The highway where trucks work like electric trains

What Hacker News said

Cites kube-system · 2021-11 · on “Electric vehicles could fully recharge in 5 minutes with new cable design”

You don’t have to put them on rails. We could have highway lanes that power vehicles for long distance travel, and then they rely on battery for local use. [this video] This could have some big advantages to cramming larger batteries into vehicles and trying to charge them at higher rates. Cheaper, lighter and safer vehicles, and batteries that last longer.

Cites ben_w · 2022-01 · on “India's richest man pouring $80B into green energy, including new ventures”

> Electrified highways solve the issue for Trucks. In principle sure[0], but the devil is in the details with anything like this. You could also solve the intermittency of PV with a planet scale HVDC grid, much cheaper than batteries, but doing so would need a long time just to mine the metal ores out of the ground (someone asked me to do the math, and I did, it’s hiding somewhere in my comment history). [0] of course Tom Scott did a video about this, in some ways he is the vlogger equivalent of xkcd: [this video]

Cites DerArzt · 2022-03 · on “Two-minute battery changes push India’s delivery riders to switch to e-scooters”

Tom Scott did a video[1] on this that tackles the problem of electric trucks in a different way. Instead of charging somewhere or swapping out a battery, what if we charged them while they were in a specific lane of a highway. [1] [this video]

Cites ProllyInfamous · 2022-07 · on “The Poor ROI of Autonomy (2020)”

It seems like AI truck driving, at least hub-to-hub, is already pretty well solved. Here's a test example (in Germany) that incorporates electric trucks which only need enough onboard energy to deliver "the last mile" : [this video]

Cites somethoughts · 2022-08 · on “Hyundai rolls out 27 heavy-duty hydrogen trucks in Germany”

Tom Scott did a video on it: The highway where trucks work like electric trains [this video] Its interesting if it could be used in combination with self driving truck technology for long haul train style trucking.

Cites HeyItsMatt · 2022-08 · on “Hyundai rolls out 27 heavy-duty hydrogen trucks in Germany”

Pantographs and catenary wires long ago solved the energy supply problem for heavy transport. They are 99% efficient and cheap to build. [this video] Diesel and hydrogen is only needed on extremely long and thin routes like road trains in northern Australia or Alaska. This is greenwashing.

Cites throw0101c · 2022-12 · on “Highway EV charging will need a ton of power – sooner than you think”

> Imagine there're 20 trucks charging at 80kW on a single autobahn rest area. Why would they need to stop to charge? Charge them on the go. See the Tom Scott video "The highway where trucks work like electric trains": * [this video] And if they do want/have to stop, imagine charging at a rate of up to 3750 kW: > The Megawatt Charging System (MCS) is a charging connector under development for large battery electric vehicles. The connector will be rated for charging at a maximum rate of 3.75 megawatts (3,000 amps at 1,250 volts direct current (DC)). * [LINK]

Cites bombcar · 2023-04 · on “Tesla Master Plan Part 3”

Electrification of trucks might be almost more reasonable - and it's been proof-of-concept'd: [this video] Many people do NOT realize just how empty most trucks are - and major intercity trucking can be relatively easily "trained" - [LINK] - but the vast majority of local deliveries are trucks that aren't even half full. When shipping (trucking is just shipping) each "transfer" costs you money and time, so you want to reduce those as much as possible. To encourage trains, you just make the transfer cost "worth" it - interstate road-mile taxes, for example would do it.