Here is why the Tesla Semi is NOT a savings

the fact that he’s calculating battery replacement as part of ownership is an issue. Warranty at 500k? Well you’ll see these trucks being scrapped at 499k miles as they will be worthless to anyone after.

 

The assertion that the batteries only last 500K needs substantiation. The data on Tesla cars show that the deterioration of batteries pretty much stops at 300K / 85% of original capacity. There’s not been many Teslas go beyond 500K, but a couple in limo / Taxi service haven and the batteries do not conk out at 500K.

As far as charging stations, they will have to have battery storage. The demand draw of a (or multiple) semi charging is such that no utility will tolerate that level of load fluctuation. The semi charging station outside the Sparks, NV, Tesla factory has Power Pack storage for that reason.

 

This whole electrical thing is a mute point and not even money concern. Local, well may be, long haul.. forget about it, unless there will be power pack swapping ability. And even then it is a pita to do it every 6 hrs.

 

That's a lot of battery storage capacity they'd need to reliably charge the sort of volume the average truck stop sees. I'd hate to know what your charge time looks like if the accumulator pack is depleted when you need a charge.

 

Wonder how well it would work in cold climates. They expel water as exhaust do they not? I could see lots of slick intersections and roads if that's the case.

 

There would be no need to swap battery packs, as long as you can reliably get a good 500 miles per charge out of it. The average big fleet would be fine with that. The issue then is you need a charger at every parking spot, or most of them, in every truckstop. Which leads me to wonder, what happens when someone drags their tandems over top of that charger?

 

Absolutely. My son’s an electrical engineer, and we sat down and calculated out one evening that a truck stop fast- charging 15 Tesla semis would draw almost the same power as a town of 30,000.

Multiple trucks fast charging would require at least a mega pack battery. That said, for now, any Tesla’s will be day cabs and just plug in overnight, drawing power at night when we have a huge generating surplus.

 

Dang Hammer, that’s some fine figurring going on their to come up with that estimate. Really fine ciphering job.

 

We see lines at fuel stops, even though it takes 10 minutes to fuel. Imagine 30+ minutes per "fueling".

500 miles? Dream on, especially on hills and/or against the wind.

 

Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt on the miles and different terrain issues the charging issue is going to be their biggest problem. There is no way to get the charging time cut down to the same time fueling currently is. I've been pulled up to the pump, fueled, and gone inside of ten minutes. The only way to handle the same amount of volume is to have more chargers than they currently have fuel pumps. I don't see them being able to get a full charge in a truck in anything under at least a few hours.