub at both ends.
In someways it seems similar to why the hub and spoke model has fallen out of favor for airlines. It might be more efficient to have one large flight between hubs and two small flights to regional airports, but passengers would rather have a direct flight.
Maybe, but the semis are also faster due to bureaucratic reasons involving train operators, which are mostly state owned companies in Europe. So p derivate enterprises just hire a trucking company to deliver goods faster. Rail is mostly used for cement, oil products, fertilizer and grain.
For instance in my country the public train company is absolutely brain damaged as it doesn't have enough bike transportation spots (only some trains do). There are even trains with a bike symbol that you're not allowed with a bike on. Thanks to the EU Green Deal they are now forced to provide them.
It's more that the EU regulations on the total length of the articulated lorry include the tractor, but American regulations limit the length of each part.
Not really. A regular truck & trailer is way too big to fit in space-constrained city centers. When it gets really tight they'll just send a box truck, often with a trailer they can leave behind outside the city center for some extra capacity when it's a multi-stop trip [0]. The fancy ones even have doors in the front of the trailer, making it quite easy to move freight from the trailer into the box truck itself.
On the other hand, the highway infrastructure has plenty of space for large trucks. If the roads to & from the main highway network can handle it, some countries will give you permits for all sorts of fancy combinations[1] up to 83 ft long. Considering that it'll still be pulled with a regular cab-over truck, that's a lot of space for freight. They are now even trialing the "Super EcoCombi", which is essentially two full semi-trailers[2], for a total of 105 ft!
Not quite. Originally, the tighter length limits were intended to give trucks a disadvantage compared to freight trains. But engine technology caught up and more efficient smaller engines negated that limitation.
I am frankly amazed that US trucks, which already have an elongated "nose first" tractor shape, have not evolved to look more like high-speed train engines.
Some have become more aerodynamic with the mirrors, over cab cowling, and wheel cowling. I wonder if some of the flat front had to do with airflow over the radiator.
> aerodynamic improvements can save quite a bit of money
If there were any significant amount of a saved money then a 'brick style' tractors like Peterbilt 389 [0] would be long gone purely by economical factors. It's still a brick on wheels which pushes a multi-ton load.
It's more a combination of a lack of a meaningful train system, an overall spareness of the cities and the roads and a male appendage measuring cont^W^W^W^W history and customs around the trucks[1].
The problem of course is that during WWII, every narrow gauge feeder line of less than 100 miles length in the U.S. was pulled up and shipped to Europe for the war effort --- after the war, there was little effort made to rebuild them (the big 3 focusing on the individually owned car and so forth) --- remember this the next time a European boasts about their wonderful rail system:
Yes, it moves a lot. Because there are 300m+ people there[0]. But if you just search for a 'USA train network' and compare that to a 'Europe train network' it would be pretty self evident.
Also take a note of the cargo distribution of the US train traffic in the link you provided yourself:
>> Of all the rail cargo, approximately 91% is made up of agriculture and energy products, vehicles and parts, construction materials, coal, chemicals, food, metal, minerals, and paper.
Most of it is not transported by the trucks in the first place. And what matters the most is what you need a proper network distribution so you only haul the last 50-100kms on the trucks, instead of the "trips [what] can take several days at high speeds"[1]
So you brought the wrong metric in the numbers measuring contest.
[0] and let's ignore what China and Russia has a quite comparable numbers of tonne-kilometers: 2.525, 2.518, 2.222.
Cab-overs do exist in the US. They are primarily used for short haul and are less common than they were in decades past. The 70s TV show BJ and the Bear featured a Kenworth with a sleeper cab. Those don't seem to exist anymore in the US.
In my layman pov… A diesel engine can take the least aerodynamically shaped body and move it at 60 mph for 1k miles no problem. As an American, I guess it’s just natural to me that if it can move, then it should move with glory!!
The range only needs to cover the period between mandated brakes. Everything over that is wasted weight, as the weight of the cargo and the weight of the truck share a weight budget.
Yeah the range between mandated breaks is way over 100 miles. In the UK it is 45 minutes after 4.5 hours driving, so about 270 miles. But you need to account for the likelihood that there isn't a charger at the break stop. On the other hand the Volvo trucks in this article apparently have a similar range and they're selling so I guess it's worth the hassle.
That’s technically true, I suppose, but dishonest since you imply that those numbers are large enough to max out driving time. You wouldn’t be able to drive to your first mandatory 30 minute break with that range.
- many U.S. truckers are owner-operators --- the rig has to appeal to them, and is in many ways, an extension of their self-perception
- bring up a map of the U.S. and plot occupations on it, removing "school teacher" and "farmer" --- for many rural counties, the most common (and one of the best-paying) is long-haul trucker --- I can still vividly recall the elaborate drawings and plans which many of my classmates in a rural school would draw up of elaborate 18-wheelers (that this situation was brought about by the county board of supervisors being comprised of large land owners who wanted an essentially captive population to work their farms is a different discussion)
It's fine for it to be an extension of their self-perception, but when said extension reaches into my bedroom when I'm sleeping then I am 100% in the pro-regulation camp.
That is why most of the townships near where I live have signage prohibiting air brake usage.
I live close enough to the Pa. Turnpike that it's not particularly pleasant to be in my front yard (back is okay) and am still angry about a previous set of neighbors cutting down the trees which markedly screened the noise and filtered some of the road dust.
Based on this response I have to assume you spend 100% of your time in your house and can't understand why diesel trucks would ever impact someone in another setting.
So I guess all the cars and trucks should be taken off the road to improve my safety right? How dare they pollute with their engines and break dust, that is harmful to my health! I should not have to wear a mask to bike safety in a city because vehicles emit dangerous emissions and pollution.
FYI the local garage truck is a diesel and I can hear it because my windows are old and crappy
Assuming you mean a bicycle, yes, you absolutely deserve safe segregated infrastructure to keep you away from conflict with vehicles. It's better for everyone and I think many cities are now catching onto that.
And you should also feel entitled to clean, breathable air while walking and cycling. Any local government that cares about the safety of residents would agree, I think.
"I should have to wear a mask to bike safely in a city because vehicles emit dangerous emissions and pollution" is the most sane libertarian take I've read this week.
Speaking of “complaining about stupid government rules”, I’m currently waiting to board a flight back to SFO from Europe and one thing that I have missed through my southern Europe vacation are the rules prohibiting smoking in or around the restaurant.
This is what I got used to in California but unfortunately should you find a fantastic outdoor restaurant table to enjoy the European sunset, chances are somebody will be smoking right next to you and your kid.
fwiw and not to diminish your point, semi trucks in Canada are rarely heard, they mostly drive along our massive highways, they are generally not allowed in cities, and you can drive from one end of Canada to the other (east <> west) on Highway 1 without entering cities/big towns, the most populated area you have to drive through is at the Ontario/Manitoba border. (Source, I've driven Canada fully, end to end e->w)
Which means very little; european trucks are allowed to haul 10~15% more weight per axle. Being allowed to drive faster and or for longer has little to do with 'hardware' beyond different gearing and more to do with road safety and labor laws.
> them getting the feeling that the US truck industry has been sleeping for decades in terms of evolution
I’ve recently concluded the reason Waymo is dominating has nothing to do with automation and everything with reliability.
Both Uber and Lyft bet on maximising driver availability, even at the cost of reliability and quality. That left wide open those willing to wait a bit longer for a car that won’t cancel, won’t smell and won’t have someone who drives unsafely while on the phone. (And apparently even willing to pay a premium for it.)
Because unless someone else crashes that market (Scania is clearly angling to be the one) they get away with selling rinky trucks so there’s no reason to spend more.
My family has owned a excavating
business since the 60s and you would see my pop and think he is some typical backwoods Mainer, but we have always purchased Volvo, Hitachi, Komatsu. A few times at our peak Volvo even invited us down to their US test facility to dig wholes all day. That was fun. Ive owned several Volvo cars, PV544, P1800, 240, 740. I tell you- Its great they are back in the hands of the Swedes. We love a classic Peterbilt, but they are not worth their cost in this day.
We have a tunnel nearby that was built with a grade that’s too steep. Every year there’s a large ICE truck that overheats, catches fire and shuts the tunnel down for a while. This is simply not going to be an issue with EV trucks. A fire is possible but much less likely in general, and MUCH less likely in that specific scenario.
In Norway we’ve also already seen that tunnels and garages require less ventilation as the share of EVs gets higher, saving millions on new construction. Electric semi trucks will unlock the full benefit.
Larger vehicles like trucks and buses is also where you get the most benefit of noise reduction.
EV semi trucks are going to improve so many things.
> This is simply not going to be an issue with EV trucks. A fire is possible but much less likely in general, and MUCH less likely in that specific scenario.
I'm actually not so sure. If the gradient is so steep that the vehicle is struggling to move at all, the current through the motor windings will be very high, causing the windings to overheat, potentially fail and potentially short circuit. There's a high risk of damaging the MOSFETs in the motor controller, which very much could lead to a fire risk depending on the failure mode.
There's not really many ways to solve this problem - in a normal 3-phase winding, all you can do is remove the current until it cools down and try again, but that will force the motor to stop and then try to restart, so creating an even larger load. Possibly if you have 6 more more phases and more magnets such that each of the normal 3-phases has multiple windings and magnets, you can cycle through the different ones and still keep applying some torque, but obviously this would still not really solve the fundamental problem.
Essentially the problem is the same for ICE vs EV - if the gradient is so steep and load so heavy that the engine / motor can't provide enough force, then it will be overloaded. Whether that's through pressure / shearing / excess heat in an ICE or through excess current / excess heat in EV, the outcome is failure to continue forward at best.
The only real solution is to massively over engineer the engine for normal situations, but human nature being what it is, there will always push things way beyond the designed limits and safety margins until it fails.
It’s a lot easier to engineer an EV truck to handle steep gradients without overloading. We see from real examples that EV trucks are by default much more capable of driving fast uphill.
One part of this is the batteries. When you have the amount of batteries needed to drive a truck for a reasonable distance, you automatically get a high amount of power output as well. The power is distributed over many cells, so no overload there.
EV motors are significantly smaller than their ICE counterparts, they’re relatively cheap, don’t require significant maintenance and they generate much less waste heat for a given power output. Adding more motors+inverters to handle the required power is not over engineering in the case of an EV truck, it’s just good engineering. I suppose it’s even necessary to some degree, to deal with the lack of a multi speed gear box
As mentioned in the other comment, the problem is often overheating in brakes. This is also less of an issue with EVs. You can distribute the energy dissipation to the motors/batteries and the brake pads, so the heat load is less concentrated. Energy sent to the batteries is absorbed as energy stored, with very little waste heat.
I'm specifically talking about the windings in the motors themselves. There's only so much current they had take before they start heating up, and that's when they can start to fail - just as melting or burning the insulation, creating a short across some of the winding, making them even less effective and even more prone to short circuiting which can cause even higher currents.
In normal use, only one phase is active an a time, so the duty cycle is 1/3. When the motor slows almost to a stop, the duty cycle on that winding is 100% meaning that the effect of that current on heating the wire is much worse than normal.
The catastrophic failure is when the MOSFET fails in a way that it doesn't protect the winding or battery from a short circuit which could lead to runaway heating in the battery as well as the motor. But even before then, unless the controller is actively limiting current to safe levels, the motor will get destroyed.
