What will it mean when most everything that is hauled by truck is hauled by electric truck? It will mean less stuff is hauled by truck, which is probably the point of the thing – in case you hadn’t noticed.
“Electrification” is about scarcification – my neologism.
The making of less. The making do with less – which will cost more, too. 
All in the name of a false cause – that being the saving of a planet that doesn’t need saving – by reducing the number of people on it. Less to eat. Less heat. It all ends up in the same place, or so they hope:
Less of us.
Of course, not of them.
What they are bent on “saving” is the planet, alright.
For themselves.
Toward that end, the first of Tesla’s over-the-road electric big rigs will leave the factory, shortly. They will not travel very far from there, though – notwithstanding the lies being told about their ability to pull a 40 ton load 500 miles, which is about what a diesel-powered big rig can pull, just a fourth as far (a fully-fueled big rig can typically go more than 2,000 miles on 300 gallons of diesel before needing to refuel).
And it’s actually a lot less than that.
Not just because of the time it takes to re-instill a full (or even partial) charge into a vehicle that is the equivalent, in terms of the energy needed to do that, of at least a couple dozen Tesla cars.
But rather, because of the impossibility of instilling it.
Without first building it.
A study of highway charging requirements came out the other day, published by National Grid. It stated that ” . . . electrifying a typical highway gas station will require as much power as a professional sports stadium.”
That’s for electric cars.
You can read more, here.
But that’s not the money shot. Here’s that:
“The projected needs for a big truck stop would equal that of a small town.” Italics added. This being about 5 megawatts of power per electric truck stop.
Now scale that up. Taking into account the fact that an electric big rig only goes about a fourth as far as a fully-fueled diesel-powered big rig and thus would need to stop three more times than a diesel-powered rig can travel without stopping, to travel the same distance. That means it would be necessary to build – and power – at least three times as many new “electrified” truck stops along the highways, in order to provide the power needed by electric big rigs to run the same distances as diesel-powered big rigs do without stopping.
And not just the stops but also the 5 megawatts each they’d need to actually be capable of powering up those electric big rigs. Where’s all that power going to come from?
“It’s not like plugging in a toaster,” explains Dave Mullaney – who leads analysis of electric trucking at the RMI energy research institute. “If you put 50 trucks somewhere, that is basically equivalent to a factory.”
And that’s the best case scenario. The real-world scenario is that the electric big rigs probably won’t go even 500 miles in between stops unless conditions are ideal. Warm – not hot and certainly not cold – and mostly flat, with steady-state cruising most if not all of the way.
How will they do on grueling uphill grades? Big rigs traveling cross-country often have to go up – and over – mountain ranges. As anyone who has driven an electric car already knows – if they will admit it – going uphill dramatically cuts into an EV’s touted best-case range. Imagine pulling 40 tons up a hill. How about in the bitter cold? Big rigs are often driven in subzero conditions, as from (or to) places like Minnesota or Chicago in the winter. Sub-zero conditions aren’t a problem for diesel-powered big rigs. They are a big problem for electric cars, which typically lose 20 percent of their range when it gets very cold.
How much will 20 percent less cost us? Keeping in mind that it means having to stop even more often – and wait, which costs truckers money. Or do you suppose the companies forced to run electric big rigs will eat that cost, rather than pass it on to us?
Of course, the cost will be prohibitive – which is just the point. Not to make us pay more, you see. That was the way things were done in the Before Time. In our time, the point is no longer to make more money. It is to make us make do with less by making what was formerly a taken-for-granted abundance into general scarcity.
But only for us.
There will be no making-do with less for the ones making sure this all comes to pass – for us. They will suffer no shortages of food or heat. They will always have plenty to eat and many warmed rooms to spread out in. They will also enjoy the wide open road, because it will within a few short years be emptied – of us, who will no longer be able to afford to drive.
Much less buy the handful of exotic goods shipped to the few boutique stores that remain after the Great Reset, where they will have plenty – and we will watch them buy and enjoy it.
. . .
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I think that these electric big rigs can do well in a city environment with mostly stop & go driving and with a lot stops. That is to say that these EV big rigs can do well in local runs with lots of stops. Then, they can charge at their main depot where they’re based. I don’t know if they’ll do well on the open road though.
