Be prepared to be outdragged by a truck...
- Thread starter tones
- Start date
Richard Nichola
pfm Member
Wow. The future is here. A truck with a 500 mile range between fills. That's a day's driving, 10 hours at 50mph. Also it can top up 80% in 30 minutes. That's a meal break. The driver stops, plugs in, takes his half-hour rest break as he is obliged to do within his hours, comes back and he's ready to go again. The only logistical difficulty will be installing the charge points at loading bays. Lorries back up to bays, you need a long lead to reach the tractor unit from the back. You can't put the charger at the front because that's the turning space. Nobody wants to have to take the trailer off the tractor to go and charge it, that's 10 minutes' work.
Existing lorries are speed limited to stop them doing this. Electric ones will too, and it will take no more energy to stop a 30-ton electric lorry from 60 than a 30-ton diesel one. Battery weight isn't really a problem when you get into commercial vehicles. If the batteries add half a tonne to a car, that's a problem. If a truck generating 4x the power needs 2 tonnes of batteries, so what? A diesel tractor weighs 3x that anyway, and every pallet on the trailer weighs a tonne as well.
martin clark
pinko bodger
4.2 to 100 is 1.15g all the way there - reckon that’s stretching realistic expectation of road tyres somewhat, if not credulity. It’s approaching the straightline performance of a top-level hillclimb car, but without the downforce. 
sean99
pfm Member
I must admit I didn't see this coming - long steady distances seem ideal for a diesel engine (as opposed to the stop and go driving that most of us do). Elon Musk is definitely a visionary, so I wouldn't want to say he's wrong. Perhaps he envisions crowded freeways with trucks equally stuck in the stop and go ?
I wonder how he'll work the economics ? Are trucks mostly bought (in which case battery price will be a big problem) or leased (in which case battery costs are amortized and maybe not a problem). One thing is for certain - Tesla cars don't make economic sense - they appeal to a mixture of nerdery, posing, and environmentalism. The truck industry is not so sentimental - it's all about dollars and cents. If the Tesla truck doesn't cost less over its lifetime than an equivalent diesel then it won't sell.
The roadster is cool, I suppose, but the last thing the world needs right now is another hypercar for the hyperrich.
I wonder how he'll work the economics ? Are trucks mostly bought (in which case battery price will be a big problem) or leased (in which case battery costs are amortized and maybe not a problem). One thing is for certain - Tesla cars don't make economic sense - they appeal to a mixture of nerdery, posing, and environmentalism. The truck industry is not so sentimental - it's all about dollars and cents. If the Tesla truck doesn't cost less over its lifetime than an equivalent diesel then it won't sell.
The roadster is cool, I suppose, but the last thing the world needs right now is another hypercar for the hyperrich.
Anh
Naim ghetto blaster
Yes, so this makes the 0-60 hype all the more daft.
The lorry still can pick up speed very quickly and is likely to be disproportional to its stopping ability though.
For a 1.5 tonne car, braking power is more aligned with it's ability to go.
Cav
pfm Member
Tesla is the biggest bullshit company since Enron.
They have failed to produce the number of road cars they promised; they "launch" a truck - which has not yet been built claiming 500 mile range; their 30 minute charging works ony at Tesla charging points which are as rare as hens teeth; thay have failed to do anything other than produce slick advertising.
They have failed to produce the number of road cars they promised; they "launch" a truck - which has not yet been built claiming 500 mile range; their 30 minute charging works ony at Tesla charging points which are as rare as hens teeth; thay have failed to do anything other than produce slick advertising.
Mike Judge`s `Silicon Valley` brilliantly sums these people up,
Its about having the next `Game changing tech IDEA that will change the world` your company dont have to produce anything
Just having that `idea` and slapping a patent on it pushes your company worth up, its that fictional `worth` thats important
Everyone has seen what happens when that new phone explodes while charging/being used/sitting there doing nothing.
What are they doing to make sure that 3000KG of battery is puncture proof in these trucks?
Most countries power stations supply just about enough to power whats there. Where does the extra power to charge all these
vehicles come from? Is tesla investing/building them?
Dowser
Learning to bodge again..
4.2 to 100 is 1.15g all the way there - reckon that’s stretching realistic expectation of road tyres somewhat, if not credulity. It’s approaching the straightline performance of a top-level hillclimb car, but without the downforce.
Quite, but they have until 2020 to reset expectations
I recall he mentioned 8.x quarter mile too! However, electric technology means it will be fast and have amazing torque. I intend keeping my Impreza until there are DIY electric drivetrain kits available 
SteveG
pfm Member
Tesla will need to sort out the reliability issues as well - I saw in a recent What Car reliability review the Tesla cars did particularly badly, being the worst electrical car for reliability and one of the worst (perhaps the worst) overall. I suspect there will be couple of reasons for that:
- the expectations that will have been set by the high price and the level of quality that purchasers will have expected compared to other cars they've bought
- while Tesla are the leaders for electrical technology they're not all that experienced as a manufacturer yet
Yank
Bulbous Also Tapered
Tesla apparently do no prototype testing on their vehicles. They go straight from the computer model to production tooling, without the extensive road testing, reliability testing, desert and arctic testing, and chassis tuning that other manufacturers do.
Type approval, as for any vehicle.
Just like petrol will never replace steam, because you have to get petrol in glass bottles from the chemist, for heaven's sake. If you run out of fuel in a steam car, you can get a new bit of coal anywhere, but petrol, well that's another affair.