In response to some of my recent posts on self-driving and electric vehicles, several readers asked if the electric grid could handle the increase. Other readers flat out stated the electric capacity was insufficient.
What’s the real story?
An electrical engineer in the utility industry emailed his thoughts in a pair of emails yesterday.
Mish,
I agree with you 100% about autonomous trucking. The driver plus insurance represent 39% of the cost per mile of operating a truck, according to the ATRI.
Something you might consider is that autonomous trucking will make electric trucks inevitable. It is easy to build a 200-mile range electric truck today. There are a few on the market. Driving this across the country makes no sense if you’re paying a driver to sit around for 1.5 hours every 200 miles (based on a 400kWh battery and a 350kW charger). Once autonomous trucks work, only electric makes sense. The value of fuel savings is much more than the lost productivity from frequent stops.
Electric trucks require 2kWh/mi to operate and will have dramatically lower repair and maintenance costs. ATRI says a diesel truck’s fuel plus R&M is 58.3c/mi plus 15.8c/mi. At the national average 10c/kWh and 90% lower R&M costs, the electric truck fuel plus R&M will be 70% cheaper.
If you are concerned about battery life replacement costs, Tesla has already demonstrated that properly operating a battery can dramatically reduce degradation. They see about 5% of range loss per 100k miles of operation. Some of this is related to aging and some to use. Either way, oversizing the battery pack so it provides a reasonable range for its life is pretty economic.
With reasonable assumptions, autonomous driving will make freight 40% cheaper per mile. Autonomous electric will be 55% cheaper per mile compared to today.
I asked the responder what his background was, whether or not I could quote him, and whether or not he had any links or supporting evidence to back his claims.
He said the company he worked for would not like the publicity but he had a link and a personal spreadsheet to back his claims.
I said I would call him EEUI (Electrical Engineer Utility Industry).
Second Email from EEUI
I’m an electrical engineer in the utility industry. I’ve been studying this question from an electric load growth perspective. Electrifying overland freight in my part of the world would increase our load by about 30%. Maybe more, if the cost reductions resulted in more freight being hauled.
Check out the ATRI report on Operational Costs of Trucking. The relevant information is on page 17:
The attached are my numbers. All numbers are in dollars per mile. WAG stands for wild ass guess. I assume that automation increases the equipment cost by 20% and electrification by another 80%.
You’re welcome to use my numbers but I work in an industry that prefers to avoid publicity.
EEUI
Truck Costs From ATRI
$23.61 in driver wages and benefits will largely vanish. That’s a 34.7 % reduction in costs rights there assuming all driver miles vanish (which they won’t).
But insurance costs will drop as will maintenance costs. Electric vehicles have far fewer parts to wear out and things like braking will be much smoother.
That’s how I saw things before looking at EEUI’s spreadsheet.
EEUI Spreadsheet
| Diesel from ATRI | Automated | Elec Automated | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fuel | 0.583 | 0.583 | same | 0.2 | 10c/kWh, 2kWh/mi |
| Lease | 0.215 | 0.258 | 20% higher (WAG) | 0.43 | 100% higher (WAG) |
| R&M | 0.158 | 0.158 | same | 0.0158 | 90% lower |
| Insurance | 0.071 | 0.0071 | 90% lower | 0.0071 | 90% lower |
| Permits | 0.019 | 0.019 | same | 0.019 | same |
| Tires | 0.044 | 0.044 | same | 0.044 | same |
| Tolls | 0.023 | 0.023 | same | 0.023 | same |
| Driver wage | 0.462 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Driver ben | 0.129 | 0 | 0 | ||
| 1.704 | 1.0921 | 0.7389 | |||
| Saving | 36% | Savings vs Automated | 32% | ||
| Savings vs Today | 57% |
EEUI estimates an operating saving of 36% with diesel and 57% with electric.
My assumption is that EEUI is on the high side, perhaps by a lot, especially with electric. But that is not what matters. A savings of 20% is enough to guarantee automation. An additional savings of another 15% or less is enough to make electric happen.
Move to Driverless Accelerates
A Study Says by 2030 1/4th of Miles Driven will be Driverless. I expect 85 percent of miles driven will be driverless by 2030.
For further discussion, please consider Second-Order Consequences of Self-Driving Vehicles.
Also consider Portland Says Yes to Testing Driverless Cars, Other Cities Will Follow: Mass Adoption When?