The only happy day scenario is if the motor control is actively limiting the current to safe levels well below the expected failure point, and then the EV will just fail to move at all under that load, other than rolling backwards.
As I said, the limit for this will be based on what the manufacturer expects the maximum load will be, but people have a knack for trying to carry more weight than their vehicle was designed for, or taking it places that are unsuitable. That's just humans being humans.
It's possible to design an EV that could withstand significantly steep hills with heavy loads, e.g. by putting many more sets of individually wired windings in parallel, but it'd be expensive and unnecessary for the typical situations that they'd be used in, and so unlikely to be commercially viable.
>I'm actually not so sure. If the gradient is so steep that the vehicle is struggling to move at all
The problem isn't overloading the engine when you go up, it's overheating the brakes when you go down. The reasoning here is probably that EV semis will use regeneration for some of the braking thus avoiding the overheating to some extent.
To be fair, the parent didn’t specify which direction they were talking about. And is brake overheating a cause for an entire truck to catch on fire? That sounds more like an engine failure kind of thing.
Yes, last time I read about a fire in that tunnel I believe it was the brakes. I don’t know how.
Even if it’s an engine issue, I don’t see how an EV would be more likely to catastrophically overheat. An EV will generate a lot less heat for a given amount of power. There’s also less potential for oil and fuels leaks which exacerbates the issue.
The risk would be from power cell failure and how difficult it is to put out those fires for most of the chemistries used, how they're packed, etc. I would guess the rate of occurrence will be pretty similar. I don't think we'll fully know until we have a bunch of older EV trucks to know how the risk compares to older diesel ones.
> Yes, last time I read about a fire in that tunnel I believe it was the brakes. I don’t know how.
Friction brakes convert momentum into heat. If you ride the brakes going down a mountain you generate more heat than the brakes can dissipate into the air and the brake temperature keeps going up until they're hot enough to start a fire.
If I were to guess, it's about using "motor breaking" (not sure that's the correct English term for it) that you do if you travel downwards for a long time, in order to avoid over-heating the brakes so they are ineffective. I'm guessing doing motor breaking for too long, in a hot environment, might overheat the engine as well?
Engine braking doesn’t work on diesels, that’s why they have “Jake brakes”, that loud braaaaaaaaap you hear when they go downhill (and why you see signs at the edge of town saying “compression brake use illegal”). I highly doubt a diesel engine would overheat going downhill. (Not a diesel mechanic, but FWIW used to be an auto mechanic decades ago.)
Am I sure? No, but I have been told this numerous times by actual diesel mechanics, and otherwise why was it necessary for Jacobs to invent the compression brake?
Your car also has rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag to contend with. Might work well at slowing a passenger car, not so much with a 50K lb. vehicle, hence the Jake brake.
> Your car also has rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag to contend with
I like to believe I'd recognize the difference, especially since it's a manual car and I can tell the difference between letting it roll in neutral and shifting down a gear which slows down the car :) Maybe it's not that it doesn't work on diesel cars but the effect is just less than with petrol?
I don't see how that could overheat the engine. You're backdriving the engine from the wheels and fuel injection should be complete shit down so there is no combustion.
> If the gradient is so steep that the vehicle is struggling to move at all
But such a gradient would be completely unusable for any ICE! EVs can deliver an absolutely insane amount of power at even the slowest speeds. If an EV has the power to sustain highway speeds, it'll also have the power to go up a steep hill at a snail's pace. On the other hand, an ICE will struggle significantly with steep hills - even if they technically have the horsepower to do it.
I highly doubt it'll result in a fire, though. Measuring motor current isn't exactly rocket science, so it'll just go into an overload mode. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if EV motors were explicitly designed to survive short-term stall currents. Measure the wheel speed and it's pretty obvious to figure out when you're stalling and should shut down to avoid damage.
So Volvo only sold their "Car" brand to Geely and not Trucks? That is like Toshiba selling only their Appliance brand to another Chinese company or Sharp Display and TV belongs to Foxconn but not other Sharp products?
So who provides this Volvo Semi batteries? Geely / CATL or someone else?
> So who provides this Volvo Semi batteries? Geely / CATL or someone else?
Northvolt and Samsung, apparently.
> That is like Toshiba selling only their Appliance brand to another Chinese company or Sharp Display and TV belongs to Foxconn but not other Sharp products?
That sort of thing is actually somewhat common in appliance-world; appliance _brands_ are often sold off or licensed. For instance, Siemens appliances are not made by the same Siemens who make trains and MRI scanners and things; they're made by GSH GmbH, which is owned by Bosch.
HP is another fairly well-known example; the HP (HP Inc) who makes the printers is no longer the same HP (HPE) who makes networking equipment and things.
And then of course in the automotive world there's Stellantis, which owns all the car brands that you vaguely assume no longer exist.
I think he's proven that single driver long haul freight in Western Europe (which seems to be a good chunk of truck trips) is perfectly doable. Just two weeks ago he did a 4.500km trip around Europe which is about the maximum you can do given the law on driving times.
The same is then true for the shorter trips (round trips etc.)
And the European Commission has just decided that electric trucks don't have to pay road toll until at least 2031.
Better for the environment, more comfortable, quieter, cheaper in the long run, ... what's not to like.
And yes: There are still some use-cases where non-EV trucks are "better" by some metrics but that's definitely not the case anymore everywhere.
> the level of adoption of electric trucks as in Germany
2.4%[1], which is more than I would have guessed, but I think that number includes delivery vehicles. For semis, it's 0.4% (and 2% of new registrations in Q1 2025). So, still a long way to go.
That's for vehicles registered in Germany. Half of the heavy trucks on the Autobahn are registered elsewhere[2], which makes sense given geography -- I guess it's similar in the Netherlands.
Range is somewhere between 350 and 600 km depending on conditions. Aerodynamics, weight, weather all have an influence as well as the battery size and efficiency of the specific model of truck. The guy on the youtube channel has driven most of the selection of currently available long haul electric trucks in Europe under a variety of conditions, so this seems fairly representative.
The trucks are all designed to be driven for the legally mandated maximum of 4.5 hours at highway speeds and to be recharged sufficiently in a 45 minute break to be able to do that again for another 4.5 hours. In particularly adverse conditions a little less driving time before recharging is possible but for an average load the currently available tech works just fine and it is mostly the charging infrastructure that limits adoption.
It is a testament to Elon Musk's vast skills at producing obfuscating noise that nearly all of the discussion of electric semi trucks here has been about the Tesla Semi, and not about trucks made by the many manufacturers who will actually sell you an electric semi truck.
In a way it's a testament to the lack of marketing skills of the truck companies that are selling these vehicles. Perhaps they don't feel the need market their capabilities to people who don't actually buy trucks, but there are some benefits to that kind of above-the-line advertising. As Musk has demonstrated.
I have trouble calling these "semi". The do good work and are an environmental boon to short hauls, but "up to" ranges of 500km arent really semi territory imho. A better measurment imho is time. These things are good for four or five hours of highway driving, much much less when fully loaded or in mountains. So they cannot sustain a full day of driving without recharge. That is a delivery truck duty cycle, not semi.
(A typical diesel semi does 3500km between fillups, long enough for a few days of driving and about as long as the longest hauls in north america.)
And there is a big push for much larger trucks (net safety, less manpower/maintenance etc). Trucks that haul two 40-foot teus are comming. We need far better battery capacities to electrify such loads.
A large proportion of truck traffic in the EU is regional trunking - regular runs between distribution centres, typically as part of a hub-and-spoke model. To give an example, If I receive a parcel via Royal Mail, it's likely to have travelled via the Midlands Super Hub to my local mail centre, a distance of about 120 miles. At either end of that journey, the truck is likely to spend at least 30 minutes being unloaded and loaded.
There are many thousands of routes like that, with a constant flow of trucks covering relatively short distances on a predictable schedule. The operators running those routes have fleets of many thousands of vehicles and would have no difficulty whatsoever in managing a mixed fleet, using diesel or electric based on what's most suitable for the role; with diesel costing over $7 a gallon, there's a very obvious financial advantage to electric trucks.
Currently, the rollout of electric trucks is overwhelmingly bottlenecked by grid capacity rather than vehicle range - installing rapid chargers on every loading bay in a medium-sized distribution centre might require 20 megawatts of peak capacity, which isn't the kind of thing you can wire up overnight. Many operators are ready and eager to switch a large proportion of their fleet to electric trucks, they're just waiting for the grid to catch up.
It's not just time but cost of building out charging infrastructure and grid connections. I looked at some numbers on this a couple of years ago and the costs back then were big enough to make anything medium or long distance non-viable absent either huge amounts of subsidy or a big shift in the relative price of electricity vs diesel (which is realistically only likely to happen via big taxes on truck diesel).
Drivers by law have to take a 45 minute break every 4.5 hours in Europe, with max 9 hours driving a day.
Don't know how fast these things can charge though, but suspect they'll have more than your typical 350kw passenger car chargers.
This is the same argument people used to have about electric cars: if I can't drive nonstop for 18 hours at 95mph up a mountain hauling a speedboat and recharge up to 100% in 30 seconds then they're worthless etc etc. In reality these are not realistic or typical usage patterns.
True, most people don’t drive that much at once.
BUT
When I need to drive a lot, then I want to be able to do it. Driving for 600km / 6 hours, taking few hours break and coming back 600km the same day is easily possible with a gasoline/diesel car. It’s a pain with an electric one.
Modern luxury EVs have a range of close to 500km, and they are able to charge at over 1000km of range per hour. Split that 6-hour leg into two 3-hour legs with a 15-minute charging session & pee break, and you can easily do that.
Besides, why optimize for the absolute best experience on your once-a-year trip? What about the _other_ 300+ days of the year? How much time are you going to save by plugging your car into a charger when you get home once or twice a week, instead of going to a petrol station to fill it up?
Sounds good, but it's not reality, at least not for now. What you're describing is the absolute best scenarios - most expensive cars and MW charging stations. These I can't afford and the charging stations don't exist or are very rare (at least here in Europe).
If it would be true, that'd be great.
For me saving time on the gas station is negligible. I drive around anyway, but yes, I agree with you - charging at home is very cool. Just plug it in when you get home and you can drive in the morning.
The only way I see this, have 2 cars. One for longer trips (diesel), one for shorter, every day usage (electric). But this needs 2 parking spaces, insurance, taxes etc. I can't affor this either.
A good question is then whether a driver can recharge a truck during rest periods. Most jurisdictions dont allow refueling or maintenance during driver rest periods.
Trucks are not personal vehicles. They are run as part of a business. If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately. That isnt happening because the math/money doesnt, yet, make sense.
Cursory research indicates that in the EU, they are:
If charging the battery of an electric heavy goods vehicle or bus requires supervision or involvement of the driver, then this time needs to be recorded as 'other work.' On the contrary, if the driver can freely dispose of her/his time while the battery is charging, then the time taken for the battery to charge has no effect on the breaks or the daily rest of the driver. Any movement of the vehicle from the charging location would be deemed to be an interruption or an end to a break or rest period.
According to the electric trucker channel there are rumblings about altering the last clause, because currently if you end your day at a charging station you can’t free it up and go to a regular parking space when you’re topped up.
