Slashdot Mirror
Cummins Unveils Electric Semi Truck Before Tesla (autoblog.com)
Cummins has beat Tesla to the punch by unveiling its own electric semi truck. According to Forbes, the fully electric, class 7 day-cab urban hauler, called Aeos, gets 100 miles of range from its 140-kWh battery pack and can haul a 22-ton trailer. While the company does offer the options of additional battery packs to triple the range or a range-extending engine generator, the Aeos is better suited for city use rather than long-haul trucking. Autoblog reports: While this electric truck is a concept, it's a working demonstration of a product Cummins plans to start producing in 2019. At the unveiling in Columbus, Ind., Cummins also revealed its latest near-zero-emissions natural gas engines, as well as the X15 and lightweight X12 clean diesel engines. The company said it is embracing new technologies that allow its customers to contribute to a sustainable future.
and that was expected.
As they say in the parlance of our time - so sad.
we've seen hundreds of Tesla-killer prototypes and promises. What we haven't seen to date, though, is a company other than Tesla who can actually deliver a production electric vehicle that people really want to drive.
disclosure: i'm a Tesla owner (and it's by far the best vehicle i've ever owned by an extremely wide margin)
i could live a little longer in this prison
"Better For City Use"
No large trucks in cities please. I think they only said this because the batteries probably wear down quickly at freeway speeds. That's the way it is in most electric cars anyway. Multiple the range you see quoted to you by 2 if you're just driving around the city all day. Yes, freeway driving is that inefficient power-wise. (Can't defeat the laws of physics.)
Should read "Cummins unveils entirely uninteresting electric truck."
First off, the articles about have been mixed about the range extender. Some have said it's a range extending "battery". Adding only 200 miles range from a diesel generator would certainly be an unusually small amount. And where's the generator supposed to get air from? I doubt you could manage it just from flow under the vehicle like a small passenger sedan can.
Secondly, it's a prototype. Prototype EVs are a dime a dozen. Show us where Cummins is building the giant factories needed to actually produce EV components in bulk. These things don't pop up overnight. You can put out some minimal production of lousy low-quality EVs without much effort, but volume production of decent EVs requires serious investment and time.
Third, short-range class 7 electric semis are not in any way, shape, or form new. The Port of Los Angeles has been using short-range class 8 electric semis for something like two decades now. The interest in what Tesla is doing is about long-range, fast-charging-or-battery-swap semis. The info on some potential "range extender" is unclear, and they've said nothing at all about the latter.
Fourth, building battery pack that is A) long range, B) durable, C) safe, D) cheap, and E) quick to charge, is much more challenging than just wiring together some batteries. It's taken companies like Tesla a decade to mature their tech to the point where it is today. Where was Cummins all that time? It'd be one thing if they were partnering with an established EV player on the powertrain. But there's been no statement of the sort. Not like they would, because this is just, as mentioned, a prototype to try to take attention away from their competitors.
Fifth comes the problem of the source: a manufacturer needs to actually believe in their products if they want it to succeed. If a manufacturer feels that they're just making a hair shirt for hippies or a low-volume compliance vehicle, that's all it will ever be. They'll never sink the capital needed to get production costs down (the number one challenge with EVs, and yes, it's all about capital). They'll never sink the capital into building infrastructure (it takes billions). They'll never sink the capital into improving their tech. They'll just go for "what are the bare minimum stats we need to look like we're doing something?", and that's it. Does anyone here actually think that Cummins is suddenly convinced that EVs are the future? Hardly. So they're not going to put in the required capital. Which is a lot.
Making a prototype for show is one thing. Building your entire company around EVs is entirely another.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
While people may think this is trying to steal Tesla's thunder, you should remember that Tesla Motors wasn't started to make a buck, it was started to prove the viability and promotion of electric vehicles. The fact that other companies want to jump on the bandwagon isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing because it means that the plan behind Tesla is working. If you only like Telsa for the money aspect, you can suck it. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
With a name like that, I just can't...
Natural Gas is not - nowhere near zero emission. Put on a brain! .Thailand #1 in clean energy, now, Even TukTuks are LPG.
