Article states the range is « up to 300km » with a minimum of 2,5h charging. It seems to me it’s not yet adapted to transportation, unless batteries are removable and can be changed on the spot.

Also, is the 300km range on an empty truck? If so, I can’t imagine with 30tons of material inside.

From the article: With the expansion of its electric range, Renault Trucks is taking another step in its eMobility strategy and targets: By 2030, the manufacturer aims to generate 50 per cent of its sales from electric vehicles. By 2040, 100 per cent of the vehicles marketed are to be locally CO2-neutral.

Sounds like an ambitious timeline.

The range sounds limited and there's a lot of data missing, regardless this is positive

300km? Thats not even enought for my local drops and pick ups. Hope you can carry a spare battery...

It sounds like it would be charging more often than it would be on the road.

“The models are available as 4×2 and 6×2 tractor units as well as 4×2, 6×2 and 8×4 tridem vehicles and with two or three electric motors with a total output of up to 490 kW. The motors are connected to an Optidriver transmission. Two to six battery packs with a capacity of 180 to 540 kWh can be fitted as energy storage. Renault Trucks specifies 43 kW AC and up to 250 kW DC as charging power. The charging time is said to be 9.5 hours with AC or 2.5 hours with DC. According to the manufacturer, the range is up to 300 kilometres.”

Metropolitan areas have hundreds of not thousands of trucks that drive less than 100 miles daily. I can see this being used for beer and grocery distribution

Renault ? The company that wrecked Nissan ? TotalJunk

It’s for inner city and local deliveries. You know for companies who drive across town and unload for 30 minutes at a time.

Where are the cargo capacity and the total weight stats? None of the electric specific stats are going to matter if the things can only transport 80% / 70% / 60% as much cargo per trip compared to a fossil model.

This is the same issue that the reporting had with the tesla electric trucks

There’s a use case of everything. Regulations aside, trucks can be charged while loading / unloading. Tesla has improved charging speeds rapidly. The gas vs electricity debate isn’t the biggest deciding factor moving forward.

We move to zero emissions or we all burn.

We have some 44 tonne lorries that run on LNG on trial. They have a range of 400km and are pretty much unusable for the majority of our work.

> According to the manufacturer, the range is up to 300 kilometres.”

No good for us. Even the LNG wagons we have on trial with a 400km range can only be used for a very small portion of our work.

> The charging time is said to be 9.5 hours with AC or 2.5 hours with DC.

Our lorries run day and night and very rarely do they spend even an hour parked up before they're going back out with the next driver.

> I can see this being used for beer and grocery distribution

The range is right on the edge of usability for supermarket RDC work in the UK.

Very few lorries in the UK do that kind of work, they're usually running out of a distribution centre 50-100 miles away. Even in London the distribution centres supplying the city are on the outer edges of the M25 and can do 40-50 miles before they get to their first drop.

Edit: I like how people who have never ever set foot in a lorry feel they have the knowledge enough to downvote me.

Then you’re a bad candidate to run electric semi’s?

Drivers need breaks for food and water. If we can’t charge the trucks faster than the human driver we will be able to soon. Do you want the trucks now, or when Iran invades and diesel doubles in price?

Unfortunately, manufacturing hundreds of millions of personal electric vehicles is not going to get us any closer to zero emissions, that's a car industry marketing ploy as pervasive as the recycling symbol on plastic bottles. Emissions will still come from mining the resources, manufacturing the cars, continuing to build highways to support them, and doing all of it more and more for the ever increasing number of cars on the road, continuing to clog them and make travel times longer in cities. Only building out public transportation infrastructure at a ludicrous pace can possibly lower our transportation emissions. Until you see that happening; train lines and bus lines and dedicated bike lanes being built like there's no tomorrow, the halting of new highway construction; we're still at business as usual.

> Then you’re a bad candidate to run electric semi’s?

With 28 years experience of driving lorries I can say with confidence most companies in the UK are in the same position.

> Drivers need breaks for food and water.