The problem is that it is still going to interrupt your rest, and therefore your focus while driving. Getting woken up at all is a problem, the fact that you can go back to sleep after 15 minutes doesn't really matter. I would be quite surprised if the EU was willing to mess with that.
A better solution would be a truck stop with a charging connector per parking spot, and a way for the charger to dynamically connect to the trucks one-by-one. The driver can plug it in when they arrive, and the truck stop will handle the rest.
Alternatively, build a bunch of low-speed chargers instead of a single high-speed charger. When it comes to overnight charging, everyone is going to be there for at least 9 hours anyways. No need to hurry up and finish that charging session in 30 minutes.
> The problem is that it is still going to interrupt your rest, and therefore your focus while driving. Getting woken up at all is a problem, the fact that you can go back to sleep after 15 minutes doesn't really matter. I would be quite surprised if the EU was willing to mess with that.
The problem is that sleeping is not the only activity during the rest period. A "standard" rest period by EU law is 11 hours. Going for a run, getting dinner, doing some life stuff, then moving the truck a few meters, is not going to kill the driver's focus, but currently it's either limiting (because you're now on reduced rest, or you need to rest 11 hours from moving the truck) or illegal.
> Alternatively, build a bunch of low-speed chargers instead of a single high-speed charger. When it comes to overnight charging, everyone is going to be there for at least 9 hours anyways. No need to hurry up and finish that charging session in 30 minutes.
That has its own issues, because it means you need to electrify essentially every truck parking spot where truckers might overnight.
I only recently got a personal electric car not because they only recently got good enough or only recently made sense, but rather because my last petrol car finally needed replacing. I suspect trucks are similar - they're not going to replace them right away when they have an existing one that is working fine and still has many years of use ahead of it. Keep using the existing ones until they need to replace them, then go EV. Otherwise you're losing that amortization of the capex
"If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately"
Real life is not that simple. Depending on your cargo and routes, profitability might be about might be more about capacity (mass or volume), purchase cost, operating cost, max range, torque, reliability etc. And then... businesses have inertia and are only rational actors the extent that the people who control them are.
Businesses are not suddenly going to dispose of their current fleet because something new comes along. For most, I imagine, their trucks will be on some kind of fixed-term lease agreement.
"If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately"
Real life is not that simple. Depending on your cargo and routes, profitability might be about might be more about capacity (mass or volume), purchase cost, operating cost, max range, etc. And then... businesses have inertia and are only rational actors the extent that the people who control them are.
There is a good YouTube channel of a truck driver in Germany who drives an electric truck and he's been praising it all over. The range is enough to go between pauses, and yes he can charge while resting.
>>Most jurisdictions dont allow refueling or maintenance during driver rest periods.
Well good thing recharging is not the same as refueling. Fueling requires an operator to be present and watching the pump for safety reasons. Recharging doesn't have such limitation.
500km doesn't even get me to the capital of my European country. Maybe you're thinking specifically about Eastern Europe or something, where there is a bunch of smaller countries closer together?
The statement was pretty clear, right? Most European countries are less than 500km wide is almost certainly true, no matter how you define width. There are only 8 EU countries that are larger than 500km^2. And that includes the vast spaces of Scandinavia where no one lives.
Driving from Warsaw to Lisbon, 6 countries, and crossing 4 of the largest, is 3.300km.
Do you mean the Balkans? Since e.g. Poland is bigger than the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and around the same size as Germany (to within 15%). Ukraine is even bigger - larger than all the former.
It isnt about travel distances. Most "long haul" trucks dont go anywhere near maximum range on a given run. It is about driver time. A truck that cannot keep a driver driving for an entire shift (8 or 10 hours) is a logistics problem. At four or five hours, drivers will need to get to a depo and swap out for another truck mid-shift in order to keep driving, which is a wildly inefficient use of expensive human resources.
What is needed are 8 or 10-hour endurance trucks, even if at a lesser load, as that will cover a driver's day and allow recharge during rest periods.
You're right about driver time being the key metric. mattlondon's reply[1] to the GP gives the extra context: the endurance is aligned pretty well with (EU) legally mandated breaks, allowing for mid-day charging.
Which might be OK in Europe. My current area allows for 13 hours of driving during a maximum 14-hour work day. Most semi drivers then maintain a 14+10 rotation for a few days before a "weekend" of downtime. These Volvo trucks are nowhere near that sort of daily endurance and just wouldn't be competitive.
Yes, it's clearly a problem that in some places poor working conditions, risks in road safety due to fatigue and global warming due to fossil fuel use are found acceptable because it allows companies make more profit.
Yeah, in the US they should probably run overhead wires which would be more efficient than batteries. They could also consider coupling together a few dozen trucks on the highway. For the ultimate in efficiency, and to reduce particulate emissions, they could replace the wheels with steel wheels and make them run on tracks...
Running overhead wires cross country in the US would be exorbitantly expensive. In the city? Sure, though it would be ugly. In the countryside, not a chance of it being workable.
You don't need it in the city or in the countryside, you just need it on the highways. The overhead wires will directly power the cross-country legs, a small battery can cover last-mile delivery and interruptions in overhead wire coverage due to things like complex highway interchanges.
Besides, it's not like this kind of electrification is unheard of. Most of the world has electrified rail with a density higher than the US highway system, and India has been electrifying its railways at a pace of over 4000 miles per year. Electrifying the main cross-country freight corridors by the end of the decade should be quite doable.
Who said anything about long haul? A longer workday doesn't mean a longer route. Most trucks do multiple deliveries every day without ever leaving their home area, commonly between ports and warehouses.
These do exist already. The Electrictrucker also has a video about this. They can be combined with a EV truck as a range extender or with a regular truck to save on gas/diesel.
I'm getting really nervous as we cross into the megawatt-hour territory. A tank full of diesel fuel isn't exactly a walk in the park during a disaster, but it takes a few minutes or hours to burn off. The battery can dump all of its energy in seconds. Managing a diesel fire is a much more understood artform.
What would a million watt hours look like if released in <10 seconds? How many casualties would we have if this were to occur in a tunnel or other confined roadway environment?
> megawatt-hour territory. A tank full of diesel fuel
A full diesel tank on a truck is circa 13 megawatt hours
A bigger risk than the energy density (or how bomb-like it is) must be the self-sustaining fires.
Per mile driven, electric trucks have less fires than diesel ones but when they go on fire, they can be harder to put out.
It's different risk profiles, diesel can run downhill in an accident and create a fairly hard to contain situation. BEVs don't really do that but they reject attempts to snuff them out.
I like the Edison Motors concept a lot. Diesel generator running at peak efficiency charging a small battery. From a fire hazard point of view, probably worst of both worlds when it does go up in flames but i'd still expect less fires than conventional diesel trucks, based on nothing but the gut feeling that the drastic simplification of the drive train results in fewer ignition opportunities.
> A bigger risk than the energy density (or how bomb-like it is) must be the self-sustaining fires.
The whole problem with batteries is the oxidizer is already included. When the cathode decomposes, it turns into an O2 factory. There really isn't a limit to how fast this can go if there is a structural compromise of the battery. Diesel fuel requires external oxygen constantly. This makes it much easier to extinguish.
What are you talking about? Batteries don’t dump their energy in seconds. They dump their energy over many, many hours.
The initial burst of flames you see in some videos is not the energy stored in the battery, it’s the flammable electrolytes separating the anode and cathode that’s burning.
There’s a study from Sweden that set an ICE and EV car on fire. The energy release profile is fairly similar. The ICE is a bit more intense overall. So there’s nothing inherently more dangerous about batteries. Quite the opposite.
The only issue with (current gen li-ion) batteries is the thermal runaway. When the battery is shorted the energy is dumped over the following hours and it’s nearly impossible to stop. It’s doesn’t “burn” per se, but it will get so hot that it will re-ignite any flammable material that the car or truck is made out of. For a trained fire department it’s fairly easy to deal with though. You just need to cool the battery pack during the time where it’s dumping its energy. This could be done with a specialised hose that sprays water underneath the battery pack. You can inflate a barrier around the car and fill that with water. We’ve also seen that fire departments get an empty container delivered, fill it with a bit of water and lift the car into it. For a truck that’s obviously not possible. My point is there’s dozens of ways to deal with it.
Several next generation batteries (which are fairly mature and well beyond the lab stage at this point) have electrolytes that are less flammable or not flammable at all. So you avoid both the initial burst of flames and reduce the potential of thermal runaway. With good separation between cells/packs, it’s extremely unlikely that the whole pack will burn at once.
EV cars and trucks are already objectively (as measured by fire statistics in countries with high share of EVs like Norway) safer. No company is going to introduce a battery chemistry unless it’s more safe than the current commercial cells, so it’s only going to get better from here. Fire departments are only going to be better trained, and these days they can just copy the learnings from countries like Norway, where the fire departments already consider EVs to be far better for overall fire safety than ICE vehicles.
Batteries have the potential to be nearly entirely fire proof, even while storing a lot of energy, so the future is very bright in this area.
Lots of semi trucking is not "long-haul". In many European countries, you don't have need for long-haul routes for port to city or city to port transit.
Paris to Rotterdamn is under 500km, and Paris to Le Havre is much shorter (although these also have train routes).
Similarly, they could serve basically any route in the UK or Ireland.
The majority of trucking in the UK is based on the tramping model. A driver gets in his truck at 6am on a Monday and drives it around the country until Friday evening. Sleeping in service stations, lay-bys and industrial estates depending on where they can find availability (often with difficulty).
The idea that electric trucks could just slot into this is extremely naive.
Which is exactly what is happening. It makes sense for cars as well, as they need to top up more frequently highway carge stations become a regular service rather than an overpriced emergency one.
Good luck with that. The reality is their aren't enough toilets for truck drivers nevermind building a whole suite of rest stops up and down the country.
My trip home to my parents is 400 miles (about 650km) and that's far from the the most extreme journey.
Presumably you mean with recharging? Which is theoretically fine but the charging infrastructure for large vehicles is currently nonexistent. We see some electric busses, from Gatwick if I remember correctly, coming to recharge at Cobham services in the regular car charging spots.
1. How sure are you? The ones from established manufacturers don't really look substantially different from their diesel counterparts. Unless you're really looking closely you'd have a hard time telling them apart.
2. Electric semi trucks are not ideal for long distance trips, they're more for predictable day routes, so it wouldn't surprise me to not encounter many of them on what was presumably a highway drive.
These are mostly being sold in Europe, not the US. They're also not particularly distinctive looking, mostly; I'm sceptical that most people could identify one offhand as it passed by.
Similar to cars, it's easy to spot Teslas but other brands don't stand out this much and you really need to know the little details to spot. Same for trucks.
This caused a lot of confusion with VW; a lot of people thought the id.3/4 were their first electric cars, because the eGolf and eUp looked so... normal. I'm fairly sure they deliberately said "we need to make it look more electric-car-y" at some point.
5,000 electric semis actually represents roughly 2% of Volvo's annual truck production and makes them the current market leader in heavy-duty electric trucks, far ahead of competitors like Daimler and Peterbilt.
Awkward headline, since its not really much of a milestone. The first couple in a region are interesting, hitting significant proportions a year is interesting, a cumulative (relatively) small number is not that interesting.