The move to driverless is clearly accelerating and for numerous good reasons. Savings will force the industry in these directions, far sooner than most believe.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Taxes make up a measurable portion of fuel costs at the pump. The government is going to be strapped for revenue when fuel usage drops. The result should be obvious, raise taxes on fuel in general or battery robotrucks specifically.
tax electricity.. one cancels the other…
Tax the natgas or oil used to create the electricity.
Reduce gov’t spending?
I do like well done satire, please play again.
Is that Haiku?
It would be interesting to see what happens to oil prices as electric vehicles takes over. Will oil get much cheaper to compete? Will that end the wars in the Middle East?
Of course.. sunnis, shiites, and jews will all hug and make up.
Dear Mish
If I assume 2kWh per mile and 60mph then the power output consumed is 160 horsepower. A little googling suggests this is an anemic power rating for a standard semi. Indeed these trucks will be making frequent stops to recharge. Like every 50 miles if you assume a Tesla 100kWh battery pack. Bigger packs mean more heat due to less surface area / volume. How long will battery pack last before it is no longer usable? 1 trip??? 10 maybe maximum. There are technical issues here that EEUI did not mention. The maintenance thing may be correct though. Not sure there.
Exactly PHXFREDDYII. Pull the trucking requirements down to horsepower, as you’ve done, and it’s painfully obvious a loaded semi traveling just 100 miles at 55mph consumes as much energy as 10 houses use in a day. (Loose assumptions used: 100% battery efficiency(!), 1hp=1000w, semi@55mph requires ~160hp. 160kw x 2 hours= 320kwh per truck per 100mi trip) A house requires ~30kwh per day. The transportation budget is YUGE compared to domestic (home) use. Send that truck on a reasonable 250 mile trip and you’ve used as much energy as 25 houses use in a single day. We’re looking at this whole thing backwards…the vehicle can be, and should be, our domestic energy provider . Every year cleaner auto engines are developed along with cleaner fuels, and a very modest car engine can ‘recharge’ a house battery in 20 minutes, and carries enough fuel to do it 10 times over. “Plug the house into the car, not the car into the house.”
Let me add this: A car with hard tires and reasonable aerodynamics will do 55mph on level ground with ~20-40hp. The 30 minute drive to and from work, given the generous assumptions above, will still as use much energy as a house will use in a day. (30hp = 30kw, 30kw x 1hr = 30kwh. House also requires ~30kwh per day). It’s reasonable to guess that the grid COULD possibly handle that 2x increase, but only if car charging is done overnight. My point is this: light transportation needs could be met over the grid… anything larger is out of the question.
I don’t care if they fight, take the strategic value away from the region and maybe we will stop being there.
Even if oil is free….The Middle East wars will continue just as it has from the beginning of time. Besides it is simply a matter of time before all the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia moves to France. Oil was an excuse for war, which was an excuse for weapon manufacturing and sales which is more profitable than oil.
Conspicuous by its absence given the title is discussion of the electric grid – which will have to handle all the electric cars too. Also, with a 60% duty cycle – drive for 3 hours, recharge for 1.5, it will slow things down. Yes, burn more coal or natural gas, or maybe build more Dams (California is tearing them down).
Again, for “long haul Trucking”, there are railroad tracks adjacent to almost every interstate, and they are even more efficient using oil than electric trucks would be, require NO special complex electronics or computers since they don’t have to steer and have the right of way, but somehow railroads can’t replace Trucks even though they have all the exact advantages you mention for self-driving trucks. You haven’t to my knowledge explained why railroads aren’t a viable alternative.
I’ll offer a guess – the price added to any item by transport is so low that the difference between trucking and rail is not worth it. Example, you might pay $1 for a bag of oranges at source, the cost of trucking adds 10 cents, rail would add 5 cents… intermediary costs, shop markup add another dollar. Need some real figures to get a proper view of this though.
In the US, rail systems are monopolies on their lines and routes, and always have been. Because of they don’t have to compete they are incredibly inefficient. Much like your local cable company or electric utility.
Railroads are only efficient in a “hub-to-hub” configuration. They cannot possibly compete with trucks, even if the rail load capacity could handle the volume between hubs.
Excellent point!
Rail doesn’t go everywhere, roads do.
Autonomous trucks won’t go everywhere, either. They will be point to point long haul freight, taking the truckload costs down.