It is cheap - which is why trucks in Thailand have had gas cylinders on their trucks for flat haul for ages
And there are plenty of prototypes as said. However I expect gas prices to shoot up again.
The problem for EV's is that dealers make no after sales money - a disaster!
No more rip off services. No more overpriced fluid scams. And truck drivers WILL do DIY surgery on duff battery packs.
How clean is Cummins' "clean diesel"? Is it just a marketing term like "clean coal" or is there a substantial decrease in particulates and NOx emitted by the exhaust?
"While this electric truck is a concept (...)". Tomorrow I can "unveil" or "announce" a solar powered space ship capable of flying to Mars and back. Stop posting about non-existent products. Wake me up when they actually starts selling this truck.
Presumably only if they're not counting CO2, unless somehow they've changed the laws of physics. More half truth marketing which makes me suspicious of all their claims.
Even for urban delivery trucks do more then 100 miles a day typically. I doubt a battery system would do so well in stop and go traffic all day? As for over the road which is generally irregular routes, the ideal that you could just pull into a truck stop and charge up your electric truck for eight plus hours after only 300 miles is also ridiculous. I pretty much averaged 400 miles plus a day easily, and how is Tesla measuring this distance? Flat land, with a stiff wind pushing you? What about 6 % grades up mountains? Sorry trucking is a business model with around 3% profit and most trucks are not owned they are leased. Limiting weight capacity because of all those batteries isn't going to impress a trucking outfit who spec's out trucks at a minimum in weight. Europe has a much better trucking system and shorter routes. This may be feasible there, but not in the US or in many places where the range and infrastructure is not there for EV trucks.
Hint: check the literal meaning of "ballistic".
(here's another hint: SpaceX)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What we haven't seen to date, though, is a company other than Tesla who can actually deliver a production electric vehicle that people really want to drive.
Like Renault ? Who's been putting electric vehicles on the market for quite some time (cooperating with Nissan) (Covering a whole range of uses cases: Twizzy, Zoe, Megan, Kangoo)
Like Citroen ? Whose electric truck have been used by French postal services since the 90s ? (who needs extreme range when 20km is about as far as a your regular delivery route goes ?)
On the other hand: all of the above are European manufacturer, and Europe's densely populated cities are just ripe for EV (even back when these used to have ridiculously short ranges), and lots of country have electricity production that doesn't even rely on burning fossils.
What Tesla managed is to find a way to make it marketable in the US, mostly by a combination of getting around US' "range anxiety" problems (mostly using off-the-shelf cells for the batteries, and integrating as much as possible the production to keep the costs low even with the ginormous battery) and doing very well executed marketing campaign (they managed to make the cars look sexy in their consumers' minds).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Wow. This article really stirred up the Tesla shills here on slashdot.
"Cummins has beaten Tesla to the punch..." surely?
UPS (hydrogen): https://www.trucks.com/2017/05/02/ups-fuel-cell-electric-delivery-truck/
USPS (mix): http://about.usps.com/news/statements/091616.htm
FedEx (electric): http://www.theearthyreport.com/fedex-testing-ev-delivery-trucks/
DHL (electric): https://electrek.co/2017/08/16/ford-new-electric-truck-dhl/
and the Walmart hybrid truck looks a lot like the truck in the OP article:
http://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/news-archive/2014/03/26/walmart-debuts-futuristic-truck
What is a semi truck? Half truck, half... what?
This truck brought on a definite laugh with me. I drove semis for 20 years. If I was making city wide deliveries, I would drive way over 100 miles a day. Most of my driving was highway delivery which entailed around 3000 miles round trips. This truck is a total joke and a complete waste of R&D.
Seems to me that these days there's a bigger learning curve required to design, build, and sell semi trucks than there is to design and build electric power trains. Also, I suspect it will be both easier and more cost-effective to retro-fit an electric truck for extra range than it would be for a car. If I'm right, truckers will be able to start saving money on fuel immediately, and invest in greater range later on without having to trade in / trade up.