Since when is 5k a couple? Volvo is selling these while companies like Tesla are cough asleep at the wheel. I think the article mentioned 140 Tesla semis sold.
If you think that’s confusing, there are two completely separate Japanese companies who use the Mitsubishi name and the same red diamond logo to sell air-conditioners in Australia. The products have absolutely nothing in common; the two companies have been completely independent from each other since 1921.
I don’t know the internals of the holding or Volvo, but the company that I work for is _technically_ American, and we operate like a full European company, developing everything in-house. The only thing the parent holding intermingles with us is numbers at the end of the year and strategic directions.
So this could be happening here as well: Chinese say “hey let’s do electric” and the rest happens in Sweden. Would it then be really a Chinese vehicle?
> I don’t know the internals of the holding or Volvo, but the company that I work for is _technically_ American, and we operate like a full European company, developing everything in-house. The only thing the parent holding intermingles with us is numbers at the end of the year and strategic directions.
> So this could be happening here as well: Chinese say “hey let’s do electric” and the rest happens in Sweden. Would it then be really a Chinese vehicle?
Yes, that's the nature of corporate headquarters. If the company doesn't want to be thought of as a Chinese company, it could relocate its corporate headquarters elsewhere.
This says nothing of the ownership structure and so on. A company could be just as Chinese due to ownership and/or control independently of where its corporate HQ is located. I don't think that this framing is especially useful, because there is no such thing as a stereotypical company or person. Individuals make up companies. Companies are just people, acting in concert.
To say a company is Chinese makes me wonder why that is important to the person saying it, and makes me wonder why that is the way they choose to phrase it, and makes me wish they would tell me more about actual individual people that exist and what their views and goals are. Corporations aren't people. People are corporations.
Geely owns Volvo Car AB. Volvo Trucks is a different company and part of the Volvo Group, which is not owned by Geely (but they are a big shareholder).
There is this channel on YouTube named "Bruce Wilson", which I've got pushed onto my recommendation feed lately, and I've watched some of the videos:
This guy drives a Scania in the US, and it feels like he is more like a marketing stunt for Scania. He shows other truckers his one and they are all so surprised about the quality of this European truck, them getting the feeling that the US truck industry has been sleeping for decades in terms of evolution.
It should be easy for Volvo and Daimler Trucks to do the same, but I do not know why they don't do it.
https://www.youtube.com/@Bruce_Wilson
> He shows other truckers his one and they are all so surprised about the quality of this European truck, them getting the feeling that the US truck industry has been sleeping for decades in terms of evolution.
As a European visiting US/Canada I once struck a conversation with a truck driver who had a really cool vintage semi, with lots of chrome and flare. I told him that I really liked the look of his truck, but that vintage trucks of that age would never be allowed on the road again in Europe, at least not for commercial jobs.
He then told me his truck was basically brand new...
Besides me making a fool of myself, I really grew an appreciation for the EU having rules about semis, especially in the noise department. Yeah, US domestic semi trucks are cool in their own way, but the constant noise of clutch fans, air brakes, 'jake' brakes, 'stack' exhaust with no of mufflers, etc. would drive me insane.
In (most of) Europe, all vehicles are subject to strict noise and emission rules, and many larger cities are now congestion zones which prohibits larger/older diesel powered vehicles from entering the city. Same for my city, where most trucks and busses are now electric. Since it happened gradually the change wasn't all that noticeable, that is until you go somewhere else and hear (and smell!) a diesel powered bus/semi drive by... We like to complain about all the 'stupid' government rules, but when you go to a place without those laws you really start to appreciate them, it truly feels like taking a step 'back' for the worse.
For some reason, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, even brand new electric trucks in the US look very vintage, with their giant chrome grill and fender flares, compared to European and Asian trucks. [1]
[1] https://www.peterbilt.com/trucks/zero-emission/567EV
Maybe everyone in this thread knows this, but it hasn't been mentioned: US trucks are all cab-behind-engine, and European trucks are all cab-over-engine. That's why they look so different. The US style supposedly has some benefits in maintenance and maybe efficiency, but the European style works much better in cities with narrow streets and tight turns.
I think it's mainly a regulation/law thing:
"In contrast, European regulations are much stricter regarding the dimensions of trucks. In European Union member countries, trucks cannot exceed 18.75 meters in length, which prioritizes the maximum use of available space for cargo. Manufacturers resort to solutions such as the use of smaller cabs and flat bodies to comply with these regulations while still maintaining cargo capacity."
https://www.sgibinc.com/en/differences-between-american-and-...
That's part of the reason, but it doesn't explain the use of chrome, rectangular or round headlights instead of molded headlights that integrate into the bodywork, and many other design elements that have remained virtually unchanged since the 1970s. I think a lot of it is just that Americans like the look.
Even a brand new electric cab over garbage truck looks vintage: https://www.peterbilt.com/trucks/zero-emission/520EV
TBH, that's Peterbuilt's design language. My guess is that the parent poster was talking about the 589. That's what I think of when I think about tractor-trailers. https://www.peterbilt.com/trucks/on-highway/589
> it doesn't explain the use of chrome, rectangular or round headlights instead of molded headlights that integrate into the bodywork,
Interchangable standardized parts are a bad thing now?
If you compare, say, the Peterbilt 579 and 589, you'll find that the former is way more modern looking and aerodynamic and the latter is very classic and old school looking. The 579 is also vastly more fuel efficient. I'm fairly certain that the classic design of the 589 is entirely for aesthetic reasons rather than for part interchangeability.
https://www.peterbilt.com/trucks/on-highway
Different supply chains.
This might be completely wrong, since my understanding is based very much off of Truck Simulator games, but isn’t one of the reasons aerodynamics as well? The US is huge, and trips can take several days at high speeds, so aerodynamic improvements can save quite a bit of money, whereas EU is smaller, the trucks do not go at large speeds for as long and have to navigate tiny city streets, thus being more compact is an advantage there.
Look into truck speed limits in the EU. They are absurdly low. It's common to see trucks in America going 75 mph for comparison. A typical governor is 80 mph.
Most EU trucks are GOVERNED to 56 mph. American trucks are high performance racing machines by comparison.
> American trucks are high performance racing machines by comparison.
Only when you look at governed speed. If I remember the aforementioned Bruce Wilson videos correctly, his imported truck has something like 120 horsepower more than the local counterparts.
Weight-wise, American trucks are limited to 80.000 lbs. The EU allows 88.000 lbs everywhere, but heavier trucks are becoming more and more common. For example, short-distance transport to and from sea ports can be 97.000 lbs, they are exploring raising the EU-wide limit to 132.000 lbs, and Finland and Sweden already allow 165.000 lbs for long-distance transport with trials for 194.000 lbs. That's over twice as much cargo per truck as in the US!
And going fast is one thing, but you need to be able to do so safely. I've heard plenty of stories of American truckers complaining about it being "impossible to stop quickly". Meanwhile in Europe things like radar-assisted emergency braking are becoming the default, and the trucks are able to stop on a dime. Kid suddenly jumps in front of a truck? No problem, they'll live [0]. The driver is going to need a new pair of pants and the trailer is going to be an absolute mess, but that kid hasn't been turned into physics!
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOw8AjHfnoA
They're low for emissions, safety, and efficiency purposes.
Overall its a net benefit to all of society, including the truckers that cant be pressured to go faster to meet a target.
It may be efficient in Europe, but when trucks drive long distances (are you sure you understand how far?), speed makes a huge difference.
You'd literally need to build more roads, as long haul trucks would be on the road, literally, for an entire day longer per load. Speed is efficiency.
A lot of driving is actually done at night. Fewer cars.
> You'd literally need to build more roads
Not as much as you'd think, though. At higher speeds you need more distance between individual vehicles, as the vehicles need significantly more time to stop. The rule-of-thumb is that you should keep a three-second gap between vehicles - which if followed would mean speed is completely unrelated to road capacity [0].
The higher speeds are also going to lead to more frequent and nastier incidents, which means more traffic jams. Once the roads get full lower speeds might even result in a higher average throughput!
[0]: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/analysis-road-capacit...
Efficiency is higher at slower speeds because of air resistance increasing exponentially rather than linearly.
Resistance at 60 is a huge amount higher than at 50.
Go 10% faster if you want, but you'll use 30% more fuel over the same distance.
Numbers are approximate.
Hence the talk of aerodynamic design.
The numbers you quote don't show math, and even if they did, the math is different for each vehicle airflow.
Regardless, efficiency has many properties.
Time means more labour cost + cost of spending another day on the road, plus time not shipping something else.
I sometimes, in my car, drive from Quebec to California. It can take an extra day to make this drive, if I must drive slower due to weather, traffic, or construction.
EG 60mph vs 80mph average (yes, average without stops).
A little more fuel pales in comparison to these costs.
Fuel is a lot more expensive in Europe, almost double.
Shouldn't the trucks be more used for "last mile" operations from the cargo trains vs going very long distances and needing to go very fast? Seems like that would be the more appropriate solution.
Interestingly, the freight train network in the US is a lot better than that of Europe and Asia. A much larger fraction of goods is delivered by train in the US at a higher efficiency.
https://www.marketurbanist.com/blog/why-americas-freight-tra...
> the freight train network in the US is a lot better than that of Europe and Asia
That depends a lot on how you look at it. The US got screwed by geography and doesn't have a lot of inland waterways. This means that rail freight is the only viable option for a lot of bulk cargo. The US is sending an awful lot of coal and grain via train, but in Europe most of that is done by river and canal.
The US also has a rather poor record quality-wise. Electrified rail basically doesn't exist, precision-scheduled railroading has made delivery times a joke, the infrastructure is crumbling, and freight trains are utterly incapable of playing nice with passenger rail. Heck, they are literally running trains which are too large to fit on the railways! It has been optimized for dirt-cheap bulk transport and as a result it isn't really capable of doing anything else.
The fact that US railways have such high tonne-miles, despite the state of the railways, says more about the complete lack of competition than it says about the railways.
> US got screwed by geography and doesn't have a lot of inland waterways
We have some of the largest inland-waterway networks in the world. We just Jones Acted ourselves out of being able to use them.
Cargo shipping is a mix of all modes. Rail has a lot of good things going for it, but capacity is limited, routes are limited, speeds are limited, and trains are fairly inflexible.
Trucks can be used for a lot more things. They might not be ideal for long distance routes, but they're often used for them. Dock to dock time is often going to be far less with long haul trucking than truck to local train depot, rail to remote train depot, truck to remote dock.
It's also much harder to build rail capacity than road capacity; certainly that'a a function of our government, but someone with one container to move has to work within the environment.
Trucking also feels like it has more agency. If your truck fails, you can send another to pick up the load; if your train fails, you're at the mercy of the railroad. If there's disruptive weather in the path, a truck can drive around it; almost always a train will have to stay on its route, and may need to stop for the weather to clear. If the shipment needs to be recalled, the truck can turn around; you might be able to get your load off the train, but maybe not?
I’d have to imagine the folks in this industry have done enough analysis to figure out what is most cost efficient.
I have no specialized knowledge in this, but I don’t think that cost efficiency is the primary reason for using trucks over trains. Because, if it was, rail with last mile by truck would probably win. Rail has a very low cost per mile by weight rate. But, it can be slow. Particularly when you consider that there are only a few routes across the country (across the Rockies), and trucks can go directly from point A to point B without needing to connect to a rail hub at both ends.