45 minutes after no more than 4.5hrs driving. I typically drive about 300-350km in that amount of time so I could potentially be looking at having to recharge before I'd need to take a break, especially in winter or when it's a windy day as certainly with the trucks I drive now when you're towing a 450sq.ft parachute in windy weather you can see your fuel consumption increase quite significantly, as much as 25% on nights like the other night when it was 30MPH with gusts up to 60MPH..

> Do you want the trucks now

Not as they are. Too short a range, too long recharge time and too big a weight penalty. We'd have to increase the size of our fleet 20% to carry the same tonnage we do at a time when there's a shortage of truck drivers throughout much of the world, especially UK, EU and North America.

Tesla has orders they can’t fill. Someone found a use case for electric trucks. They might not meet your needs today.

Computers get better every year. These are the first generation of e-trucks. They’re meet your requirements before you know it.

If they don’t work for you don’t buy them?

Good thing these aren’t replacing every single truck on the road than?

If you do mostly local deliveries this will work perfectly because sitting in traffic won’t use up as much energy and if you have down time when unloading vs dropping a load you could be charging.

Not every truck should be replaced but for non long haul this will be good.

You’re correct.

I can’t buy a train. I can’t afford to live near one. I can buy an electric car.

Do what you can until you can do better?

I have an ebike. Works great. I can’t buy a bike lane.

Unless there's a massive leap in battery technology, especially power density, it ain't happening any time soon.

It will be faster, easier, cheaper soon enough. I guarantee it.

But with the cost of fuel vs charging cost maybe it make economic sense to have more lorries to switch out. Fuel is likely the number 1 cost for the company.

> has orders they can't fill

"Demand infinitely outpaces production!"

One way or another new cars are going to be made. It’s definitely better for the environment if these new cars are electric than if they are internal combustion.

Ideally we would transition to more public infrastructure for transit (trains and busses), but some cars will always be needed and it’s better for the environment if those cars run on electricity.

Can you imagine getting stuck behind 2 people at a charging station? Even if it takes 20mins to charge to full, it would be a gigantic pain in the arse. There’s no way this is feasible on a mass scale

Nissan wrecked Nissan and needed Renault

It’s not feasible to build more charging stations?

Have you ever heard of daisy chain chargers?

You plug in one battery to an outlet. Plug the other battery into the he first and on and on and All the batteries get charged.

There’s simple solutions to every impossibility you’re stuck on.

We go green or the planet heats up and all the crops die.

Take your pick.

Electric trucks will fuck up roads even more than normal trucks. Put that shit on trains.

I think 300 km is good distance for lots of scenarios, also u need to think that 300 km in Europe is not that bad. USA is super big and may not be enough, but for lots of other countries is good enough...

It’s about serviceability. Say you replace every single fuel station with ev chargers, you are still going to have chaos given it takes 2mins ish to fill up a tank vs 20. Also, people are going to be pedants about their chargers, extremely fast chargers are just going to chew the batteries. A car with a shelf life of 8 years? Where the second hand market blows? That equates to far more problematic mining of lithium, which is definitely not good for the environment, plus producing a tonne of car waste. Then there is the reality that every single city in the world is packed to gills already, what you going to do? Bulldoze parkland for ev stations?

I don't get why with the surface area of the cargo thing they don't put solar panels on the roof..

Why would they? If we're talking weight, there are already weight limits, so I don't see how they'd change anything there.

Plenty of trucks spend their entire day doing deliveries in a single city. Not all truck routes are long-haul.

Put solar panels on the 53’ trailer and you increase the range considerably.

There’s solutions to every problem.

Before airplanes we were building tall buildings for blimps.

We will solve every problem. We have too.

Heavier trucks mean either less cargo or more load per axle. Less cargo means more trucks. Either way you end up with more damage to roads and that's without even mentioning the positives steming from putting shit on trains.

I suppose I didn't consider that more trucks would be on that road as a result; I was just considering the weight of an individual truck.

>if the things can only transport 80% / 70% / 60% as much cargo per trip compared to a fossil model.

But, you see the plan is to spam out 2x as many trucks, doubling the traffic on the roads.

Because the energy generated would be negligible compared to the battery capacity.

Very fast charging of batteries diminishes battery capacity ( basic chemistry).