What if they DO go everywhere? Then say goodbye to those insurance cost savings that have been calculated into all of this.
I wonder if we will also switch to Photovoltaics(PV) with battery storage for any excess.
My PV array on a monthly basis during the winter generates all the energy I need to drive an Electric Vehicle around the local area. The rate of return on investment is not that great. There is also the environmental impacts of burning fossil fuels that needs to be taken into consideration.
I can see where the electric utilities will become more like electrical energy distributors than electrical energy producers but will likely end up being split between the two.
Great strides have been made with batteries as noted above. The next biggest challenge is to increase the efficiency of PV cells from their 15 to 20% range to around the 60% of triple junction PV cells.
To put less strain on the grid, I can see reduced rates for those who charge off hours and use 110 Volts instead of 220 or 240 Volts and those that can get by with lower amperages. Who knows, we may end up ditching a personal car and carpool via a Uber-like service, etc. to get to work or do shopping etc.
I don’t think you answered the headline. I was the one who said current grid ‘probably’ could not handle peak summer demand. A 30% increase pretty much ‘implies’ my intuition was correct.
Nor did I ever say there was no solution. It would just require a few nat gas peaking plants put on the grid, and since fracking took away a lot of the summer storage necessity it’s not that the solution is the problem it would have been 10 years ago.
Now transmission capacity I wouldn’t even guess at. That is outside my scope of knowledge but could be a bit more difficult than building plants.
1) the assumption that the energy needed to move thousands of 18 wheeler trucks is a “mere” 30% increase in energy on the electrical grid seems rather whimsical and really low
2) summer brown outs prove that there is a shortage (either generation and/or transmission) already, even before massive new energy demand
3) if you believe there is so much extra natgas capacity in the US (I am not agreeing or disagreeing) — then why not just power new trucks with natgas?
Which is more economical? Retrofitting trucks to burn natgas instead of diesel… or building hundreds of power plants, thousands of miles of transmission lines, ripping up roadways to install power tracks AND then also retrofitting trucks to use electricity?
4) I don’t want to waste time fantasizing about whether pot hole infested highways and rusting bridges all over the USA would be better maintained in this imaginary electric truck world. Every politician has promised infrastructure maintenance for decades. Its just does not happen. I’ll believe the corrupt culture of government will maintain existing roads only when I see it happen.
How can anyone discuss installing power tracks in roadways when the country can’t even maintain the roadway itself?
To number 3- this was a week ago… start 30 seconds into video and look at guy leaning against passenger side of car. Like an E ticket at DisneyWorld.
http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/video-mostra-momento-em-que-carro-explode-em-posto-de-sao-goncalo-rj.ghtml
Maybe electric autonomous vehicles would need less maintenance, maybe not. The cost should be the same energy wise as electric, why isn’t it :
http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/
Gas engines that run on natural gas typically have a thermal efficiency between 35-45% (LCV basis)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_engine
And could be made more efficient
http://www.voanews.com/a/this-internal-combustion-engine-is-50-percent-more-efficient/3250128.html
Your 3b) is really the pivotal point. Electric drive trains are much, much simpler and less maintenance intensive. And getting more so, as emission requirements get tighter. Concentrating the complexity of burning fuel in a few stationary power plants, while the tens of thousands of individual trucks just use scaled up versions of the RC motors the Chinese can build and sell for less than a cup of Starbucks, is a big pro for electrification of the fleet.
Nuclear is an extreme example: It can be cost effective at massive scale, but your average nuclear powered car, never mind how nice a million mile range on one “tank” of plutonium sounds, just isn’t all that viable. Fossil fuel engines/generators are a less extreme variant of the same phenomenon.
The low to moderate battery capacity/range, more charging delays don’t matter much as long as you’re not paying a trucker, “hack” mentioned in the article, make the e-trucks even more viable once on stretches where they can operate autonomously.
“Which is more economical? Retrofitting trucks to burn natgas instead of diesel… or building hundreds of power plants, thousands of miles of transmission lines, ripping up roadways to install power tracks AND then also retrofitting trucks to use electricity?”
The first guys to use electric trucks will pay only for the trucks.
Everything else will be an external cost borne by others until it gets big enough to be noticable. There’s a real first mover benefit here.
The first fool to build an electric truck that runs off a power strip in the road is going to have a giant paper weight.