In someways it seems similar to why the hub and spoke model has fallen out of favor for airlines. It might be more efficient to have one large flight between hubs and two small flights to regional airports, but passengers would rather have a direct flight.
Maybe, but the semis are also faster due to bureaucratic reasons involving train operators, which are mostly state owned companies in Europe. So p derivate enterprises just hire a trucking company to deliver goods faster. Rail is mostly used for cement, oil products, fertilizer and grain.
For instance in my country the public train company is absolutely brain damaged as it doesn't have enough bike transportation spots (only some trains do). There are even trains with a bike symbol that you're not allowed with a bike on. Thanks to the EU Green Deal they are now forced to provide them.
It's more that the EU regulations on the total length of the articulated lorry include the tractor, but American regulations limit the length of each part.
True, but that EU regulation is based on the ground truth of much less spacious roads and cities.
Not really. A regular truck & trailer is way too big to fit in space-constrained city centers. When it gets really tight they'll just send a box truck, often with a trailer they can leave behind outside the city center for some extra capacity when it's a multi-stop trip [0]. The fancy ones even have doors in the front of the trailer, making it quite easy to move freight from the trailer into the box truck itself.
On the other hand, the highway infrastructure has plenty of space for large trucks. If the roads to & from the main highway network can handle it, some countries will give you permits for all sorts of fancy combinations[1] up to 83 ft long. Considering that it'll still be pulled with a regular cab-over truck, that's a lot of space for freight. They are now even trialing the "Super EcoCombi", which is essentially two full semi-trailers[2], for a total of 105 ft!
[0]: https://assets-global.website-files.com/6424195493a93d7e7fe4...
[1]: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langere_en_Zwaardere_Vrachtaut...
[2]: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads...
Not quite. Originally, the tighter length limits were intended to give trucks a disadvantage compared to freight trains. But engine technology caught up and more efficient smaller engines negated that limitation.
Yes, that's what I was referring to by efficiency.
Makes me wonder if you couldn't have some sort of pop-out aero fender on the cab over trucks for use at higher speeds.
I am frankly amazed that US trucks, which already have an elongated "nose first" tractor shape, have not evolved to look more like high-speed train engines.
Some have become more aerodynamic with the mirrors, over cab cowling, and wheel cowling. I wonder if some of the flat front had to do with airflow over the radiator.
> aerodynamic improvements can save quite a bit of money
If there were any significant amount of a saved money then a 'brick style' tractors like Peterbilt 389 [0] would be long gone purely by economical factors. It's still a brick on wheels which pushes a multi-ton load.
It's more a combination of a lack of a meaningful train system, an overall spareness of the cities and the roads and a male appendage measuring cont^W^W^W^W history and customs around the trucks[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peterbilt_Semi-Tractor.jp... It was introduced in 2007.
EDIT:
[1] heh: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44479293
> lack of a meaningful train system
The US moves the most freight by rail in the world; seems meaningful…
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/highest-railway-cargo-tr...
The problem of course is that during WWII, every narrow gauge feeder line of less than 100 miles length in the U.S. was pulled up and shipped to Europe for the war effort --- after the war, there was little effort made to rebuild them (the big 3 focusing on the individually owned car and so forth) --- remember this the next time a European boasts about their wonderful rail system:
https://armyhistory.org/railroaders-in-olive-drab-the-milita...
Wow that link is a treasure. Thank you.
I have read quite a bit about WWII from a European perspective but I never read anything that even touched on those aspects.
sigh
Yes, it moves a lot. Because there are 300m+ people there[0]. But if you just search for a 'USA train network' and compare that to a 'Europe train network' it would be pretty self evident.
Also take a note of the cargo distribution of the US train traffic in the link you provided yourself:
>> Of all the rail cargo, approximately 91% is made up of agriculture and energy products, vehicles and parts, construction materials, coal, chemicals, food, metal, minerals, and paper.
Most of it is not transported by the trucks in the first place. And what matters the most is what you need a proper network distribution so you only haul the last 50-100kms on the trucks, instead of the "trips [what] can take several days at high speeds"[1]
So you brought the wrong metric in the numbers measuring contest.
[0] and let's ignore what China and Russia has a quite comparable numbers of tonne-kilometers: 2.525, 2.518, 2.222.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44479968
> It's more a combination of a lack of a meaningful train system
Doesn't the USA have the world's largest and most cost-effective rail freight network? This seems meaningful.
Cab-overs do exist in the US. They are primarily used for short haul and are less common than they were in decades past. The 70s TV show BJ and the Bear featured a Kenworth with a sleeper cab. Those don't seem to exist anymore in the US.
Why are e-trucks like this getting 1/100th of the not-yet-in-mass-production Tesla Semi?
Can i go in and order 100 of these? Are they custom/super-expensive?
Apparently so: https://electrek.co/2024/06/01/einride-orders-150-peterbilt-...
Do you think it’s because they’re using diesel?
In my layman pov… A diesel engine can take the least aerodynamically shaped body and move it at 60 mph for 1k miles no problem. As an American, I guess it’s just natural to me that if it can move, then it should move with glory!!
Edit: my bad I didn’t properly read your post
~All trucks, except for electric ones, are diesel, and have been for a long time.
The one I linked is all electric.
Wowza!! Ok I checked out the link. My bad for not reading ur post properly.
Yikes 100-250 mile range.
Probably fine for what it is.
The range only needs to cover the period between mandated brakes. Everything over that is wasted weight, as the weight of the cargo and the weight of the truck share a weight budget.
Yeah the range between mandated breaks is way over 100 miles. In the UK it is 45 minutes after 4.5 hours driving, so about 270 miles. But you need to account for the likelihood that there isn't a charger at the break stop. On the other hand the Volvo trucks in this article apparently have a similar range and they're selling so I guess it's worth the hassle.
> In the UK it is 45 minutes after 4.5 hours driving, so about 270 miles.
Trucks/lorries drive lots of places other than UK motorways, and they are not doing 60mph down the A4.
> The range only needs to cover the period between mandated brakes.
I was confused there for a second until I realized you meant "breaks."
That’s technically true, I suppose, but dishonest since you imply that those numbers are large enough to max out driving time. You wouldn’t be able to drive to your first mandatory 30 minute break with that range.
If youre doing 56mph, as you would be in the EU, then you can drive for 4.5hrs and cover 250miles before your first mandated break.
So it almost seems optimised for the mandated break timing.
On average truck journeys in europe are only 72 miles anyway so...
> On average truck journeys in europe are only 72 miles anyway so...
That’s astonishing. I’d be curious to see the median and mode distances compared between the U.S. and E.U.
US trucks are much cooler looking, although I don’t doubt European ones are more efficient and practical.
Even firetrucks, the ones I saw in SF looked so cool compred to the ones I see over here.
Reasons behind this:
- many U.S. truckers are owner-operators --- the rig has to appeal to them, and is in many ways, an extension of their self-perception
- bring up a map of the U.S. and plot occupations on it, removing "school teacher" and "farmer" --- for many rural counties, the most common (and one of the best-paying) is long-haul trucker --- I can still vividly recall the elaborate drawings and plans which many of my classmates in a rural school would draw up of elaborate 18-wheelers (that this situation was brought about by the county board of supervisors being comprised of large land owners who wanted an essentially captive population to work their farms is a different discussion)
It's fine for it to be an extension of their self-perception, but when said extension reaches into my bedroom when I'm sleeping then I am 100% in the pro-regulation camp.
That is why most of the townships near where I live have signage prohibiting air brake usage.
I live close enough to the Pa. Turnpike that it's not particularly pleasant to be in my front yard (back is okay) and am still angry about a previous set of neighbors cutting down the trees which markedly screened the noise and filtered some of the road dust.
How about the government regulating housing so that you have to upgrade your insulation and windows to keep the noise out?
Oh wait, you want government regulating (with massive costs) to apply to other people for your comfort!!!
I wonder why people hate the government and excessive regulation?
Based on this response I have to assume you spend 100% of your time in your house and can't understand why diesel trucks would ever impact someone in another setting.
Nope, but I ride a bike for my commute.
So I guess all the cars and trucks should be taken off the road to improve my safety right? How dare they pollute with their engines and break dust, that is harmful to my health! I should not have to wear a mask to bike safety in a city because vehicles emit dangerous emissions and pollution.
FYI the local garage truck is a diesel and I can hear it because my windows are old and crappy
Assuming you mean a bicycle, yes, you absolutely deserve safe segregated infrastructure to keep you away from conflict with vehicles. It's better for everyone and I think many cities are now catching onto that.
And you should also feel entitled to clean, breathable air while walking and cycling. Any local government that cares about the safety of residents would agree, I think.
"I should have to wear a mask to bike safely in a city because vehicles emit dangerous emissions and pollution" is the most sane libertarian take I've read this week.
Reducing the externality in the first place can be more efficient than trying to work around ways once it already exists.
Property rights as described by Ronald Coase would help find a near optimum solution.
The homeowner is not the one intruding on the commons
Other than the monopolization of the land from public commons to private property…
Speaking of “complaining about stupid government rules”, I’m currently waiting to board a flight back to SFO from Europe and one thing that I have missed through my southern Europe vacation are the rules prohibiting smoking in or around the restaurant.
This is what I got used to in California but unfortunately should you find a fantastic outdoor restaurant table to enjoy the European sunset, chances are somebody will be smoking right next to you and your kid.
I suppose it's highly location-dependent. For instance, France recently banned smoking at the beach, parks and bus shelters.
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fwiw and not to diminish your point, semi trucks in Canada are rarely heard, they mostly drive along our massive highways, they are generally not allowed in cities, and you can drive from one end of Canada to the other (east <> west) on Highway 1 without entering cities/big towns, the most populated area you have to drive through is at the Ontario/Manitoba border. (Source, I've driven Canada fully, end to end e->w)
US semis travel 2-3x further per haul on average.
Which means very little; european trucks are allowed to haul 10~15% more weight per axle. Being allowed to drive faster and or for longer has little to do with 'hardware' beyond different gearing and more to do with road safety and labor laws.
> them getting the feeling that the US truck industry has been sleeping for decades in terms of evolution
I’ve recently concluded the reason Waymo is dominating has nothing to do with automation and everything with reliability.
Both Uber and Lyft bet on maximising driver availability, even at the cost of reliability and quality. That left wide open those willing to wait a bit longer for a car that won’t cancel, won’t smell and won’t have someone who drives unsafely while on the phone. (And apparently even willing to pay a premium for it.)
It is marketing: they provided him with the truck, and he openly stated that he wants to be part of bringing Scania to the US long term.
I think that is the point, that they don’t understand why other manufacturers aren’t doing the same, not that they didn’t understand it was marketing…
> I do not know why they don't do it.
Because unless someone else crashes that market (Scania is clearly angling to be the one) they get away with selling rinky trucks so there’s no reason to spend more.
Daimler in the US is Freightliner (and some others):
https://northamerica.daimlertruck.com/brands/products
https://northamerica.daimlertruck.com/company/history
My family has owned a excavating business since the 60s and you would see my pop and think he is some typical backwoods Mainer, but we have always purchased Volvo, Hitachi, Komatsu. A few times at our peak Volvo even invited us down to their US test facility to dig wholes all day. That was fun. Ive owned several Volvo cars, PV544, P1800, 240, 740. I tell you- Its great they are back in the hands of the Swedes. We love a classic Peterbilt, but they are not worth their cost in this day.