Charging times will remain too long (> 10 minutes) for at least a couple of decades.

Recycling of those batteries is still challenging.

If those battery packs catch fire they are very difficult to extinguish

The mining of the chemical components is very polluting indeed

So electric vehicles are ok if you do not do long distances (commuting).

Instead of recharging there should be international legislation that the battery packs should be standardised and can be changed quickly. In that case electrical vehicles (cars and trucks) can be a viable solution. As long as that is not the case there is not much gain in them imho

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Battery weight is a problem, but electric motors are also a lot lighter than diesels plus all the attendant plumbing and hardware. You don't even need that couple hundred pounds of drive shaft. Electrics are also far more efficient than diesels. This doesn't matter as much on long hauls, but regenerative braking provides a lot of charge with a heavy load.

This engineer did the math for the Tesla, and it checks out.

It's horses for courses. Pepsi bought a bunch of the Teslas for their short-haul delivery.

I’m not denying there is a problem, but the reality is that you (we) are being SOLD the “solution”. Aka people are profiteering and shifting the burden of responsibility onto the general public

What other options do we have?

Imagine not wasting a large amount of your fuel during all that horrible London traffic.

Look up the original Tesla, Nicholas - the Wardenclyffe Tower. This new Tesla shit is a scam and is intentionally masking the real solution, so people that laugh at you (us) can profiteer

Ok. You invest in that. I’ll invest in this.

Congrats here is your L

I’m not sure what they’re saying, is it 6 x 540kWh = 300 Km?

That’s approximately 30 Tesla model S’s…. (with 390 miles per charge…)

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So Europe place who rations electricity wants electric trucks and cars. LMAO this is stupid.

Like the cybertruck, unless they're using something other than lithium ion batteries, it's probably not going to work.

And this is the niche these trucks will fill. Urban centres are heading towards a complete fossil-fuel ban. That means these short range EV trucks could be the only heavy vehicles allowed inside major cities in the future.

If nothing else, it will be good for air quality.

Try loading up that Model S to capacity and see what the range becomes.

EVs are terrible at carrying cargo, especially if you tow something.

I seriously doubt solar panels would generate a meaningful amount of range. You have to remember, that if you put solar panels on, now you just increased the weight of an already heavy vehicle. Solar panels on top of a trailer would also only generate 100% capacity at noon in the middle of summer near the equator. Any other time they would generate a significant amount less. Now you also have to clean the panels regularly and they have to be replaced as they wear out or break.

Solar panels on moving vehicles is just silly. Absolutely not worth it on anything other than a bicycle to charge your phone.

Not that ambitious, all cars and vans registered after 2035 have to be carbon neutral. Its 2030 in the UK. That doesnt include trucks but if all new cars and vans will have to be carbon neutral by law its not such a stretch for trucks 5 years later. It may be mandated by law even before that.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_6462

I really hope you realize that Europe's cargo infrastructure relies almost completely on trucking. There is absolutely no way it is possible to make the switch to trains at this point.

We're literally working right now on switching to trains/ships - 30% by 2030, 50% by 2050. It is completely possible.

Where?

Europe would need an all-new rail system and it still wouldn't service the continent as well as trucks combined with ships can.

Emissions would still come from the manufacturing of gasoline/diesel engine vehicles as well. The difference would be hundreds of millions of gasoline/diesel engines pouring CO, HAPs, Hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen which produce smog and acid rain, while E.Vs don't produce these pollutants.

The power needed to charge the vehicles is the main issue. But as we build more solar and wind farms among other clean energy generation, we should see improvement.

The ability to hot swap batteries would solve a lot of these issues and may be more appropriate in a commercial context. Build it in to your workflow and have dedicated swap points every hundred km or so.

But if the battery is 60% the value of the truck...

You literally don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Please tell me what your first hand experience of driving lorries is.

I don’t know how to calculate it, but if that’s 30 teslas worth of weight , it’s 30x4500= 135,000 lbs for 390 miles.

IDK….

That doesn't mean everything scales linearly.

Trucks are also way less aerodynamic than a fish faced Tesla.