It would cost trillions (plural) to retrofit every interstate highway. Since we are dealing with a fantasy world here anyway, lets assume the trucks only have to drive on interstates and never any local roads. Congress can’t find the money to pay for VA hospitals or tax refunds, they run regular deficits — but you are actually crazy enough to think there is a spare $10 trillion sitting around to retrofit highways? Are you out of your mind?
You continue to ignore the problem of brown outs, and where all the extra electricity would come from. But since nothing else in your scenario is even plausible — I suppose magic power beans fits in with the rest of your day dreaming.
“How can anyone discuss installing power tracks in roadways when the country can’t even maintain the roadway itself?”
Welcome to Wisconsin.
A streetcar is being constructed, for some strange reason, on the streets of Milwaukee. Mind you, I’m talk guidewire and track and cables and all. Like Mish says, it’s all about the technology. We’re talking 70s technology, that is, 1870s.
All ANY of this us about is control. TPTB see the freedom your personal automobile brings and they want that to stop. Your car will be taken from you first, then the autonomous cars will also see their own demise. Possibly on the premise that they are hazardous. Control will be installed and they’re not asking you, but rather telling you.
You don’t need to add to peak capacity (generation or distribution) if the plugs to recharge the batteries have restrictions on use during peak times. Could be done via very high tariffs at peak times (so you could recharge whenever you like but you will pay dearly for it) or it could be done by smart meters/plugs just not working (government/industry would work out how to enforce this). Lots of spare capacity in generation/distribution late at night (when most people would have parked their cars for the night anyways).
If anything the variable generation problems of wind turbines will be cancelled out by all the batteries that will take that power. A win/win.
someone needs to post a typical 24hr demand curve for electric power. The curve will starkly illuminate why electric vehicles will not cause a shortage of capacity.
In fact, electric vehicles are more likely to smooth out the 24hr demand curve thereby improving efficiency of overall power generation by a smidge.
On another note – one poster wondered how electric cars will effect oil prices. Once electric cars reach a 10% market share you’ll see oil prices plummet. There will be so much excess supply of oil it won’t even be funny.
http://isonewswire.com/updates/2016/5/26/beating-the-heat-how-iso-ne-prepares-for-summer-peak-demand.html
Total capacity with everything online in New England.. – a fantasy is 30,000 -31,000. So the grid would blow every hot day. Also, this guys estimate for +30% is JUST freight.
Vooch – roughly same btu of energy for either, so you are saying will switch to nuke or renewable or coal?
electric power demand varies dramatically over a 24hr cycle.
Overnight there is nil demand.
plenty of excess capacity in current system
Yes ( within the lulls), but it is still going to take same hc to generate unless you use alternative source.
“plenty of excess capacity in current system”
Likewise the fixed track rail system already in service.
There is more excess capacity in rail freight than there is excess capacity in electrical generation.
And to Fish’s question about demand cycles — demand at night is lower than daytime… but demand in summer already causes brown outs in a number of areas, EVEN AT NIGHT. People run their A/C’s all night during the summer.
Ceiling fans and shade trees are much more efficient than A/C units, as everyone knows and everyone has been told multiple times — but everyone prefers their A/C.
Electric trucks will have to be prohibited during the summer, even if Mish and Co find trillions for retrofitting the highways, trillions for power plants in someone else’s back yard, and someone builds an electric truck for highways that don’t exist and won’t exist until Congress finds a spare $10-15 trillion.
If your respondent is correct and there will be a 30% increase in load on the grid and we factor in an increase in aircon load due to the planet continuing its 500 year warming cycle, we have a problem, which only nuclear and fossil fuelled power generation can solve.
I agree that electric, driverless transport is a given; however, the necessary power infrastructure must be put in place and closing down nuclear and introducing more inefficient renewable generation is no answer.
Without the necessary power infrastructure development, electricity prices could rise with demand and cancel out the savings shown by your respondent.
Renewables are in no way less efficient than nuclear in most of the world. Last year the vast majority of new generation capacity in the world came from renewables. Not because of government subsidies, but because head to head, it is cheaper for new installations.
That was for most of the world. That doesn’t mean it always is more economical, especially in replacement systems that already have an installed fuel distribution network.
Mish, Neither you nor the engineer are factoring in technological innovation. It’s ALREADY HERE.
Eight years ago I funded prototype of a new electric nano-motor that is now mature, and increases driving distance by 30-40%. It is the world’s first computerized motor. Tesla’s former chief scientist, Rob Farber, came to work for us. He said, “this is the motor of the future. Tesla has an elegant motor from the past”. This will radically accelerate adoption of EV’s when it hits the market in the next year or two.