PS, F*ck CAT and John Deere. From us.
We have a tunnel nearby that was built with a grade that’s too steep. Every year there’s a large ICE truck that overheats, catches fire and shuts the tunnel down for a while. This is simply not going to be an issue with EV trucks. A fire is possible but much less likely in general, and MUCH less likely in that specific scenario.
In Norway we’ve also already seen that tunnels and garages require less ventilation as the share of EVs gets higher, saving millions on new construction. Electric semi trucks will unlock the full benefit.
Larger vehicles like trucks and buses is also where you get the most benefit of noise reduction.
EV semi trucks are going to improve so many things.
> This is simply not going to be an issue with EV trucks. A fire is possible but much less likely in general, and MUCH less likely in that specific scenario.
I'm actually not so sure. If the gradient is so steep that the vehicle is struggling to move at all, the current through the motor windings will be very high, causing the windings to overheat, potentially fail and potentially short circuit. There's a high risk of damaging the MOSFETs in the motor controller, which very much could lead to a fire risk depending on the failure mode.
There's not really many ways to solve this problem - in a normal 3-phase winding, all you can do is remove the current until it cools down and try again, but that will force the motor to stop and then try to restart, so creating an even larger load. Possibly if you have 6 more more phases and more magnets such that each of the normal 3-phases has multiple windings and magnets, you can cycle through the different ones and still keep applying some torque, but obviously this would still not really solve the fundamental problem.
Essentially the problem is the same for ICE vs EV - if the gradient is so steep and load so heavy that the engine / motor can't provide enough force, then it will be overloaded. Whether that's through pressure / shearing / excess heat in an ICE or through excess current / excess heat in EV, the outcome is failure to continue forward at best.
The only real solution is to massively over engineer the engine for normal situations, but human nature being what it is, there will always push things way beyond the designed limits and safety margins until it fails.
It’s a lot easier to engineer an EV truck to handle steep gradients without overloading. We see from real examples that EV trucks are by default much more capable of driving fast uphill.
One part of this is the batteries. When you have the amount of batteries needed to drive a truck for a reasonable distance, you automatically get a high amount of power output as well. The power is distributed over many cells, so no overload there.
EV motors are significantly smaller than their ICE counterparts, they’re relatively cheap, don’t require significant maintenance and they generate much less waste heat for a given power output. Adding more motors+inverters to handle the required power is not over engineering in the case of an EV truck, it’s just good engineering. I suppose it’s even necessary to some degree, to deal with the lack of a multi speed gear box
As mentioned in the other comment, the problem is often overheating in brakes. This is also less of an issue with EVs. You can distribute the energy dissipation to the motors/batteries and the brake pads, so the heat load is less concentrated. Energy sent to the batteries is absorbed as energy stored, with very little waste heat.
I'm specifically talking about the windings in the motors themselves. There's only so much current they had take before they start heating up, and that's when they can start to fail - just as melting or burning the insulation, creating a short across some of the winding, making them even less effective and even more prone to short circuiting which can cause even higher currents.
In normal use, only one phase is active an a time, so the duty cycle is 1/3. When the motor slows almost to a stop, the duty cycle on that winding is 100% meaning that the effect of that current on heating the wire is much worse than normal.
The catastrophic failure is when the MOSFET fails in a way that it doesn't protect the winding or battery from a short circuit which could lead to runaway heating in the battery as well as the motor. But even before then, unless the controller is actively limiting current to safe levels, the motor will get destroyed.
The only happy day scenario is if the motor control is actively limiting the current to safe levels well below the expected failure point, and then the EV will just fail to move at all under that load, other than rolling backwards.
As I said, the limit for this will be based on what the manufacturer expects the maximum load will be, but people have a knack for trying to carry more weight than their vehicle was designed for, or taking it places that are unsuitable. That's just humans being humans.
It's possible to design an EV that could withstand significantly steep hills with heavy loads, e.g. by putting many more sets of individually wired windings in parallel, but it'd be expensive and unnecessary for the typical situations that they'd be used in, and so unlikely to be commercially viable.
> more capable of driving fast uphill.
Or downhill...[0].
I'll get my coat...
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67752125
>I'm actually not so sure. If the gradient is so steep that the vehicle is struggling to move at all
The problem isn't overloading the engine when you go up, it's overheating the brakes when you go down. The reasoning here is probably that EV semis will use regeneration for some of the braking thus avoiding the overheating to some extent.
To be fair, the parent didn’t specify which direction they were talking about. And is brake overheating a cause for an entire truck to catch on fire? That sounds more like an engine failure kind of thing.
Yes, last time I read about a fire in that tunnel I believe it was the brakes. I don’t know how.
Even if it’s an engine issue, I don’t see how an EV would be more likely to catastrophically overheat. An EV will generate a lot less heat for a given amount of power. There’s also less potential for oil and fuels leaks which exacerbates the issue.
The risk would be from power cell failure and how difficult it is to put out those fires for most of the chemistries used, how they're packed, etc. I would guess the rate of occurrence will be pretty similar. I don't think we'll fully know until we have a bunch of older EV trucks to know how the risk compares to older diesel ones.
> Yes, last time I read about a fire in that tunnel I believe it was the brakes. I don’t know how.
Friction brakes convert momentum into heat. If you ride the brakes going down a mountain you generate more heat than the brakes can dissipate into the air and the brake temperature keeps going up until they're hot enough to start a fire.
Presumably truck drivers are skilled enough to know not to ride the brakes, aren’t they?
If I were to guess, it's about using "motor breaking" (not sure that's the correct English term for it) that you do if you travel downwards for a long time, in order to avoid over-heating the brakes so they are ineffective. I'm guessing doing motor breaking for too long, in a hot environment, might overheat the engine as well?
Engine braking doesn’t work on diesels, that’s why they have “Jake brakes”, that loud braaaaaaaaap you hear when they go downhill (and why you see signs at the edge of town saying “compression brake use illegal”). I highly doubt a diesel engine would overheat going downhill. (Not a diesel mechanic, but FWIW used to be an auto mechanic decades ago.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_release_engine_bra...
> Engine braking doesn’t work on diesels
Are you sure? I'm pretty sure I can engine break with my diesel car and do that pretty often in fact. Or I misunderstand what engine breaking is.
Am I sure? No, but I have been told this numerous times by actual diesel mechanics, and otherwise why was it necessary for Jacobs to invent the compression brake?
Your car also has rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag to contend with. Might work well at slowing a passenger car, not so much with a 50K lb. vehicle, hence the Jake brake.
> Your car also has rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag to contend with
I like to believe I'd recognize the difference, especially since it's a manual car and I can tell the difference between letting it roll in neutral and shifting down a gear which slows down the car :) Maybe it's not that it doesn't work on diesel cars but the effect is just less than with petrol?
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In Britain we call it "engine braking", I think Americans say the same.
A quick search says it heats the engine less than accelerating, so shouldn't cause overheating.
I don't see how that could overheat the engine. You're backdriving the engine from the wheels and fuel injection should be complete shit down so there is no combustion.
> If the gradient is so steep that the vehicle is struggling to move at all
But such a gradient would be completely unusable for any ICE! EVs can deliver an absolutely insane amount of power at even the slowest speeds. If an EV has the power to sustain highway speeds, it'll also have the power to go up a steep hill at a snail's pace. On the other hand, an ICE will struggle significantly with steep hills - even if they technically have the horsepower to do it.
I highly doubt it'll result in a fire, though. Measuring motor current isn't exactly rocket science, so it'll just go into an overload mode. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if EV motors were explicitly designed to survive short-term stall currents. Measure the wheel speed and it's pretty obvious to figure out when you're stalling and should shut down to avoid damage.
Note that these are made by the "real" Volvo, not Volvo Cars which got sold a while ago and is now owned by the Chinese Geely.
So Volvo only sold their "Car" brand to Geely and not Trucks? That is like Toshiba selling only their Appliance brand to another Chinese company or Sharp Display and TV belongs to Foxconn but not other Sharp products?
So who provides this Volvo Semi batteries? Geely / CATL or someone else?
> So who provides this Volvo Semi batteries? Geely / CATL or someone else?
Northvolt and Samsung, apparently.
> That is like Toshiba selling only their Appliance brand to another Chinese company or Sharp Display and TV belongs to Foxconn but not other Sharp products?
That sort of thing is actually somewhat common in appliance-world; appliance _brands_ are often sold off or licensed. For instance, Siemens appliances are not made by the same Siemens who make trains and MRI scanners and things; they're made by GSH GmbH, which is owned by Bosch.
HP is another fairly well-known example; the HP (HP Inc) who makes the printers is no longer the same HP (HPE) who makes networking equipment and things.
And then of course in the automotive world there's Stellantis, which owns all the car brands that you vaguely assume no longer exist.
> So Volvo only sold their "Car" brand to Geely and not Trucks?
Yes. And they bought Renault Trucks from Renault. And they own Mack in the US.
The YouTube channel Electric Trucker may be a revelation for people who are skeptical about electric semi trucks.
The way he speeds past diesel trucks driving up hill is indane.
https://youtube.com/@electrictrucker?si=9UHJ8OPMuLkZPtGx
He also has an english language version of his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@electrictrucker
It's very worth watching.
I think he's proven that single driver long haul freight in Western Europe (which seems to be a good chunk of truck trips) is perfectly doable. Just two weeks ago he did a 4.500km trip around Europe which is about the maximum you can do given the law on driving times.
The same is then true for the shorter trips (round trips etc.)
And the European Commission has just decided that electric trucks don't have to pay road toll until at least 2031.
Better for the environment, more comfortable, quieter, cheaper in the long run, ... what's not to like.
And yes: There are still some use-cases where non-EV trucks are "better" by some metrics but that's definitely not the case anymore everywhere.
Yes, I thought I linked to the English channel.
I'm in The Netherlands and I feel that we aren't even close to the level of adoption of electric trucks as in Germany.
Maybe it's easier to justify the investments for a much larger country/market.
> the level of adoption of electric trucks as in Germany
2.4%[1], which is more than I would have guessed, but I think that number includes delivery vehicles. For semis, it's 0.4% (and 2% of new registrations in Q1 2025). So, still a long way to go.
That's for vehicles registered in Germany. Half of the heavy trucks on the Autobahn are registered elsewhere[2], which makes sense given geography -- I guess it's similar in the Netherlands.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektrolastkraftwagen#Deutschl... but the source is government data
[2] https://company.toll-collect.de/de/magazin/lkw-verkehr-deuts... roughly; 5 years ago
You did. I'm sorry, my bad.
He has a german channel which has more and longer content: https://www.youtube.com/@elektrotrucker
What about range (especially under load)?
Speed in relation to semi trucks always seemed the most absolute vanity metric on earth!
Range is somewhere between 350 and 600 km depending on conditions. Aerodynamics, weight, weather all have an influence as well as the battery size and efficiency of the specific model of truck. The guy on the youtube channel has driven most of the selection of currently available long haul electric trucks in Europe under a variety of conditions, so this seems fairly representative.
