The business case of Tesla’s Heavy Commercial Vehicles (HCV)

[Ampster]

A very small niche market is the non highway "tractor" market for container ports. These trucks move the container trailers around the yards getting them in position for trains or other transportation. A chinese battery company, Balqon, recently completed an upgrade for the Port of Los Angeles.

 

[adiggs]

The point is that in EU and I believe there is similar regulations in the other countries as well that the limit of driving time is 9 hours and each driver is obligated to take a break at least for 45 min, so each Truck has more than 14 hours per day for charging
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This is strictly tracked with special electronic equipment mandatory in each truck operating in EU - tachograph which record driving time for one month. If the driver deviate from driving time rules it has almost no way to hide it and the penalty is really high (in Switzerland for example it’s 4000EUR)
The common understanding is that the driver is tired after 8 hours and he is dangerous for the others

I'm not in the field, so have no personal experience, but would one of these vehicles typically be parked for 14h a day as you mention, or would a vehicle typically be team driven? So one person drives it from A to B, sacks out at B, while somebody else drive the truck from B to C? Or two people drive a truck together, with one driving and one sleeping in the cab. Presumably that would result in a ~5h downtime each day.

As long as it's a non-trivial percent of the truck population that is indeed parked for 14h a day, then a large enough battery to just drive all day long and then recover during the downtime does indeed sound like a workable model.

 

[Robert.Boston]

Tesla may want to re-imagine the tractor-trailer configuration from the ground up. The best place for the battery may not be in the tractor, but underneath the trailer. Electrify the trailer first.

Lots of reasons against this approach, e.g.

• How does an uncoupled tractor move? It has to be able to drop off one trailer and pick up another. Sometimes they dead-head for scores or hundreds of miles.
• The E-tractor could only take E-trailers, requiring BOTH the tractor and trailer to be electrified simultaneously
• Trailers often sit idle for days/weeks/months, so the total number of batteries needed is much higher

 

[RichardL]

Lots of reasons against this approach, e.g.

• How does an uncoupled tractor move? It has to be able to drop off one trailer and pick up another. Sometimes they dead-head for scores or hundreds of miles.
• The E-tractor could only take E-trailers, requiring BOTH the tractor and trailer to be electrified simultaneously
• Trailers often sit idle for days/weeks/months, so the total number of batteries needed is much higher

I do think this is a valid approach - the idea suggested was to electrify the trailer in order to 'assist' the tractor - so that the motor and controller would measure the hitch force vector - when being pulled it would act to reduce hitch effort to some preset minimum, when the tractor is braking, it would regen in order to again reduce the force on the hitch - so a current diesel tractor could pull the trailer, but it would not have to work so hard and hence should get better mileage.

Later on electric tractors could connect - both to refine the control and also to 'share' electricity.

Obviously the issue of idle time, while allowing recharging, would effect the financial model - but it does provide a pathway to gradual adoption rather than relying on going all electric at one time.

 

[c041v]

Lots of reasons against this approach, e.g.

• How does an uncoupled tractor move? It has to be able to drop off one trailer and pick up another. Sometimes they dead-head for scores or hundreds of miles.
• The E-tractor could only take E-trailers, requiring BOTH the tractor and trailer to be electrified simultaneously
• Trailers often sit idle for days/weeks/months, so the total number of batteries needed is much higher

Although I am no expert, it seems odd to have most of the weight at the rear of the assembly when the front brakes do so much of the work. I am not sure how a heavy trailer would influence the tractor's performance in emergency conditions. I'm also not sure how you would prevent theft of what would now be a very valuable trailer.

Putting the pack lower in either the tractor or trailer would certainly help mitigate rollovers though. I'd love to see Tesla grow enough to have the R&D depth to take on a redesign of the traditional Transport Truck. So much opportunity for improved aerodynamics, comfort and, safety.