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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • That’s more medium duty, and yeah, that probably could be converted to electric fairly easily (albeit at a higher cost). I was mostly thinking about longer distance travel, where the main goal is the most amount of uptime and you can’t afford to park and charge for 3-4 hrs every 200 miles. And that is usually the most expensive model, with most getting less milage and/or taking longer to charge.

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  • Then what about trucking? Lithium is not nearly as energy dense, weighs a lot, and does take a significant longer time to charge than a diesel to refuel. If you don’t believe me, look up the eCascadia by Frightliner. They are probably the current best option if you wanted a heavy electric truck, but they only get to around 200 miles with a load (for reference, a standard turbo diesel one would go around 600-800 miles and only take 30 min to refuel).

    Currently in trucking, I’ve found that everyone kinda laughs at the idea of electrification (except on medium duty, that wouldn’t be too hard, just overly expensive). Current electric motors are fine, it’s just that the energy storage is nowhere near what is needed for actual use.

    Yes, for most basic ev consumers current lithium is fine from a usability perspective, but from a cost one this might provide a much more useful alternative (assuming the cost isn’t insane).







  • But car company profit margins! The last couple of years have kinda been great for a lot of car manufacturers, increasing prices, basically only having higher end models in stock (mostly because they generally take longer to move, which they began to en mass when the car market went to hell), and basically moving directly to evs moving forward, which are inherently more expensive (at least for now). Personally, I kind of like the idea of phevs like the 2nd Gen Chevy volt and the new prius, as they make the transition to electric easier and are generally cheaper to manufacture. Then after more charging stations are available, moving more and more to evs. Not trying to be a gas shill, but I just can’t see getting an ev right now because of the whole charging mess (the only mostly reliable stations I’ve heard of are the Tesla ones) and the cost.