I’m negotiating to combine this with other disruptive technological improvements – nano-coated solar panels and a nano-battery, that will solve all the fears about short driving distances and concerns about excess load on the grid.
Paragraph 2 is not for publication quite yet. Paragraph one is ok to mention if you want, without naming me. Michael Winn (previously posted to you re: qigong)
I can see driverless and maybe electric trucks but all this requires someone to pave and maintain roads for these trucking companies to use. That usually means government and often after seizing someone’s private property using eminent domain.
Roads for individual drivers might arguably be in the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to “establish post Offices and post Roads”, but doing so has put rail transportation largely out of business since the IHS was started in the mid ’50s. It also enabled educated people to desert the cities with cars for jobs and houses in the suburbs (leaving the cities – and their trolley systems – to decay).
So before I get really enthusiastic about all these great technological developments, I’d like to see a debate about privatizing ALL the roads in America right down to the neighborhood streets. Easiest way would be to create a bunch of companies, allocate the highway assets among them, and distribute the shares to taxpayers.
And stop government from seizing private property to build new roads (or widen old ones), thereafter.
Why? Even back in the horse drawn carriage age, roads were always public. Who wants to pay monopolistic toll rates just to get around town?
“Even back in the horse drawn carriage age, roads were always public.”
Not true. Look on any 19th century map and you are likely to see roads known as “turnpikes”. Not everyone lived on a road back then either. Some addresses were on trolley lines or people just used PO boxes.
“Who wants to pay monopolistic toll rates just to get around town?”
You are already paying them. They’re called gasoline taxes. They are very inefficient as there is no incentive nor disincentive to drive different routes or at different times of the day to beat traffic congestion.
Many roads would revert back to mass transit (rail, trolley) if they were private. And we could do away with the evil known as “eminent domain”.
Agreed – let’s start with fully privatizing all interstates.
and by fully privatize, I mean sell the land & improvements, not some crony capitalist concession.
let the free market reign. We’ll see costs decrease & quality improve.
Let’s experiment with your state first. Wait 20 years and if it turns out great I’ll lead the effort to adopt it in mine. I drive a lot of miles a year. I’m betting my total gas taxes run less than $350/year. Real hard to beat that for an excellent transportation network in my area.
so you want some little old lady in Queens subsidizing your driving ?
Wrong.
This alleged utility guy doesn’t have a clue considering he is supposedly in the utility industry.
In many parts of the country, the existing power grid experiences brown outs every summer. Sometimes it is because the electricity does not exist anywhere in North America, other times it is because Canada (for example) has surplus electricity but the transmission lines cannot get the electricity to where there is a shortage.
That is with the existing electrical grid.
The amount of energy it takes to move an 18 wheeler is significant. We are not talking about adding an extra light fixture to your house, which might be easily offset by installing an LED bulb or two. We are talking about many many many kilowatts of extra electricity PER TRUCK, times thousands of trucks on the road — and often those trucks are not in electricity surplus areas.
And unless you have been living under a rock or pretending to work for a utility — then you know every single US municipality thinks it would be swell to build a nuclear reactor or natgas / coal fired plant in… the other guy’s back yard. Other’s think we should cover Canada in hydro-electric dams and force all Canadians move elsewhere, which is just a different form of “not in my backyard”.
To make Mish’s fantasy come true, the US will have to build a LOT of new power plants — actually we need a lot of new power plants to replace the nuclear and coal plants that are already scheduled to go offline soon — and would need more on top of that to produce similar energy to the diesel engines in existing trucks.
In addition, the US would need to build thousands of miles of new / expanded transmission lines.
And lastly, the lazy DPW unions would need to be crushed nation-wide, allowing magic elves to install the power tracks in the road that Mish’s pretend trucks need. And more magic elves to maintain these roads in a condition where the roads and power tracks wouldn’t turn into pot-holes as is the case now.
Thinking outside the box here: most rail roads already have extra capacity to haul cargo containers over long distances. Minimal (in some areas zero) new infrastructure needed. Truck drivers would only have short haul routes, home every night. Rail roads win, highways get less truck traffic, shipping costs lower, truck drivers spend less time away from their families — incremental costs to the USA minimal or zero.