I could see a use for this tech in ship yards, where containers are moved around via tractors. But then again, if you’re going to spend that kind of money why not just install massive gantry cranes over the yard? You’ll still be running them on electricity instead of diesel, one operator can move far more containers in an optimized way, and max out the space by not making corridors for trucks. Heck, bust up the unions and you can robotize the whole yard from ship’s holds to rail siding.
I mean, if you’re going to build back better why not actually build back in a better way?
I’ll have to dig into what numbers these studies used, but on the surface, 5 MW for a truck plaza seems tiny compared to what the actual load will be.
I have posted on other threads here that it would take bout 4 MW of electric capacity just to outfit a typical suburban gas station/convenience store with relatively slow “fast chargers”.
If you consider the actual “fill time”, I can add 300 miles of range to my gas-powered sedan in two minutes of actual gas pumping time.
A fairly large (for today) “fast charger” is about 250 kW.
This 250 kW “fast charger” would take 20 minutes of actual “charging time” to add 300 miles of range to a typical EV (assuming 3.5 miles per kWh).
That is a ratio of 10 – so in theory for a highway plaza (for cars), I would need 10 times as many chargers as I would gas pumps just to avoid long lines and wait times.
If a plaza has 20 gas pumps now, it would need 200 fast chargers at 250 kW to “break even” as compared to gas pumps.
200 x 250 kW = 50 MW, adjusting for 15% charging loss yields a connected load of about 60 MW.
And remember – this calculation is for CARS, not trucks.
I’ll have to see if they provided any useful numbers in the article. Maybe fewer chargers are required for trucks, but the chargers to replace the pumps would have to be much larger than 250 kW each.
I was thumbing through the latest NAPA Parts catalog the other day, and came across two pages of EV “fast” charging stations.
If you wanted to buy a level four, 30kw, DC “fast charger” from Bosch, the cost is a paltry $18,509.
Dropping down to a level three or two will only cost you 3 to 8 large.
Was speaking with the Amazon guy, a few weeks ago. If I remember correctly, he was having to re-charge his electric panel-van every 50 miles-or-so.
He was driving a brand-new Mercedes ‘eSprinter’.
Even now, as I write, I am questioning my memory. Can he really have said, “50 miles”?
It is all part of the wealth transfer plan.
You pay more for less.
THEY make just as much.
It is the new wave of global communism.
And we know that communism can’t lift anyone up, it can only achieve equality by hindering performers.
The west’s money will be siphoned off to the 3rd world by those at the top and wala – equality.
Via CFP:
‘A wind project promised Mass. cheap power. Then came inflation’
…”But fast forward to today, and Avangrid is having second thoughts about the price of the electricity it promised to sell. […]
In other words, the company said it would need ratepayers in the state to pay more for power to make the project work. […]
making the project viable would only require a “very modest increase.” […]
The last year has seen growing supply chain disruptions, increases in the price of steel, and rising interest rates, “and the company says, ‘Well, this is not nearly as economic as we thought it was going to be,’ ” he says.
This is a big issue for Avangrid, he adds, “but to me, that’s a one-off kind of problem. It’s not an indictment on offshore wind.” […]
“We’re not seeing offshore wind failing. We’re seeing some economic turmoil and corporations trying to address the uncertainty by finding additional value for themselves,” says Melissa Birchard, director of the Acadia Center’s Clean Energy & Grid Transition program.”…
https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/11/16/offshore-wind-avangrid-commonwealth-ppa-explainer
Think we’ll be seeing more of this type of reasoning/wordplay being foisted on us down the line for everything EV related as it fails to deliver?
‘Think we’ll be seeing more of this type of reasoning/wordplay being foisted on us down the line for everything EV related as it fails to deliver?’ — helot
Absolutely. During the Great Moderation of inflation from the mid-1980s on, capital projects could be contracted using fixed-price bids. Inflation was hardly a factor.
Whereas the high inflation 1970s were a catastrophe for big projects and contractors alike. Electric utilities were among the worst victims. Nuclear plant projects that took 5 or 7 years longer to finish than expected, while inflation was boiling at 10% annually, nearly sank several utilities.
Supply chain issues, reshoring, war-driven inflation, and shortages of materials, fuel, and labor mean that constructing a giant new electric grid to serve EeeVeees is a rank fantasy. Selling trillions worth of government and corporate bonds to finance such a misconceived, negative rate-of-return “investment” [sic] is not going to happen either, without dire consequences. Remember ‘crowding out’ of other borrowers? Yeah, it’s bad.
