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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.
Wear down? You mean degrade? If so, no, that's not "the way it is in electric cars".
Driving on modern EVs is much less stressful than charging. A 300 mile Tesla driving at 70 mph discharges fully in 4,3 hours. It can then fill up half its pack in 20 minutes. The rate of putting energy into packs is much higher than the rate of taking them out, unless you're driving full out on the track.
Secondly, supercharging has little to no impact on a Tesla pack's life, as confirmed by numerous comparisons. Nor is degradation even much of an issue at all, period. Here is collected data on Tesla vehicles. Click on "charts". You'll see that typical degradation is about 4% in the first year of ownership, and then it strongly declines; after five years, the average total degradation is about 6-7%. Roadster owners (aka much older vehicles) usually report about 10% degradation. Tesla warranties their packs for 8 years (with unlimited miles on the S and X). And 8 year battery warranties are actually pretty much the industry standard these days.
That of course doesn't mean that you can't make a bad battery pack; it's actually easy. Early Leafs had bad problems with degradation in hot climates, for example, because their packs are only passively cooled rather than climate controlled (they still suffer worse degradation than Teslas, but they're not as bad as they used to be). It all comes down to what type of cells you use (because chemistry / design greatly affects properties; all li-ions are most definitely not equal) and how much you baby them.
You are however correct that freeway driving on EVs is much less energy (not power) efficient than in the city. EV ranges, however (at least for passenger vehicles - I've never looked into semis) are rated on the EPA 5-cycle or an equivalency metric (such as US-06 times a downward adjustment factor of 0.7). They're for "normal" highway driving, supposed to be an average of how people drive. That said, if you drive faster than average, you'll get significantly poorer performance. On the flipside, if you're a slowpoke, you'll significantly exceed the range.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
Actually, EVs tend to go further in low-speed stop-and-go conditions than they do at high speeds. EV range is strongly correlated to velocity. Gasoline engines cancel out the increased aero losses at speed by the increased efficiency they gain from being in a higher torque regime. Gasoline vehicles (excepting hybrids) also do not regen, and they idle at stops.
What hat are you pulling that "eight plus hours" from? I have no clue what Cummins' plans are (presumption: "not much"), but long charge times has never been part of Tesla's game plan. Tesla battery packs are generally designed to fill approximately 50% in ~20 minutes, to 80% in ~40, and then taper down from there. Semi's launch will correspond with the rollout of Supercharger V3. All that we know about V3 is that it will be battery buffered (so the grid doesn't limit how fast it can discharge), and that it will make 350kW look like "a childrens' toy". Current superchargers are 145kW / max 120kW per stall (2 stalls per charger).
So if you were driving, say, 70mph (go ahead and fill in the details yourself), that would be 5,7h, meaning somewhere on the ballpark of one hour of charging spread out over the course of your day of Tesla goes with fast charging for semi, even less if they go for battery swap (some people think they will; I do not). Whoop-di-doo. Fuel costs generally are double driver salaries anyway for a fleet operator. Also worth noting that in the EU, a driver isn't even allowed to drive more than 4,5 hours without 45 minutes of total breaks.
Again, this article is about Cummins, but anyway, EPA ranges are based on the 5-cycle or an equivalence factor thereof. It's actually quite realistic. If you want a cycle to complain about, it's Europe's reliance on the ridiculous NEDC (it inflates EV ranges by 15-20%).
Grades are big loss factors for ICE vehicles, but not for EVs. An EV that rolls down the opposite side without regen loses almost nothing at all. If it has to regen, losses of the energy spent in climbing are generally only 25-50%, depending on the efficiency of the motor and battery. In the real world, the vast majority of climbing energy is recovered via rolldown rather than regen, and hence practical losses are very minimal.
Which is why cutting fuel costs in half in the US, and by 60-85% in Europe, is a Big Freaking Deal.
Are you trying to hit all of the selling points? The fact that it's leased makes it much easier because even if you have to pay a higher lease payment each month, you're saving much more than that in fuel payments each month, so it makes it a no brainer.
Tesla's Model 3 comes in at pretty much the same weight as other competitors in its class (BMW 3-Series, Audi A-4, Mercedes C350, etc). Semi will be no different. The packs on Semi will probably come in around 2 tonnes, give or take (it'll be easier to say once we're given exact specs). The drive units will add another 0,5 tonne or so. Compared to the weight of the engine and transmission they're replacing, that's not that much.
It will also almost certainly be the most powerful diesel truck ever. Expect
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
Fixed that for you.
Incorrect, unless your definition of "significant" is different from mine. Said graph is from:
J. B. Dunn *a, L. Gaines a, J. C. Kelly a, C. James b and K. G. Gallagher (2015) "The significance of Li-ion batteries in electric vehicle life-cycle energy and emissions and recycling's role in its reduction" DOI: 10.1039/C4EE03029J (Analysis) Energy Environ. Sci., 2015, 8, 158-168 (The significance of Li-ion batteries in electric vehicle life-cycle energy and emissions and recycling's role in its reduction - Energy & Environmental Science (RSC Publishing) DOI:10.1039/C4EE03029J
Blue + red is energy burned in operation. Green plus purple plus light blue is energy used in manufacture, with no mass production in the EV case. Green plus purple (without light blue) is energy used in manufacture, with mass production in the EV case. To make the results of the above study even more extreme, a lot of EV manufacturers don't plan to power their production with grid power at all; Tesla, for example, plans to power the gigafactory almost exclusively with solar.
Really, it should be obvious that vehicle operation causes much more emissions than vehicle production. An average gasoline car burns its own weight in fuel every year. And beyond that, a sizeable chunk of the energy of its manufacture is recovered at the end of life via recycling.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
This.
I've got a BMW motorcycle. If I do an oil change myself using "official" BMW oil it runs me $150 bucks. $200 if I take it to a dealer. I assume BMW adds unobtainium to their oil or something, cuz god only know why it costs so much.