If Musk was less of an ego-maniac, he might see the sense in partnering with someone already in the truck manufacturing business. Leveraging the knowledge, reputation, and sales channels of an incumbent would allow him to get all that wonderful innovation Tesla has developed into a LOT more vehicles. Megalomania only gets one so far - at some point your company will suffer if you fail to cooperate with others and strike strategic alliances.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Drinks on TESLA are also crumple zones, meh
Tesla is planning to build a truck from the ground up around electric propulsion. The article indicates that Cummins won't sell anything even approaching a vehicle, they're just PLANNING to sell the drivetrain for other truck manufacturers to integrate into their existing frames. It's something I suppose, and I do like the design (hybrid with full electric drivetrain), but saying Cummins "beat" Tesla to it is kind of like when Blue Origin "beat" SpaceX to a reusable rocket (suborbital minimal payload vs orbital full payload launchers).
Reminds me of Monsanto, which was started to feed the hungry. And Enron, originally created to warm the housing projects over a cold winter. And let's not forget about Facebook, which is solely concerned with helping people connect. We live in good times, my friend.
I've never seen a company the size of Telsa with so much short interest, and I've learned to never ignore short interest.
Plenty of companies the size of Tesla have copious short interest and I've seen several who were larger than Tesla over the years. The reason for the short interest obviously is that Tesla's market cap is wildly out of line with the underlying fundamentals of the company. The company simple does not kick off enough profits or free cash flow to justify the current valuation and has no reasonably short term prospects of that happening. There is simply a lot of irrationally enthusiastic speculation going on with Tesla but it's hardly the first company to experience that.
Tesla might become profitable but I'm VERY dubious that anyone investing at the current stock price will ever realistically see the fundamentals catch up to the stock price in a short enough time to make it a good investment. I like Tesla as a company and I like their products but there is no way in hell that I think the company is a good value at anything even close to the current market price. It's a arguably good company but probably not a good investment currently. The short interest merely shows that I'm not the only one who thinks that
The article doesn't make it clear - can it haul 22 tons 100 miles?
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Consumers have been shafted far too many times by companies who use a common word in marketing terms only to have their legal department re-define it in weird ways.
Like redefining "Lifetime" of a product to mean "the length of time we think it ought to be" (as TiVo has done for their products). Or redefining "Unlimited" to mean "less GB than the largest limited data plan we offer" (as many cellular providers did).
So please excuse us for believing caveat emptor for anything a corporation says.
For those wondering, the research is sponsored by tax-dollars.
Such control of private enterprises by government officials is Crony Capitalism if one wishes to be charitable, and Fascism in other cases.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's not driving 150mph. It is driving 70mph for 2 hours then having to stop for 20 minuts to get a half charge at a supercharger.
The full charge time for a battery pack goes up significantly in the second 50 percent, and goes up even more dramatically for the last 10-15 percent (from 85 to 100 or so.)
You can test it out using your cell phone and watching the time to charge. Especially as your battery pack ages it takes longer and longer for it to reach that 100 percent charge, although 50-75 percent often doesn't take much time at all.
And Europe's killer achievement is having managed to have a standard for charging (Mennekes) - to the point that even Tesla, in Europe, provides Mennekes-compatible plugs on its car (but with a proprietary alternative DC charging mode) instead of the weird proprietary stuff they use in the US.
Meaning that instead of relying on 1 single company providing a network of charging stations, like the supercharger network, you see lots of diverse solutions popping up everywhere.
Some highway rest area start to feature standardised charging columns (with Mennekes / DC / Chademo tripple compatibility, just to be sure).
Parkings start to have dedicated EV spots where you can leave your EV charging while you go shopping / working / etc.
But then again, the fundamental different driving habit are making a significant difference.
- in Europe most of the drivers are actually fully aware that they don't drive that much around. Have a diverse charging network slowly growing organically is totally acceptable. (for most of the typical EV uses "I'll just let it charge in parking" is completely acceptable)
- in US, people seem obsessed trying to drive ridiculous distances in one go, and the supercharger network has been as much significant as the big batteries in helping fight range anxiety (the network of supercharger has helped show that you can realistically drive a Tesla to travel across the whole country).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
These are not competing vehicles an "urban hauler" is meant for "last mile" delivery where as Tesla's semi are targeted for long haul trucking.