Yet this does not happen… because are not as trivial as the assumptions in Mish’s prediction.
As for this utility guy who thinks power plants and transmission lines grow on trees, without community opposition, paid for with magic beans… I don’t believe he actually works in a real world utility. he sounds a lot like a government bureaucrat
” it would be swell to build a nuclear reactor or natgas / coal fired plant”
Coal is a four letter word. Can not be used. I once tried to buy one of those things and got e-mails that are hard to imagine. People from Sierra Club threatening to come to my house and dump trucks of coal into my pool. How they knew my address and that I had a pool (This was late 90’s-pre google earth) was kinda scary.
I was making fun of the fact that everyone wants a power plant in the OTHER GUYS BACK YARD.
No one cares which fuel the enviro-terrorists hate this week. They drove to the protest in gasoline cars, wearing clothes made from plastics derived from hydrocarbons, and they screamed their childish stupidty into a polymer composite bullhorn powered by fossil fuel generated electricity. These children need to grow up quickly, the skills they have (whining about socialist bullsh!t) are not employable skills in any country.
MedixMan is 100% correct…transportation’s energy budget is 100 times the domestic energy budget, probably more. You can power a house for 24 hours on just the braking losses of a loaded semi. The existing grid might power your little Tesla 40 miles to and from work, but not much else.
Medex Man – great post and makes the most sense to me. Use the existing rail lines; use truckers for very short haul. I could never for the life of me figure out why this wasn’t already being done.
It is being done to a limited extent.
It should be ramped up but instead we’re going to allow the interstates to become de facto rail lines for self driving vehicles.
@backwardsrevoluion — Some truck companies are starting to use natgas…
I can’t remember where I saw the link anymore, but UPS recently (a month ago?) announced they are converting more of their 18 wheeler trucks to be dual fuel (either natgas or diesel), and they are installing big natgas storage tanks at a few of their larger truck hubs.
Many of UPS’s local trucks already run on natgas. Refueling is rarely an issue, because the trucks return to the local hub every night (sometimes twice a day). They don’t need a network of fueling stations. If the truck runs out of fuel on the road or breaks down (which is not often) — they already have mechanics and tow trucks. And UPS maintains a group of mechanics at each hub to deal with truck maintenance; those same mechanics can and do get licensed to deal with high pressure / large volume natgas feeds.
I don’t know if UPS is unique in this change, it just happens that they recently had a company release about expanding the program in several midwest cities.
T Boone Pickens has been pushing for trucks to use natgas for many years (yup, he is selling natgas and has an interest).
I don’t know how many truck companies have switched, or how many are considering… just saw the company news release from UPS recently
@back revolution — oops, I put the natgas powered trucks reply in the wrong place.
As to your question of why the US doesn’t have freight trains handle long haul and use truckers for local deliveries…
At my previous residence (a state where one former governor makes license plates and the current governor should be), we asked the state commuter council bureaucrat why the state couldn’t run more trains during rush hour.
The rail system in said state has FOUR parallel tracks. There are rarely more than two trains running at once (one each direction). The middle tracks are kept “in reserve” for Amtrak trains — which somehow always run 80-100 minutes late regardless of the weather. When Amtrak trains make their belated appearance, they run about one every 45-50 minutes, leaving the middle tracks empty most of the time.
So our state bureaucrat tells us — completely straight face and it was not April Fools day — that the state cannot figure out how to run more than two trains on the existing FOUR tracks.
And I couldn’t make this next part up if I wanted to… a small **CHILD** asked his daddy why the train guys couldn’t install track switches like he has on his train set. Adults all over the room snorted their coffee out their noses, the young boy thought he said something wrong, and the state bureaucrat began to explain why the state hadn’t thought of using track switches…
I no longer live in that state, but last I heard the boys painfully simple idea was still over the heads of the bureaucrats.
Two comments. First, this doesn’t place any value on the the time to transport the goods. If the truck has to stop frequently to recharge, that doesn’t add driver cost (because there is no driver), but it does delay the goods, and yes, there is a cost to that.
Next, Gas or Electric are not the only options. Natural gas is making inroads into the diesel market because it is cheaper to operate, and trucks last longer.
Yes nat gas fueled engines are like propane fueled engines which have been around for a very long time. That fuel is the cheapest, and the engines run so clean the engine oil always looks like new (I had one). Also very clean exhaust.
