If someone else does it would it have the same impact? I think part of the reason it worked so well is because Van Damme was well known for exactly that sort of stunt.
But Van Damme is 63. Even though I'm sure he is fitter, faster, and more supple than 99% of the population of any age if he could do that again now that would be quite some achievement I think. Even with safety lines.
The best part is Volvo backs up their marketing with amazing vehicles. It’s really the first car I’ve been so thoroughly pleased with. The only annoying thing is they’re going deeper on touchscreens rather than tactile controls… which is certainly quite annoying. But very few automakers are going the opposite way. Tesla ruined it for us all I guess.
The technological innovation pace in large capacity batteries and motors for EV’s is very inspiring. However, everything has externalities that seem to be ignored or remembered only after the fact. The USA’s roads have a score of D <1>. These electric trucks are tremendously heavy, and road wear is proportional to vehicle weight to the 4th power! <2>. A possible future innovation might be reinventing the highway pavement system, either materials or methodology of resurfacing.
They aren't really that much more heavy than normal trucks. We're talking a couple of percent of the useful payload here. They aren't 'tremendously' heavy but just about the same weight give or take a couple of percent. A couple of tonnes of battery goes a long way. And it's not like big diesel engines, assorted plumbing and other systems, and a couple of hundred of gallons of fuel weigh nothing.
There's no need for new pavements, or any other solutions for a perceived problem that simply does not exist.
This vehicle has 10 axles, so it should put less wear on the road than a typical truck&trailer with 5 axles with a capacity of 45-55 tonnes of cargo. Wear is directly proportional to the number of axles.
A number of years ago there was a demo of a technology where they mixed (something like) iron filings in the asphalt. By slowly driving over it with a massive electromagnet they could heat the asphalt from within, helping to fix any small cracks before water ingress could cause a larger problem.
I've been pretty frustrated with the slow adoption of EV and PHEVs for large trucks.
EV drivetrains are so much better suited to heavy trucks for everything but range (thus... the hybrid). The insane torque they can deliver, the energy recovery in braking, simply is a revolution for them. The Tesla demo showed that being barely able to go up a mountain is a thing of the past with an EV drivetrain.
I had to drive an RV with a friend over the Appalachans, and then the constant undulating foothills of the eastern midwest. What is especially annoying is the automatic transmission can't handle the climbs without careful metering of torque by the driver, otherwise it does a loud and jerky downshift. EV drivetrains would have none of that.
The range? Put a generator onboard. For RVs they already have one in most cases.
The stability of the entire system would be enhanced with floor batteries. interior and storage space would improve. You have a huge room for solar cells, and for RVs, the roll-out sunshade could be further solar cell real estate.
The weight issue will improve with density. Sulfur, solid state, and semi-solid state are in the wings. But again, a hybrid drivetrain would reduce the amount of batteries needed and improve range.
We should have mandated the development of hybrid drivetrains in all wheeled transport two decades ago, which is five years after the Insight and Prius hit the market.
A small trailer with a genset and extra luggage space would be enough to convert an compact electric car into a touring car. Even better if you could rent one only when you need it.
> The idea is that HCT will contribute to [...] reduced road wear [...]. One example is Finland, where it is permitted to drive with 76 tonnes of total weight and 34,5m truck combinations on most roads. Another is Sweden, where it is allowed to drive 74 tonnes...
Apparently it can actually reduce road wear, likely due to using fewer trucks (and therefore fewer axles), despite the absolutely massive size of the semi featured in TFA.
Considering how close the truck matches the length and weight limits of the road networks listed, I strongly suspect it was explicitely designed around said limits. Possibly coupled with a margin for safety and human inaccuracy at the weigh scale, or simply lowest common denominator for limits in a market not listed.
And the strength of guard rail needed to keep the vehicle in its lane is also proportional to .. the square of the weight (kinetic energy) if I could guess?
I wonder how good their regenerative braking is -- that's a lot of kinetic energy to both have to stop effectively and to take advantage of as, well, energy.
Most diesel trucks use a jake brake / engine brake because the wheel brakes would otherwise wear out relatively fast, or even overheat and fail on longer downhills.
Seems like in-wheel motors are just about perfect for this application, and if they can put a reasonable fraction of that energy back into the batteries, even better.
In wheel are bad unless you really need the compactness. In general on a vehicle you want to minimize the unsprung mass. Also the geometry of the wheel restricts you to mostly axial geometry, where as radial electric motors can be made as long as you want.
These trucks can charge at 160kw, so yeah they can put some pretty serious power back into that battery during regenerative braking.
yes regenerative braking is a holy grail. Unfortunately current (haha) car implementations have some corner cases that might be a safety hazard in a truck.