The trucks are all designed to be driven for the legally mandated maximum of 4.5 hours at highway speeds and to be recharged sufficiently in a 45 minute break to be able to do that again for another 4.5 hours. In particularly adverse conditions a little less driving time before recharging is possible but for an average load the currently available tech works just fine and it is mostly the charging infrastructure that limits adoption.
It can get even better if you will start throwing around acceleration from 0-60mph in 5 seconds like Tesla Semi.
I learned recently that US truckers have been losing their minds over truck specific speed limits.
To be honest i thought this not possible without batteries advancing. Positive Surprised its economically viable. Go volvo! Go geely!
Volvo Trucks is a different company than Volco Cars, and has nothing to do with Geely
Tesla trucks delivered: 0
Article says there are about 140, but I wonder what the details are-- are they really in production use?
I've personally seen Pepsi Tesla Semis on the highway near Sacramento.
It is a testament to Elon Musk's vast skills at producing obfuscating noise that nearly all of the discussion of electric semi trucks here has been about the Tesla Semi, and not about trucks made by the many manufacturers who will actually sell you an electric semi truck.
In a way it's a testament to the lack of marketing skills of the truck companies that are selling these vehicles. Perhaps they don't feel the need market their capabilities to people who don't actually buy trucks, but there are some benefits to that kind of above-the-line advertising. As Musk has demonstrated.
> there are some benefits to that kind of above-the-line advertising
For raising capital. Waymo is beating Tesla on robotaxis, BYD on cars and Volvo on trucks.
I have trouble calling these "semi". The do good work and are an environmental boon to short hauls, but "up to" ranges of 500km arent really semi territory imho. A better measurment imho is time. These things are good for four or five hours of highway driving, much much less when fully loaded or in mountains. So they cannot sustain a full day of driving without recharge. That is a delivery truck duty cycle, not semi.
(A typical diesel semi does 3500km between fillups, long enough for a few days of driving and about as long as the longest hauls in north america.)
And there is a big push for much larger trucks (net safety, less manpower/maintenance etc). Trucks that haul two 40-foot teus are comming. We need far better battery capacities to electrify such loads.
European perspective:
A large proportion of truck traffic in the EU is regional trunking - regular runs between distribution centres, typically as part of a hub-and-spoke model. To give an example, If I receive a parcel via Royal Mail, it's likely to have travelled via the Midlands Super Hub to my local mail centre, a distance of about 120 miles. At either end of that journey, the truck is likely to spend at least 30 minutes being unloaded and loaded.
There are many thousands of routes like that, with a constant flow of trucks covering relatively short distances on a predictable schedule. The operators running those routes have fleets of many thousands of vehicles and would have no difficulty whatsoever in managing a mixed fleet, using diesel or electric based on what's most suitable for the role; with diesel costing over $7 a gallon, there's a very obvious financial advantage to electric trucks.
Currently, the rollout of electric trucks is overwhelmingly bottlenecked by grid capacity rather than vehicle range - installing rapid chargers on every loading bay in a medium-sized distribution centre might require 20 megawatts of peak capacity, which isn't the kind of thing you can wire up overnight. Many operators are ready and eager to switch a large proportion of their fleet to electric trucks, they're just waiting for the grid to catch up.
It's not just time but cost of building out charging infrastructure and grid connections. I looked at some numbers on this a couple of years ago and the costs back then were big enough to make anything medium or long distance non-viable absent either huge amounts of subsidy or a big shift in the relative price of electricity vs diesel (which is realistically only likely to happen via big taxes on truck diesel).
Drivers by law have to take a 45 minute break every 4.5 hours in Europe, with max 9 hours driving a day.
Don't know how fast these things can charge though, but suspect they'll have more than your typical 350kw passenger car chargers.
This is the same argument people used to have about electric cars: if I can't drive nonstop for 18 hours at 95mph up a mountain hauling a speedboat and recharge up to 100% in 30 seconds then they're worthless etc etc. In reality these are not realistic or typical usage patterns.
True, most people don’t drive that much at once. BUT When I need to drive a lot, then I want to be able to do it. Driving for 600km / 6 hours, taking few hours break and coming back 600km the same day is easily possible with a gasoline/diesel car. It’s a pain with an electric one.
Is it, though?
Modern luxury EVs have a range of close to 500km, and they are able to charge at over 1000km of range per hour. Split that 6-hour leg into two 3-hour legs with a 15-minute charging session & pee break, and you can easily do that.
Besides, why optimize for the absolute best experience on your once-a-year trip? What about the _other_ 300+ days of the year? How much time are you going to save by plugging your car into a charger when you get home once or twice a week, instead of going to a petrol station to fill it up?
Sounds good, but it's not reality, at least not for now. What you're describing is the absolute best scenarios - most expensive cars and MW charging stations. These I can't afford and the charging stations don't exist or are very rare (at least here in Europe).
If it would be true, that'd be great.
For me saving time on the gas station is negligible. I drive around anyway, but yes, I agree with you - charging at home is very cool. Just plug it in when you get home and you can drive in the morning.
The only way I see this, have 2 cars. One for longer trips (diesel), one for shorter, every day usage (electric). But this needs 2 parking spaces, insurance, taxes etc. I can't affor this either.
A good question is then whether a driver can recharge a truck during rest periods. Most jurisdictions dont allow refueling or maintenance during driver rest periods.
Trucks are not personal vehicles. They are run as part of a business. If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately. That isnt happening because the math/money doesnt, yet, make sense.
Cursory research indicates that in the EU, they are:
If charging the battery of an electric heavy goods vehicle or bus requires supervision or involvement of the driver, then this time needs to be recorded as 'other work.' On the contrary, if the driver can freely dispose of her/his time while the battery is charging, then the time taken for the battery to charge has no effect on the breaks or the daily rest of the driver. Any movement of the vehicle from the charging location would be deemed to be an interruption or an end to a break or rest period.
https://corte.be/images/documents/CORTE_ENF_007_2024_Elec_ba...
According to the electric trucker channel there are rumblings about altering the last clause, because currently if you end your day at a charging station you can’t free it up and go to a regular parking space when you’re topped up.
The problem is that it is still going to interrupt your rest, and therefore your focus while driving. Getting woken up at all is a problem, the fact that you can go back to sleep after 15 minutes doesn't really matter. I would be quite surprised if the EU was willing to mess with that.
A better solution would be a truck stop with a charging connector per parking spot, and a way for the charger to dynamically connect to the trucks one-by-one. The driver can plug it in when they arrive, and the truck stop will handle the rest.
Alternatively, build a bunch of low-speed chargers instead of a single high-speed charger. When it comes to overnight charging, everyone is going to be there for at least 9 hours anyways. No need to hurry up and finish that charging session in 30 minutes.
> The problem is that it is still going to interrupt your rest, and therefore your focus while driving. Getting woken up at all is a problem, the fact that you can go back to sleep after 15 minutes doesn't really matter. I would be quite surprised if the EU was willing to mess with that.
The problem is that sleeping is not the only activity during the rest period. A "standard" rest period by EU law is 11 hours. Going for a run, getting dinner, doing some life stuff, then moving the truck a few meters, is not going to kill the driver's focus, but currently it's either limiting (because you're now on reduced rest, or you need to rest 11 hours from moving the truck) or illegal.
> Alternatively, build a bunch of low-speed chargers instead of a single high-speed charger. When it comes to overnight charging, everyone is going to be there for at least 9 hours anyways. No need to hurry up and finish that charging session in 30 minutes.
That has its own issues, because it means you need to electrify essentially every truck parking spot where truckers might overnight.
I suspect it is a lot to do with the capex too.
I only recently got a personal electric car not because they only recently got good enough or only recently made sense, but rather because my last petrol car finally needed replacing. I suspect trucks are similar - they're not going to replace them right away when they have an existing one that is working fine and still has many years of use ahead of it. Keep using the existing ones until they need to replace them, then go EV. Otherwise you're losing that amortization of the capex
"If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately"
Real life is not that simple. Depending on your cargo and routes, profitability might be about might be more about capacity (mass or volume), purchase cost, operating cost, max range, torque, reliability etc. And then... businesses have inertia and are only rational actors the extent that the people who control them are.
Businesses are not suddenly going to dispose of their current fleet because something new comes along. For most, I imagine, their trucks will be on some kind of fixed-term lease agreement.
"If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately"
Real life is not that simple. Depending on your cargo and routes, profitability might be about might be more about capacity (mass or volume), purchase cost, operating cost, max range, etc. And then... businesses have inertia and are only rational actors the extent that the people who control them are.
There is a good YouTube channel of a truck driver in Germany who drives an electric truck and he's been praising it all over. The range is enough to go between pauses, and yes he can charge while resting.
https://youtu.be/I4b-cybcgkM?si=gGTBfgApQ_ssDANu
>>Most jurisdictions dont allow refueling or maintenance during driver rest periods.
Well good thing recharging is not the same as refueling. Fueling requires an operator to be present and watching the pump for safety reasons. Recharging doesn't have such limitation.
>Fueling requires an operator to be present and watching the pump for safety reasons
Why can't pumping be made safe enough to not require supervison?
It probably could, but given filling up a semi takes just 10 minutes, perhaps it isn't considered cost-effective to do so.
A semi truck is defined by having a separate tractor and trailer unit
These have exactly those
You might be thinking of long distance haules, but what's long distance also depends on the environment
In 500 km you can cross most counties in europe
> In 500 km you can cross most counties in europe
500km doesn't even get me to the capital of my European country. Maybe you're thinking specifically about Eastern Europe or something, where there is a bunch of smaller countries closer together?
The statement was pretty clear, right? Most European countries are less than 500km wide is almost certainly true, no matter how you define width. There are only 8 EU countries that are larger than 500km^2. And that includes the vast spaces of Scandinavia where no one lives.
Driving from Warsaw to Lisbon, 6 countries, and crossing 4 of the largest, is 3.300km.
Do you mean the Balkans? Since e.g. Poland is bigger than the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and around the same size as Germany (to within 15%). Ukraine is even bigger - larger than all the former.
It isnt about travel distances. Most "long haul" trucks dont go anywhere near maximum range on a given run. It is about driver time. A truck that cannot keep a driver driving for an entire shift (8 or 10 hours) is a logistics problem. At four or five hours, drivers will need to get to a depo and swap out for another truck mid-shift in order to keep driving, which is a wildly inefficient use of expensive human resources.
What is needed are 8 or 10-hour endurance trucks, even if at a lesser load, as that will cover a driver's day and allow recharge during rest periods.
You're right about driver time being the key metric. mattlondon's reply[1] to the GP gives the extra context: the endurance is aligned pretty well with (EU) legally mandated breaks, allowing for mid-day charging.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44478186
Edit: I see you've replied there.
Which might be OK in Europe. My current area allows for 13 hours of driving during a maximum 14-hour work day. Most semi drivers then maintain a 14+10 rotation for a few days before a "weekend" of downtime. These Volvo trucks are nowhere near that sort of daily endurance and just wouldn't be competitive.
Yes, it's clearly a problem that in some places poor working conditions, risks in road safety due to fatigue and global warming due to fossil fuel use are found acceptable because it allows companies make more profit.
Nobody is arguing these trucks can currently cover every single use case. The US long distance trucking industry is an outlier.
