Disclaimer, I have driven wagons in the past for money.
Disclaimer, I have been a certified marine and hydraulic engineer in the past for money.
Disclaimer, I am old enough to have picked up a lot of experience directly, and heard an awful lot of things one step removed from others, eg I never owned a fleet of wagons, but I worked for a guy that did.
So, the tesla twuck, it has to be said with a lisp, as in, it HAS to be said with a lisp, because even if it wasn’t vapourware, it isn’t a truck.
Daimler is making one now, it’s not vapourware, and it is a truck, meaning it has a proper ladder chassis and that is basically how it is sold, all variations on a theme from there based on standard parts and dimensions, container carrier, flatbed, curtainsider, box, often made by separate companies such as boalloy and all basically standard parts.
Because the primary purpose of trucks is to transport shit, and so 99% of everything is either going to be based around 10/20/30/40 foot containers or euro-pallets, or standard 250 cube boxes that just fit in standard wagons.
If you run trucks, you care about the following, in no specific order;
- can the body design handle the loads you envisage paying your way? And yes, even tractor trailer with 5th wheel there are factors that *heavily* influence the trailer and loads possible.
- can the drivetrain be maintained economically without too much john deere esqu vendor lock in?
- does it comply with legislation where you want to run it eg max weight per axle, a very different thing to max weight.
- how much fuel does it use in money terms, do not forget a diesel filler cap on 50 gallon tanks has no ongoing costs.
- how much do tyres cost per 10,000 vehicle miles
- how much to insure and otherwise certify and make legal.
There is *lots* more, but those are the high points, for the tesla twuck, let’s look at the answers.
- not even mentioned, the most significant part of a truck, not even mentioned.
- no, shined away with some bullshit about a million mile guarantee, well a million miles ain’t nothing special for a wagon, and there are *plenty* of cases of wagons with a million miles on the original engine and drivetrain
- not even mentioned, but a distinct lack of axles there so it’s probably going to be an issue
- claimed 2 kwh per mile, for vapourware, and I’m gonna go right out on a limb here and call total bullshit, a toy twuck might do that, a working truck loaded never will
- tyres, tyres, tyres, tyres, o-60 times for trucks hauling 60,000 lbs, puhleese, dunlop will buy shares, and you’ll be changing tyres every time you stop to recharge, and I call bullshit on the 2 kwh per mile because the tyres alone on a loaded wagon will consume more than that as they rotate and deform under load, tyre heat comes from somewhere people, and that’s rotating in free air and they still get hot
- the unknown always costs more than the known.
So I call total bullshit on the twuck, as a fucking minimum you want individual tyre pressure and temperature monitoring (this is 2017 people) and realtime reporting, because that’s your bread and butter right there, and there is NO FUCKING WAY you make it even possible to feed so much torque through the tyres that you start talking about 0-60 times you’re out the door before you even came in… .. friend of mine just had all new boots on his scania tractor rig, that’s be £5,270 fitted, if he ran his own trailers that would be another £4k for a twin axle or £3.5k for a triple.
Next thing you would want is a kick-ass GPS, proper truck gps are already pretty good, won’t send you under low bridges or down narrow roads or over stuff that can’t carry your weight, but tesla is supposed to be techno, so the fucking last thing you want is a fucking autopilot lifted from a model x….. no autopilot is fine, but a gps that calculates a route based on inclines and distance and junctions and so on to give a minimum energy solution, that would sell, but the twuck does not have that, just the autopilot.
Nor does the twuck mention air, back in the day we used to make trucks with a clutch on the compressor so it only ran when the tanks needed air, then we went to systems that were always on and just blew off the excess, now we have more hybrid systems, but it HAS to have air braking, and it has to have air, so it has to have a compressor, and the sizes are legally mandated for various uses, no mention of it at all.
This one really troubles me, with wagons the air handling system isn’t some peripheral or accessory like the alternator in your car, it’s a core part of the design, daimler electric trucks make a point of telling you that the air handling is all standard, it doesn’t just do the brakes, it does many other jobs too, from shifting (which you could eliminate in an electwick twuck) to air ride suspension / levelling to actuators to raising axles (the opposite of air ride in many ways) but it’s glossed over in usual tesla style.