Now the Everything Bubble is plunging to earth like a flaming Hindenburg blimp, starting with the housing smash already well underway. As unease turns to white-knuckle panic, boom-time fantasies of controlling the climate will be replaced with practical concerns like finding fuel, food and firewood in Depression II. “Joe Biden” is here to help. /sarc
I bet a lot of laughs are had over after dinner cocktails among the Psychopaths In Charge.
“Do you believe it? These morons are eagerly participating in their own destruction. They lap up the equine excrement we feed them like it’s the best thing they ever tasted. We’ll work on disposing of those wise to us.”
The difference here is the reason for the scarcity.
Natural Scarcity: The incentive is to economize, or to innovate around the problem.
Artificial Scarcity: The incentive is to get rid of whoever / whatever is standing in the way.
There’s probably a little of the first problem going on (it’s one of the ever-present problems that basically defines all of human civilization), but these days there seems to be a lot of the second problem, too.
Personally, I would not want to be the one telling everyone “you can’t because it’s against the rules (that we made up).”
We are “Flyover Country,” dirt people, whatever you want to call us. The funny thing is our bi-coastal degenerate “elites” think that we exist solely to do their bidding. I hope before all of this green insanity hits they get a wakeup call that lets them know that we in the hinterlands aren’t going to take this crap much longer. We are two separate countries filled with two largely homogeneous groups of people who don’t like each other and are so far apart on their philosophical underpinnings that continued proximity is repellant to both. We need to split off, but as shown by the War between the States, they’ll never let us go willingly. They need our farms, our mines, our labor.
From an engineering standpoint, the idea of an electric “truck” is ludicrous. It’s inefficient and the required infrastructure to serve a nation-sized fleet of electric “trucks” would cost trillions, if we had the money to burn on such a stupid project. It’s a solution chasing a problem that really doesn’t exist. Every time there’s a hurricane, the global warming cultists scream “CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSED THAT.” When the tropical season fizzles with one major storm and not much else, crickets.
dr mantis,
“They need our farms, our mines, our labor” and our taxes. Which is what the first War Between the States was fought over.
Amazon has deployed it’s Rivan electric delivery vans in my hood. They look very fragile, are on the bigger size (probably because of the batteries) and seem very unsuited for the weather (cold & wind) around here (Indiana outside Chicago). I wonder how long they will hold out before switching back to diesel (probably only when they start missing deliveries on a massive scale).
Another big problem with electric trucking that nobody talks about: the weight and space for cargo that will be lost due to having to haul around batteries. Most semi trucks are already at the weight limits for most roads already, so they will have to take far less freight since greenies won’t allow for building better roads.
Also poor neighborhoods will end up with illegally dumped spent batteries (like they do with tires and other hard to get rid of stuff).
Reality has to set in at some point. The question, how bad does it have to get before that happens?
Hey RichB,
I’ve seen several posts where you’ve mentioned you’re in the NW Indiana/Lake County area. I grew up in Highland. Are you nearby?
I don’t know where he is but that’s my area.
I’m in Highland!
Great point about the reduced cargo capacity of electric trucks – that means to move the same amount of stuff, more trucks will be required, making it all that much worse.
“’It’s not like plugging in a toaster,’ explains Dave Mullaney – who leads analysis of electric trucking at the RMI energy research institute.”
Oh, but it IS just like plugging in a toaster — if you ask the “experts” like AOC, Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Debbie Stabenow and Jennifer Granholm… the ones who are going to cram this EV farce right up America’s ass, like it or not:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10893647/Democratic-Sen-Stabenow-brags-doesnt-matter-high-gas-prices-drives-EV.html
But Cliiimaaate Change, Eric. The polar bears will become extinct and ‘people-kind’ will die off.
You idiot. Stop thinking about it and just feel it.
But of course we all know those that are ‘blessed’ will be living in the islands and mountains and THEY will be using diesel and gasoline from THEIR private stations, vehicles, planes/helicopters, etc to get THEIR fruits, nuts, veggies, and meats.
It’s really hard to beat the stored energy of the natural fuel we call diesel, at 137,000 BTU’s per gallon. The rest is just 5th fiddle.
The only EV’s worth anything are for local driving, including big trucks which could do city or small county work only, period.