EVs nowadays cannot absorb so much electricity with a cold battery or a full battery. Even during ideal battery conditions, I think a fully loaded tractor trailer on a hill could easily overwhelm even a large battery.
I think the solution is some sort of hybrid system:
I was thinking about the same issue the other day, but in the context of passenger EVs and tall mountain passes. On the pikes peak descent for example there are many signs imploring drivers to shift down and use engine braking to avoid brake overheating and failure. It would probably be a bad idea to put a charger at the summit.
Using hydraulic hybrid technology is a better bet for trucks. They recapture 70%-80%, which is a lot better than batteries, and they last a lot longer than batteries. The economics show a savings of $150k per truck over its lifetime (for UPS trucks). The trucks don't have the massive additional battery weight, so less particulates from tire wear and less road repair.
There's no theoretical reason why it can't be good. The Tesla Semi is capable of significant regenerative braking capacity over long downhill stretches. Tesla's marketing claim featured a route which included Grapevine Mountain — which has a 4136ft elevation. They assert that it was capable of continuous regenerative braking, though it's not clear how much friction braking was involved. (It's almost certain that some trailer braking was involved for safety and stability.)
> The truck runs 12 hours a day, with a stop for charging when the driver takes a break
I'm curious how much range it gets before needing a charge, and how long it takes to charge during that break. Running 12 hours a day doesn't tell us anything about distance covered.
As for charging speed, this truck has 0.6 megawatt hour of battery on board. Mercedes used 600 kw chargers. So, that's about 1 hour. There are a few companies working on megawatt chargers for trucks, so that's a number that might come down.
More battery in the truck is possible but also more expensive. And at least in Europe breaks are mandatory every four and half hours anyway. So, the driver might as well plug in while they rest. The battery wouldn't be completely empty by then so it tops up faster.
My question as well. The next sentence says: "In the long term, the truck will also run between Gothenburg and the city of Borås, 70 km from Gothenburg."
So the implication is that it's not being used for that distance yet.
70km is really not very far. Great if you can take some short haul diesels off the road I guess, but that's not even a 1-hr drive on most roads.
It sounds like a good question to ask but the main point is that there is a use case for a truck this size/capacity that can work 12 hour/day. At worst it displaces a diesel truck working 12hours/day with same km.
EV. Are awesome as they don't need to idle their engine so no diesel (or very few electrons) spent while waiting for loading etc.
Volvo's Class 8 electrics get around 275 mile range, which is more than Daimler's. Naturally, carrying more weight is gonna limit that range, dunno how much (any auto engineers around?)
As someone who tries to curate a wider notification network of new technologies, I found this 'hole' in my sources on electric truck availability/deployment kind of notable. Now I'm going to need to find some sort of 'Transport News' type publication that summarizes these things monthly or quarterly :-).
Compared to Tesla, it seems Volvo’s gone a different route. While they don’t mention the total range, the trial distance being ~70km one way (with 12 hr/day duty cycle) suggests they might be targeting low distance heavy transport.
Semi’s high range means it needs a bigger battery, combined with the non-stop use takes a large toll on them. Someone in the other post speculates the cost of replacing them could be $170k. Volvo’s model likely gets around that with smaller batteries - leading to lower cost of maintenance.
While there would be some efficiency savings from carrying around less weight, I'm not sure one should expect lower maintenance costs with smaller batteries since the wear per cell would be higher in inverse proportion to the size of the battery.
That’s a fair point. Volvo fitted with smaller batteries but travelling a comparable distance as the Semi will result in more charge-discharge cycles for the Volvo. That can lead to more wear.
The current trial use of Semi with Pepsi seems to be the same use case as Volvo. They only have day-cabs, and every day Semi returns to the transport hub. The long-range continuous-use stuff is still a future goal.
The Ports of Los Angeles require decarbonization, and so this is not required to go great distance, but rather to spend a day moving containers around at the port.
Readit News
This calls for a new van Damme commercial.
Edit: the old one https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M7FIvfx5J10
But Van Damme is 63. Even though I'm sure he is fitter, faster, and more supple than 99% of the population of any age if he could do that again now that would be quite some achievement I think. Even with safety lines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lsFs2615gw
The dynamic steering is too
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_wKkV5dwQ
<1> https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/roads-infrastr...
<2> https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
Of course that means more wheels needed, so more tires and other components. Tire wear also scales with axle weight (among other factors).
Total environmental impact depends on more than just the weight. The added weight isn't good, but may be offset by the other design changes.
There's no need for new pavements, or any other solutions for a perceived problem that simply does not exist.