Yeah, in the US they should probably run overhead wires which would be more efficient than batteries. They could also consider coupling together a few dozen trucks on the highway. For the ultimate in efficiency, and to reduce particulate emissions, they could replace the wheels with steel wheels and make them run on tracks...
Running overhead wires cross country in the US would be exorbitantly expensive. In the city? Sure, though it would be ugly. In the countryside, not a chance of it being workable.
You don't need it in the city or in the countryside, you just need it on the highways. The overhead wires will directly power the cross-country legs, a small battery can cover last-mile delivery and interruptions in overhead wire coverage due to things like complex highway interchanges.
Besides, it's not like this kind of electrification is unheard of. Most of the world has electrified rail with a density higher than the US highway system, and India has been electrifying its railways at a pace of over 4000 miles per year. Electrifying the main cross-country freight corridors by the end of the decade should be quite doable.
Who said anything about long haul? A longer workday doesn't mean a longer route. Most trucks do multiple deliveries every day without ever leaving their home area, commonly between ports and warehouses.
> Who said anything about long haul?
You did, just above:
>>>>> It isnt about travel distances. Most "long haul" trucks ...
With 5,000 of these trucks sold, and presumably others from other manufacturers, maybe just accept your personal experience isn't universal.
That's screwed up. How's the accident rate in your area?
I can't imagine it's possible for people to keep up their attention and stay alert for multiple consecutive 14hr days
> Trucks that haul two 40-foot teus are comming. We need far better battery capacities to electrify such loads.
Put the battery underneath the trailers and you've basically solved the problem.
These do exist already. The Electrictrucker also has a video about this. They can be combined with a EV truck as a range extender or with a regular truck to save on gas/diesel.
> We need far better battery capacities
I'm getting really nervous as we cross into the megawatt-hour territory. A tank full of diesel fuel isn't exactly a walk in the park during a disaster, but it takes a few minutes or hours to burn off. The battery can dump all of its energy in seconds. Managing a diesel fire is a much more understood artform.
What would a million watt hours look like if released in <10 seconds? How many casualties would we have if this were to occur in a tunnel or other confined roadway environment?
I think this is an example of a "good" outcome: https://ctif.org/news/electric-semi-truck-lithium-battery-fi...
> megawatt-hour territory. A tank full of diesel fuel
A full diesel tank on a truck is circa 13 megawatt hours
A bigger risk than the energy density (or how bomb-like it is) must be the self-sustaining fires.
Per mile driven, electric trucks have less fires than diesel ones but when they go on fire, they can be harder to put out.
It's different risk profiles, diesel can run downhill in an accident and create a fairly hard to contain situation. BEVs don't really do that but they reject attempts to snuff them out.
I like the Edison Motors concept a lot. Diesel generator running at peak efficiency charging a small battery. From a fire hazard point of view, probably worst of both worlds when it does go up in flames but i'd still expect less fires than conventional diesel trucks, based on nothing but the gut feeling that the drastic simplification of the drive train results in fewer ignition opportunities.
> A bigger risk than the energy density (or how bomb-like it is) must be the self-sustaining fires.
The whole problem with batteries is the oxidizer is already included. When the cathode decomposes, it turns into an O2 factory. There really isn't a limit to how fast this can go if there is a structural compromise of the battery. Diesel fuel requires external oxygen constantly. This makes it much easier to extinguish.
Diesel truck fires can be quite problematic in-and-of-themselves:
https://www.thetruckersreport.com/news/tanker-explodes-on-pa...
What are you talking about? Batteries don’t dump their energy in seconds. They dump their energy over many, many hours.
The initial burst of flames you see in some videos is not the energy stored in the battery, it’s the flammable electrolytes separating the anode and cathode that’s burning.
There’s a study from Sweden that set an ICE and EV car on fire. The energy release profile is fairly similar. The ICE is a bit more intense overall. So there’s nothing inherently more dangerous about batteries. Quite the opposite.
The only issue with (current gen li-ion) batteries is the thermal runaway. When the battery is shorted the energy is dumped over the following hours and it’s nearly impossible to stop. It’s doesn’t “burn” per se, but it will get so hot that it will re-ignite any flammable material that the car or truck is made out of. For a trained fire department it’s fairly easy to deal with though. You just need to cool the battery pack during the time where it’s dumping its energy. This could be done with a specialised hose that sprays water underneath the battery pack. You can inflate a barrier around the car and fill that with water. We’ve also seen that fire departments get an empty container delivered, fill it with a bit of water and lift the car into it. For a truck that’s obviously not possible. My point is there’s dozens of ways to deal with it.
Several next generation batteries (which are fairly mature and well beyond the lab stage at this point) have electrolytes that are less flammable or not flammable at all. So you avoid both the initial burst of flames and reduce the potential of thermal runaway. With good separation between cells/packs, it’s extremely unlikely that the whole pack will burn at once.
EV cars and trucks are already objectively (as measured by fire statistics in countries with high share of EVs like Norway) safer. No company is going to introduce a battery chemistry unless it’s more safe than the current commercial cells, so it’s only going to get better from here. Fire departments are only going to be better trained, and these days they can just copy the learnings from countries like Norway, where the fire departments already consider EVs to be far better for overall fire safety than ICE vehicles.
Batteries have the potential to be nearly entirely fire proof, even while storing a lot of energy, so the future is very bright in this area.
Lots of semi trucking is not "long-haul". In many European countries, you don't have need for long-haul routes for port to city or city to port transit.
Paris to Rotterdamn is under 500km, and Paris to Le Havre is much shorter (although these also have train routes).
Similarly, they could serve basically any route in the UK or Ireland.
The majority of trucking in the UK is based on the tramping model. A driver gets in his truck at 6am on a Monday and drives it around the country until Friday evening. Sleeping in service stations, lay-bys and industrial estates depending on where they can find availability (often with difficulty).
The idea that electric trucks could just slot into this is extremely naive.
If we built charging stations as rest stops then it would work.
Which is exactly what is happening. It makes sense for cars as well, as they need to top up more frequently highway carge stations become a regular service rather than an overpriced emergency one.
Good luck with that. The reality is their aren't enough toilets for truck drivers nevermind building a whole suite of rest stops up and down the country.
In Europe this is already happening. There are dedicated companies for this (Milence) and the traditional operators have truck charging parks as well.
These are mostly being sold in Europe, so with mandatory break times, the range is likely Good Enough.
500km is enough to drive anywhere in the UK, so it would be plenty for most uses.
My trip home to my parents is 400 miles (about 650km) and that's far from the the most extreme journey.
Presumably you mean with recharging? Which is theoretically fine but the charging infrastructure for large vehicles is currently nonexistent. We see some electric busses, from Gatwick if I remember correctly, coming to recharge at Cobham services in the regular car charging spots.
i just drove 13 hours from bay area to north eastern california (Alturas) and i didn't see one electric big rig.
1. How sure are you? The ones from established manufacturers don't really look substantially different from their diesel counterparts. Unless you're really looking closely you'd have a hard time telling them apart.
2. Electric semi trucks are not ideal for long distance trips, they're more for predictable day routes, so it wouldn't surprise me to not encounter many of them on what was presumably a highway drive.
These are mostly being sold in Europe, not the US. They're also not particularly distinctive looking, mostly; I'm sceptical that most people could identify one offhand as it passed by.
I wouldn't recognize the Volvo EV semi pictured in the article while driving. It looks generic.
Similar to cars, it's easy to spot Teslas but other brands don't stand out this much and you really need to know the little details to spot. Same for trucks.
> Similar to cars, it's easy to spot Teslas but other brands don't stand out this much and you really need to know the little details to spot.
Disagree. All you have to do is look for lack of a front grill or flush door handles to tell if a car is an EV.
Flush door handles are completely orthogonal to whether a car is an EV; that just happened to be Tesla's design language.
This caused a lot of confusion with VW; a lot of people thought the id.3/4 were their first electric cars, because the eGolf and eUp looked so... normal. I'm fairly sure they deliberately said "we need to make it look more electric-car-y" at some point.
5000 EVs is nothing though.
5,000 electric semis actually represents roughly 2% of Volvo's annual truck production and makes them the current market leader in heavy-duty electric trucks, far ahead of competitors like Daimler and Peterbilt.
Awkward headline, since its not really much of a milestone. The first couple in a region are interesting, hitting significant proportions a year is interesting, a cumulative (relatively) small number is not that interesting.
Since when is 5k a couple? Volvo is selling these while companies like Tesla are cough asleep at the wheel. I think the article mentioned 140 Tesla semis sold.
They're tooling up the new Semi factory in Nevada (next to their first Gigafactory) and it has 50000 units/year volume production capacity.
According to musk
Cool. Sure. Considering they promised 5,000 units to Pepsi and UPS in 2017 and have delivered barely 100.
Just more of Musk kicking cans down the road.
Given large fleet operators like JB Hunt operate about 30K vehicles, this is a pretty significant number.
Electric - Always a key trigger word for the global tech lefties.
>"Volvo is currently owned by the Chinese company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, commonly known as Geely."
Yes, the Chinese are good at making EVs.
There are 2 Volvos
- Volvo Cars, a chinese company owned by Geely. Formerly a part of Volvo Group/AB Volvo aka "The Volvo" people usually reference.
- Volvo Group/AB Volvo, which is still the original Volvo from 1927.
Volvo Trucks is part of Volvo Group not Volvo Cars
The two companies share name and logo
If you think that’s confusing, there are two completely separate Japanese companies who use the Mitsubishi name and the same red diamond logo to sell air-conditioners in Australia. The products have absolutely nothing in common; the two companies have been completely independent from each other since 1921.
https://www.mhiaa.com.au/
https://www.mitsubishielectric.com.au/
I don’t know the internals of the holding or Volvo, but the company that I work for is _technically_ American, and we operate like a full European company, developing everything in-house. The only thing the parent holding intermingles with us is numbers at the end of the year and strategic directions.
So this could be happening here as well: Chinese say “hey let’s do electric” and the rest happens in Sweden. Would it then be really a Chinese vehicle?
> I don’t know the internals of the holding or Volvo, but the company that I work for is _technically_ American, and we operate like a full European company, developing everything in-house. The only thing the parent holding intermingles with us is numbers at the end of the year and strategic directions.
> So this could be happening here as well: Chinese say “hey let’s do electric” and the rest happens in Sweden. Would it then be really a Chinese vehicle?
Yes, that's the nature of corporate headquarters. If the company doesn't want to be thought of as a Chinese company, it could relocate its corporate headquarters elsewhere.
This says nothing of the ownership structure and so on. A company could be just as Chinese due to ownership and/or control independently of where its corporate HQ is located. I don't think that this framing is especially useful, because there is no such thing as a stereotypical company or person. Individuals make up companies. Companies are just people, acting in concert.
To say a company is Chinese makes me wonder why that is important to the person saying it, and makes me wonder why that is the way they choose to phrase it, and makes me wish they would tell me more about actual individual people that exist and what their views and goals are. Corporations aren't people. People are corporations.
Geely owns Volvo Car AB. Volvo Trucks is a different company and part of the Volvo Group, which is not owned by Geely (but they are a big shareholder).
Volvo group is listed on the stock exchange , Geely has less than 5% of the shares https://www.volvogroup.com/en/investors/the-volvo-share/owne...