What do you guys think of electric vehicles and the future of electric in the industry?

geo

Veteran Expediter
Charter Member
Retired Expediter
US Navy
One thing that hasn't been brought up is cold weather . Once temp is 40 or below battery starts losing battery power. Once temp reaches 32 or lower you lose half of your power. Also price to replace battery's is also a issue. Then how do you recycle them.
 

Sierra Invenio

New Recruit
Researching
Electric vehicles have a LONG way to go in the department of user serviceability before they will have a place in a commercial industry. I cannot imagine having the choice of ONLY going to the dealer like you do with a tesla on a commercial vehicle that travels tens of thousands of miles a year. Additionally the energy source on an ICE is a lot easier to lock out (disconnect battery and your engine wont start, meanwhile touching both ends of a car battery, while probably painful, isn't typically life threatening, not so on a 450 vdc system) there's also not enough experience about maintaining them that's available to a large portion of the public. Additionally long charge times OR range needs to be solved. If you can drive for 14hrs without needing a charge then an 8hr charge is fine, but inverting those numbers as they are now (drive for at most 8, charge for at least 8) isn't viable for long distance, and just increasing battery capacity isn't the solution.

And higher energy density batteries come with some super scary side effects. (Lithium cobalt for example explodes violently when exposed to oxygen, instead of just catching fire like lithium polymer, but has somewhere around double the energy density.)

It will get there, I just don't know how recognizable what we have now will be by then. I think solar roofs will be standardized by then for example.
 

AMC

New Recruit
Driver
Electric vans could work for local work but not for OTR. OTR expediters would need a van with upwards of 600 miles per charge which would cost a fortune(probably over $100,000). The weight of the batteries would impact the max cargo to stay legal and non-cdl. I don't see it working for anything other than local work,.
 
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