A number of years ago there was a demo of a technology where they mixed (something like) iron filings in the asphalt. By slowly driving over it with a massive electromagnet they could heat the asphalt from within, helping to fix any small cracks before water ingress could cause a larger problem.
EV drivetrains are so much better suited to heavy trucks for everything but range (thus... the hybrid). The insane torque they can deliver, the energy recovery in braking, simply is a revolution for them. The Tesla demo showed that being barely able to go up a mountain is a thing of the past with an EV drivetrain.
I had to drive an RV with a friend over the Appalachans, and then the constant undulating foothills of the eastern midwest. What is especially annoying is the automatic transmission can't handle the climbs without careful metering of torque by the driver, otherwise it does a loud and jerky downshift. EV drivetrains would have none of that.
The range? Put a generator onboard. For RVs they already have one in most cases.
The stability of the entire system would be enhanced with floor batteries. interior and storage space would improve. You have a huge room for solar cells, and for RVs, the roll-out sunshade could be further solar cell real estate.
The weight issue will improve with density. Sulfur, solid state, and semi-solid state are in the wings. But again, a hybrid drivetrain would reduce the amount of batteries needed and improve range.
We should have mandated the development of hybrid drivetrains in all wheeled transport two decades ago, which is five years after the Insight and Prius hit the market.
A small trailer with a genset and extra luggage space would be enough to convert an compact electric car into a touring car. Even better if you could rent one only when you need it.
Apparently it can actually reduce road wear, likely due to using fewer trucks (and therefore fewer axles), despite the absolutely massive size of the semi featured in TFA.
Considering how close the truck matches the length and weight limits of the road networks listed, I strongly suspect it was explicitely designed around said limits. Possibly coupled with a margin for safety and human inaccuracy at the weigh scale, or simply lowest common denominator for limits in a market not listed.
Yes. Perhaps we could replace tarmac and tyres with steel.
Obviously there would be grip implications, so we could cut grooves in the road, and add flanges to the wheels.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Most diesel trucks use a jake brake / engine brake because the wheel brakes would otherwise wear out relatively fast, or even overheat and fail on longer downhills.
Seems like in-wheel motors are just about perfect for this application, and if they can put a reasonable fraction of that energy back into the batteries, even better.
These trucks can charge at 160kw, so yeah they can put some pretty serious power back into that battery during regenerative braking.
EVs nowadays cannot absorb so much electricity with a cold battery or a full battery. Even during ideal battery conditions, I think a fully loaded tractor trailer on a hill could easily overwhelm even a large battery.
I think the solution is some sort of hybrid system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_braking
like maybe dumping energy into the battery, then overflow into banks of resistors, and then a fallback to friction brakes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_braking#Rheostatic_bra...
if you charge at the top of the hill your battery will be warm you just need to know not to fill it up.
you just need to train drivers not to have a break at the top of a hill.
https://www.epa.gov/cati/hydraulic-hybrid-vehicles
Garbage trucks can be retrofitted with hydraulic hybrid, for big savings.
https://www.powermotiontech.com/hydraulics/accumulators/arti...
I'm curious how much range it gets before needing a charge, and how long it takes to charge during that break. Running 12 hours a day doesn't tell us anything about distance covered.
As for charging speed, this truck has 0.6 megawatt hour of battery on board. Mercedes used 600 kw chargers. So, that's about 1 hour. There are a few companies working on megawatt chargers for trucks, so that's a number that might come down.
More battery in the truck is possible but also more expensive. And at least in Europe breaks are mandatory every four and half hours anyway. So, the driver might as well plug in while they rest. The battery wouldn't be completely empty by then so it tops up faster.
So the implication is that it's not being used for that distance yet.
70km is really not very far. Great if you can take some short haul diesels off the road I guess, but that's not even a 1-hr drive on most roads.
But short haul and heavy duty like in a mine, this would be very handy.
Of course, they're also shuttering nuclear plants and reopening coal plants, so you might call it a step forward and a half-step backward...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-tests-first-ehighway-autobahn/...
https://bradmunchen.substack.com/p/scoop-the-tesla-semi-from...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38297765
As someone who tries to curate a wider notification network of new technologies, I found this 'hole' in my sources on electric truck availability/deployment kind of notable. Now I'm going to need to find some sort of 'Transport News' type publication that summarizes these things monthly or quarterly :-).
Semi’s high range means it needs a bigger battery, combined with the non-stop use takes a large toll on them. Someone in the other post speculates the cost of replacing them could be $170k. Volvo’s model likely gets around that with smaller batteries - leading to lower cost of maintenance.