Tesla Electric Trucks

I’ve recently read two news articles about the Tesla semi trucks.

One said the cost of one of these trucks was estimated to be twice the cost of an equivalent diesel truck.

The other article reported that Tesla had dramatically cut back production numbers because of battery shortage.

Tesla truck production seems to be going nowhere fast. The internal combustion engine appears to be far from obsolete.

LOL Bruce, ya think? I'm guessing maybe by the 2100 year, and maybe will be like the Jetson's flying semi's in the sky

Tesla's still having some problems with their cars aren't they? Or it's idiot operators putting it on "auto pilot", taking a nap on the way to work or play??

LOL Bruce, ya think? I'm guessing maybe by the 2100 year

Just for the sake of what is actually correct...

https://www.motor1.com/news/669135/tesla-model-y-worlds-best-selling-car-q1-2023/

They all laughed when he started talking about electric cars. Even just 3 years ago, he was still being laughed at...

You are VERY wrong about the electric trucks and where this is all going...

Yes, the costs of the trucks are much more up front, but the cost in savings on gas over 3 years time of use of the truck saves you $200k in fuel.

Focusing on the numbers right now is kind of lame because it's all going to drastically change. Once you have folks like Kenworth, Peterbuilt, etc...all following suit, just like Nissan, Ford, Chevy, etc... did for the cars, you have a much more competitive field and prices will change drastically in all verticals of this market.

The other thing you don't hear anyone talk about is how drastically things will change when they aren't getting all those taxes on fuel anymore at the pumps, they will have to shift those loses over to Electric consumption at charging stations, so the numbers you see for energy per watt kind of stuff will change drastically once that vertical is heavily regulated and taxed.

But to make statements like "by 2100" when they are actively making laws to move completely away from fossil fuels is a pretty ignorant statement. The environmental time bomb, if real, will speed up the process even more once folks pull their heads out of their asses and realize what they are saying very well could be true. Once more people wake up through education, it will accelerate even faster. The younger generations will only know green energy at one point.

The infrastructure isn't there for OTR but once they start making progress on it, it will unravel like dominoes, just like Fiber did throughout the country. If I was setting up shop right now, and buying new equipment, and was doing local routes, I would sincerely look into Tesla trucks for my fleet if the true fuel savings are there over a 3 year period like they claim. However, I did hear that the Frito Lays and Pepsi trucks that just recently started using Tesla semi's aren't getting the true mileage of 500 miles per charge like originally stated in sales pitches. From what I hear, it's more like 300 but I haven't read up on it in a bit so I don't know how accurate that is.

Once they get the battery life more practical and economical, and the infrastructure starts getting put in place for charging stations across the country for OTR, it will happen like dominoes.

They laughed and said the same thing about the cars...it's now the best selling car on the market, and it's only going to get better. If Musk is successful in getting Toyota, and all that cumulative technology and engineering that goes along with it, there will be no stopping him. Toyota is top notch in just about every category out there. It will be a sick merger and I hope it happens.

Just my thoughts..

Oh, boy! I'm thinking Bruce was bored so he posted this topic to guarantee himself some entertainment

Just kidding, Bruce. But there is bound to be some fireworks a-coming😉

Actually, the "Other" EV auto makers are far behind Tesla, yes they are selling more vehicles than any other EV builders combined!.......... And we will not be getting away from fossil fuels anytime soon. It's just political blah, blah, blah, from the Green deal morons,( AOC the biggest brain dead of the bunch) pushing it.

There's too much stuff made with fossil fuels etc. Plastics being 1 of the biggee's, practically EVERYTHING uses plastics, Automobiles, use a HUGE chunk of the plastics market.

My best bud's son-in-law works for Tesla, so we know more of the "insider" stuff than the general public thru him. I've wondered, why they didn't come up with some type of self charging gizmo inside the cars....Then there would be no real need for charging stations, and the cost to build them saved for better use.

2 pesos worth hahaha......

Oh, boy! I'm thinking Bruce was bored so he posted this topic to guarantee himself some entertainment

Just kidding, Bruce. But there is bound to be some fireworks a-coming😉

RD, I’m busted! Cuff me. Lol

Actually, I do get bored and then I conjure up stuff to post, but I hope most of the topics yield some beneficial discussion and information.

I’m not at all anti-electric, per se. But I do think it has tremendous limitations and will have limitations for some time to come. Most electric enthusiasts ignore the severe environmental problems with lithium mining and even the fact that much (not all) generated electricity still is produced by using fossil fuel. Save on the diesel bill but pay the same money to the electric utility to power up the lithium batteries.

Even if electricity was free it doesn’t matter if enough lithium and batteries can’t be produced to put into the electric trucks.

Like Stevo said, electric vehicles should have APU’s to keep the batteries charged. Toyota did that with the Prius and other hybrids have performed well.

How would you like to be stranded in your truck for a week by a huge snowstorm and have to rely on the dwindling charge in the batteries? I would at least want to have an internal combustion diesel powered APU on my truck in that scenario.

Elon Musk may be a brilliant engineer, but he has a lot of problems to solve before electric trucks become mainstream.

DWI:

Driving While Intoxicated

APU:

Auxiliary Power Unit

On tractor trailers, and APU is a small diesel engine that powers a heat and air conditioning unit while charging the truck's main batteries at the same time. This allows the driver to remain comfortable in the cab and have access to electric power without running the main truck engine.

Having an APU helps save money in fuel costs and saves wear and tear on the main engine, though they tend to be expensive to install and maintain. Therefore only a very small percentage of the trucks on the road today come equipped with an APU.

Not going to get in the debate about EVs except to say that there is such a high level of narrative based points in Michael's reply that makes me wonder if it's AI based.

As far as that debate goes, most folks don't have an issue with evs, they have a big issue with the social engineering, propaganda, totalitarian measures of the progressive woke left that, like all modern issues has been pushing their narrative.

In terms of the religion of climate change, several of the left have stated openly that EVs replacing ICE vehicles will not work. Their point is just that, they want a society that doesn't drive personal vehicles at all. Their ultimate goal is to have population centers in dense hubs with no suburban and rural land ownership. To quote the WEF: "You will own nothing and you will like it".

The progressive woke plans usually work out in reality just like the submarine that just imploded.

But aside from that. I think that a very useful electric motor application would be to have small electric wheel motors at all of the drive wheels and tandems that would dynamically break in conjunction with with Jake and service brakes in a traction control method as well as offer assist during initial acceleration and hills.

In doing so, it should be able to counter the effects of using a Jake in adverse conditions where breaking force is only applied to one axle. This would allow breaking on all wheels modulated by standard abs and TC which would prevent overbraking on wheels with less traction. Same for acceleration, it would offset the most consuming section of throttle.

Laughable short story that isn't going to occur anytime soon by the possible computer program member.

Which will occur first: Destroying the environment to the point that it will never recover, or batteries that will perform up to the touted ability?