I was on my burger ride. Burger Ride. As I was eating my burger, an electric semi truck in Pepsi colors parked along side and made a delivery. It was gone before I could finish, get cleaned up and check it out, but it passed me on the road back through a couple intersections and I could then tell it had a Tesla logo. It got a lot of stares. I didn't think those things were close to being put on the road.
What threw me was that as it pulled out from the Burger Place, it made what I thought were diesel engine noises. I wondered if it had some sort of artificial truck noise feature for safety. I Googled it and couldn't find any mention of such.
It does have impressive specs, for a short haul delivery truck. I'm not sure how I feel about the center mounted driver position. Some of the reviews mentioned problems with backing.
Cool! I'd love to see one but I don't think there's any around here yet. Pepsico has gotten most of them so far, and I think I heard that a second customer has taken some deliveries, but I forget who it was.
As far as backing, when you're backing a truck you use the mirrors when you're backing straight, but when you start to turn you have to look out the window. That's why on normal trucks right now, drivers will do everything they can to either be straight, or to back around a corner to their left. Backing to the right is called "blind side" backing because with a sleeper you can't see anything on that side once you're curving. The driver being in the middle combined with the shape of the Tesla semi means that they have likely eliminated the blind side, so it should improve the backing I would think. I'd sure love to drive one of these beasts at some point.
I read some passionate reviews about how difficult Tesla made toll booths and security guard shacks where a driver on a route can no longer reach out the window for a ticket.
The front windows have the a minivan's rear window style pop-out that only opens a few inches.
Driver has to un-belt, step out of his seat, and exit the cab via a rear corridor and door behind the seat.
Form over function.
Interesting - But it is not at all form over function. Having the driver in the center allows them to make it much more aerodynamic, which in turn greatly increases the range for a given battery size. Since that's a big constraint at this point in the development of electric semis, it's very important and I'd say it's function over form...
While not a professional truck driver, I have a fair amount of time driving and backing up semi's. I don't think that I've ever stuck my head out the window to look back. The mirrors give you a much better view since they are further away from the truck than your head could ever get.
You don't stick your head out the window, but you definitely look out the window once the trailer is more than maybe 20 degrees off from the tractor.
Where is the clutch petal?
Where's the clutch?
_O:
Of course I can't find it now, but a couple weeks ago I read an article about how the Tesla truck will increase shipping cost. The main reasons were initial cost of the truck, the heavier weight of the electric truck will displace revenue loads, and down time for recharging means two trucks will be needed to carry the same amount of revenue as one diesel truck. All of this increase will be passed on to the consumer.
Sounds like so much of the electric car FUD I've heard over the past decade. Yet here we are, with the Tesla Model Y
becoming the top selling vehicle - not electric vehicle, the top selling vehicle period - worldwide in Q1 of this year.
Here's what I think: Yes, the initial cost of the truck will be higher earlier in the game. We're almost to the tipping point where electric cars will be cheaper than their gas counterparts, but that will take a bit longer for trucks. However, fuel costs will quickly make up for that.
I'm not sure the weight will be a problem, and it certainly won't cut the payload in half. There's already a federal exemption for trucks that carry a diesel APU to be slightly overweight - 400 pounds, roughly the weight of the APU, IIRC - and I would not be surprised at all if they allow some leeway for electric trucks as well. Even if they don't, based on the best information I can find there's about a 4,000-pound difference. That's less than 1/10th of the max payload of a modern semi, so maybe you'd need 11 trucks instead of 10 to move a big bunch of heavy freight, but there's plenty of freight that is not that heavy as well.
In fact, Tesla's "Convoy Mode" could drastically change things here. That's the capability it has of having multiple Tesla Semis follow-the-leader nose to tail down the highway. That not only decreases overall drag and thus fuel costs, but it also means that you could save money on drivers. Local drivers would pick up loads and drop them at a location where over-the-road drivers could hook up 3 or more trucks and put them into Convoy Mode. They could even have two OTR drivers who could function effectively the same as team drivers do today, without the major downside of having to share a truck! They won't make it quite as fast as team drivers in a diesel semi would due to time spent charging, but let's say they need an hour of charging every 400 miles on average, that means that at 70 mph, the first driver could go 5.5 hours, plug in for an hour, drive for 5.5 more hours, and plug in again. An hour later, the other driver would come on duty and unplug, and do the same. And they could pretty much do this all day, every day, six days a week.
So, two drivers could do a round trip from LA to Boston and back in a little over four days (52 hours) with multiple trucks. For comparison, a team in a diesel semi would take 48 hours to do the same trip in a single truck. A single driver in a single truck would take 9 days.
Down time for charging shouldn't be an issue whatsoever. Hours of service regulations already require a mid-day break of at least a half hour; if that is done while charging it shouldn't make a big difference. This does assume that the infrastructure is built out. But, in the meantime, these trucks are great for shorter hauls, as the infrastructure build-out starts more and more regional runs will be feasible, and in another 5-10 years any old random route long haul routes should be feasible.