And then more vapourware appears, a 500 mile range 200 mph new roadster, I feel like I have just taken acid and I am watching a Moller Skycar crowdfunding deal…
The harsh fact is, my illegal in the yew ess aah 70 quid 15 year old 2 litre 4 banger diesel eurobox which reliably returns more than 50 miles per imperial gallon of diesel at 70 mph is probably a thing of envy for many USAians looking to save a buck on transport, but compared to a diesel wagon hauling 90,000 lbs plus its own weight at a steady mandated 56 mph down a mandated curvature and incline motorway, my old diesel car is a fucking gas guzzler extraordinaire when you start looking at miles per gallon per ton.
The only thing that really beats it is anything that goes on water.
Trains don’t… in theory they could, in practice they don’t, except for some edge cases with very long pulls of ore wagons.
Sure, fuel is a *big* thing, but the reality is even here in the Uk with some of the most expensive taxed fuel on the planet at 1.15 per litre for diesel = £5.22 per imperial gallon, a fully loaded arctic pulling 40 tons can expect anywhere from 8 to 12 mpg depending on the road, so fuel is only 65p – 43p per mile, at £12 per hour including employers contributions etc etc etc the fucking driver on a low wage is costing an absolute minimum of 21p per mile, 2x drivers or driver + mate = diesel cost, and that is here in the UK with our crazy fuel prices.
tesla twuck claimed energy consumption of 2 kwh per mile at current UK electric prices is 40p per mile, IT ISN’T ANY FUCKING CHEAPER than a new volvo, and there are plenty of real world examples of drivers getting 24 litres per 100 km, loaded, overall, urban and motorway, (truck industry insiders know this shit like the back of their hand) which is 5.28 imp gallons per 62 miles, which is 12 mpg.
48 kwh in an imperial gallon of diesel, so 4 kwh per mile, but its a heat engine, lots of thermal rejection, NOT THAT ALL THAT HEAT IS WASTE, some surplus heat is a good thing and useful, keeps lubricants flowing nicely and carrying additional heat away… but buying diesel at the pump it only costs you 10 p per kwh, not the 20 p per kwh that electric costs, ( we haven’t even mentioned reefers) so the tesla twucks claimed 2 kwh per mile is all a bit meh.
WHEN or IF there are say 500,000 combined tesla twuck fleet miles to be analysed, which is how it works with say a new volvo or merc etc, then maybe fleet operators will consider buying into it, based on those numbers…. before those numbers are available, there isn’t even anything for them to ignore, it’s just vapourware.
But the only saving we are seeing is a marginal one at best on energy costs per mile… meanwhile every truck operator on the planet knows they can go and buy a brand new alloy 100 gallon tank for 750 bucks, and add a minimum 750 miles range to the wagon… try that with fucking battery packs…. or replace the old one… we used to run twin 100 gallon tanks on the fords.
My mate who just spent 5k on tyres for the tractor can expect 50,000 miles out of them if he maintains them well and doesn’t get on any poor surfaces, that’s 10 p a mile right there, half of a cheap drivers wages of 21 p per mile and a fifth of the average of 50 p per mile for fuel.
Start doing hard acceleration and not monitoring tyre pressures and temps aggressively and tyre costs can easily treble, quadruple, quintuple or even more, and at that point you’re like some use cases where tyre cost per mile exceeds both fuel cost and driver cost per mile together…. plus of course there is a direct link between tyres and fuel economy.
Please note, we haven’t even gone anywhere near that vast costs and losses incurred (contract penalties etc) when you lose a tyre and stop rolling, older experienced owner and fleet operators care about tyres more than all except the most anal of motorcyclists, yeah, you never see anything about this in any of the interminable you tube truck driver pov videos, because none of them are proper operator/drivers so they never ever talk about their tyres, or suspension.
So what are we left with as far as the tesla twuck reveal?
His flying saucer / drone looks more credible, and just as relevant to actual haulage operators the world over.
The only thing missing from the tesla twuck is a dodgy kickstarter campaign, but then he already has that from the state and lunatic investors.
“It kills me to sleep alone”… somehow I don’t find this statement at all inappropriate for the tesla twuck CEO etc