In EU. Idk how did you come up with all-new rail system. With 2030 goal it will be mostly improving what already exists. Demonopolization of rail market, ERTMS level 2 rollout, digital automatic coupling, increased electrification and restoration of less used lines, some new projects (eg. Rail Baltica) etc. It's all coming together.

Does driving large military trucks count? Stop and go is hell on trucks. You spend fuel accelerating tons of load, and then you wear your brakes decelerating. Electric trucks spend charge accelerating and then regain about 70% of it decelerating. This isn’t a huge advantage for long haulers, but those who drive in or near cities in heavy traffic benefit.

Truckers especially worry about total cost, of which fuel is only a part. Oil changes, etc., cost money, as does the regular replacement of wearable parts like brakes. Electrics have little maintenance, you mainly need to replace tires just like in a diesel truck.

In Europe semi drivers can drive a maximum of 8 hours a day. So the range doesn't have to be incredible, it just has to be sufficient.

It's obviously not a universal truck that'll be useful everywhere. Where it will be useful is for inner city deliveries. Your typical inner city semi might travel 100-200 KM a day. They spend a lot of time unloading trailers where... your truck is typically turned off (and maybe in the future plugged in somewhere).

Obviously it's not going to replace every single truck on the road... but none of these automakers will. If every single automaker switched over to electric today, it would still take 30 days to replace every single diesel truck on the road.

Oh yeah, I have no idea how to camp are the two.

I’m not even sure how much weight an average truck carries

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Many trucks make use of multiple drivers. Couples for example. Alternatively, swap drivers like airplanes swap pilots. Doesn’t mean the truck needs to be idle. Time is money.

If you buy a gallon gasoline and burn it who is responsible for those emissions you or Exxon? What about for the food you eat? What about for the clothes you wear? At some point you need to take responsibility for your actions

How one stupid anti EV shill that can't do math put it

> 50% of lifetime CO2 emissions from an electric car come from the energy used to produce the car. This compares unfavorably with the manufacture of a gasoline-powered car which accounts for 17% of the car’s lifetime CO2 emissions.

> When a new EV appears in the show-room, it has already caused 30,000 pounds of CO2 emissions. Equivalent amount for manufacturing a conventional car is 14,000 pounds.

Which means EV is 60,000 lifetime pounds of CO2 emissions

And gasoline is 82,353 lifetime pounds of CO2 emissions

These aren't for long distance, these are for grocers type shorter distances.

The cybertruck is a shitty flatbed jeep, not a truck.

Why are so many people getting triggered by this article?

The techno utopians at it again.

A 6x2 tractor unit is rated for 44 tonnes GVW as in 97,000lb and not used for grocers type shorter distances.

> Does driving large military trucks count?

No because it bears next to fuck all resemblance to civilian driving. I passed my test at ASMT Leconfield when I was in REME and I was posted there so I'm fully aware of how military HGV drivers are trained. I also remember making the transition to civilian driving and realising pretty much everything I was taught other than to pass the test was worthless. I'm guessing you know what ASMT Leconfield is.

> You spend fuel accelerating tons of load, and then you wear your brakes decelerating.

Army drivers might but modern civilian trucks come with engine braking that's capable of holding a 44 tonne lorry at a set speed going down a relatively steep hill. You use that to slow down and the brakes to bring it to a final stop.

> Truckers especially worry about total cost

No we don't because we're not paying the bills. Our employers might but unless there's a fuel bonus to be had we generally don't give a shit.

> Electrics have little maintenance

Oh my sweet summer child. That may be true for a car but not a 44 tonne lorry. The suspension and steering will still be taking a hammering. It will still be required to have six weekly safety checks here in the UK.

> you mainly need to replace tires just like in a diesel truck.

Tell that to all the Tesla Model S owners from 2012-13 where 2/3 of the motors failed by 60,000 miles.

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In Europe? I used to drive around Germany quite a bit and I've literally never seen that ever

Because they know you can't afford it.

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That's true in North America but in Europe they don't have very large cabs. Regulations prevent things like sleepers so you usually only see drivers driving for an 8 hour day.