Great stuff Eric.
All I can say is it’s a good thing these moronic fanatics weren’t around 20k years ago to stop “climate change”, else much of the world would still be covered in ice. I wonder who was producing all the CO2 to end the ice age? I’ll be wanting to send them a Christmas card. It appears a great many will be praying for some global warming by the time Spring arrives. Europe was once nearly de-forested for fuel. Looks like round two.
It’s all insane, and for no reason. At least no sane rational reason. But, psychopaths will psychopath.
An electric road tractor is like a road tractor run by a bunch of monkeys in the back on bicycles. Even MORE unusable for their purpose than electric cars. Plain to see by the lack of any interest in building a power grid to run either that the purpose is not to save a damn thing, but to destroy things. Namely us. It doesn’t matter how cheap EVs get, or how efficient their batteries someday become. Not enough electrical power is being generated to use them. Period. Not even close.
I wonder if they are aware of what got the Russian and French revolutions started. A hint, it wasn’t fat people. On the bright side, there might be fewer morbidly obese women in spandex at Walmart. If there is a Walmart.
With the inevitable government war on American farmers in the name of “Saving the planet from climate change”, what’s going on in Germany WILL eventually happen here…….
https://www.technocracy.news/german-meat-industry-warns-of-empty-supermarket-shelves-40-jump-in-meat-prices/
I see big rigs jackknifed along side the freeway pretty regular. The I-40 corridor from Flag to Seligman, and the I-17 from Cordes to BCC sees a lot of 18 wheeler accidents. I’m so excited about the prospect of EeeeVeee fires that are difficult if not impossible to extinguish.
Fire, and toxic smoke, just another unfactored cost of the green fever dream.
That’s been the problem all along with this EV crapola. Even if there was a magic battery that could be recharged in 5 minutes there’s no way to supply that kind of power. The PTB are already sounding the alarm around here that power will be “tight” around here if it’s an especially cold winter…….well DUH! That’s what happens when you let these uber-greenies shut down reliable base load power plants and expect to run the world on windmills and solar panels. This magical thinking was starting to rear its head when I retired from the local utility about ten years ago; I suggested to my boss we should get the locations of these people and make sure they get shut off first when they have rolling blackouts.
Maybe after freezing in the dark a bit this winter enough sanity will prevail to reverse this asinine policy (not holding my breath) but even if it does you can’t exactly go get a power plant at Home Depot, need a few years lead time so get used to wearing a parka indoors and hope your pipes don’t freeze.
the new green future with EV’s
Germany Preparing For Emergency Cash Deliveries, Bank Runs And “Aggressive Discontent” Ahead Of Winter Power Cuts
no power no ATM…
German authorities have stepped up preparations for emergency cash deliveries in case of a blackout (or rather blackouts) to keep the economy running, as the nation braces for possible power cuts arising from the war in Ukraine.
The plans include the Bundesbank hoarding extra billions to cope with a surge in demand, as well as “possible limits on withdrawals”, one of the people said. And if you think crypto investors are angry when they can’t access their digital tokens in a bankrupt exchange, just wait until you see a German whose cash has just been locked out.
roughly 60% of everyday German purchases are paid in cash, and Germans, on average, withdrew more than 6,600 euros annually chiefly from cash machines.
And here is the punchline: a parliamentary report a decade ago warned of “discontent” and “aggressive altercations” in case citizens were unable to get their hands on cash in a blackout. Translation: in case of cash withdrawal halts, German society may very well tear itself apart.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/germany-preparing-emergency-cash-deliveries-bank-runs-ahead-winter-power-cuts
“Maybe after freezing in the dark a bit”, and starving as well. On the not so bright side, obesity may depart as the real American plague. Our reaction may pale compared to that of the carb junkies unable to get their “snacks”.
Reply to Mike above.
‘What will it mean when most everything that is hauled by truck is hauled by electric truck?’ — eric
That’s a rhetorical question analogous to yesterday’s media headline, ‘How hot will nations allow [sic] the planet to get?’
The answer to both questions is that the laws of physics cannot be repealed by the 535 mental midgets of Clowngress, no matter how much they object to nature’s cruel constraints.
I don’t believe ‘transition’ of the trucking fleet from diesel to EeeVeeee will get much farther than an attempt to transition all ‘people with testicles’ to ‘birthing persons.’