Another thing: If the market adopts engines that run on fuels other than petroleum, obviously the cost of gas and diesel will go down. I do not see in the calculations of the alternative fueled (electric or nat gas, or maybe even hydrogen) engines where this has been taken into account.
Most long haul trucks consist of prime movers and trailers. Would not be hard to unhook the load and put a fresh prime mover on every 2-300 miles at a truck depot. Trucks usually have to stop every 3 or 4 hours for the driver to get a coffee/stretch his legs/take a leak and only takes a few minutes to change the prime mover. Exact same system was used back in the days of Cobb and Co horse drawn wagons when a fresh team of horses was hooked up.
Also happens today with trains. Going over the high mountain passes the trains add extra engines to get over the top. Then on the other side they drop off engines. Once in a while you’ll see a train of nothing but engines being repositioned.
SD trucks will no longer need to drive 70-75 MPH because of limitations on drivers ability to stay awake.
Trucks will likely drive 50-55 MPH because the governing factors will be fuel efficiency & safety. SD trucks can drive 24 hrs straight.
Therefore even at 50MPH the load will arrive much sooner than at 75MPN
So Can the Electric Grid Handle Self-Driving Electric Trucks?
I dunno…
No data or analysis provided.
We already know the grid can’t handle the summertime A/C load.
We already know the system has brown outs. We already know many transmission lines are over-used. We already know many coal and nuclear plants are scheduled to go offline / lose license to continue operating, but we don’t know where the funds to build new generation plants will come from or where the new plants would be located.
The Donald is not going to trash viable coal and nuclear plants.
The Democrats brought us the “moderate rebel”.
The Republicans brought us “clean coal”.
Both are equally ridiculous.
The question isn’t what you think of clean coal. The question is how you plan to make up for the lost power generation when existing coal plants are shuttered.
Its not an insurmountable problem (replacing the coal plants) — I am just saying that its very contentious (no one wants the replacement plant in their backyard, not even windmills), and its not obvious how to pay for the transition.
I am sure it will get worked out (because the electricity is still in demand); I am just ridiculing the people who think this capacity can be replaced overnight (nope) AND then an additional 30% increase in generation will also fall from the sky.
How are you going to get you and your coal hating friends, the nuclear haters, the fossil fuel haters, the windmills-are-ugly lobby, and all the other special interest groups to replace the generation capacity lost by closing coal plants?
Because you have to solve that problem before you can even begin to fantasize about generating more for Mish’s electric trucks.
I don’t want to hear more about your politics. Tell me how you plan to overcome the laws of physics first.
First of all, the big problem with self-driving vehicles is their up-front capital cost. Figure a million bucks to get into even a basic self-driving car, and of course, a little bit more for a truck. So self-driving fails on that aspect alone. Then there’s the road infrastructure — in-road infrastructure to enable self-driving will require that literally every road that will support self-driving be ripped up and electronics installed into the roads to ensure backup lateral guidance. Figure another trillion for that, which has to be funded somehow.
Then you have the whole matter of DMVs and their staffing to maintain this stuff. Currently DMV’s can barely even maintain their conventional old-fashioned infrastructure. Can you imagine trying to maintain self-driving car roads, the sheer difficulty involved? DMV’s are unlikely to want to pay for the sort of engineering skills required to keep such roads operating.
Financing risk is another big issue as well, especially with self-driving cars having only finite lifetimes of software and hardware support.
Last but not least, there’s the whole road taxes issue. If you apply equivalent road taxes onto electricity, then electric vehicles don’t look so hot. And such vehicles will still need to be insured, so you can’t just imagine that you’ll have no insurance expense. Add in the requirement for top-priced professional maintenance and tightly controlled parts supply chains and the cost of overhauling rotables, and self-driving anything, let alone trucks, are likely to be non-starters. Railways, IMHO, are a far better investment at this point as the technology is actually realistic, proven, and capital costs are manageable.
ha ha when the driverless car or truck makes a mistake and the cop pulls it over and comes up to the drivers window and there’s nobody there – then what? I want to see that!
What makes you think the patrol car will be equipped with a cop?
A satellite will override the truck’s transmission via an OnStar system of some sort, bringing the truck to a halt. The bumper’s barcode will be scanned and an electronic citation issued to the truck’s operator, quite possibly the same company running the damn satellite.
When you take away the taxes the driver would have paid and add in the government costs associated with the unemployed driver, government could tax electricity to make up the difference. Some new taxes would be required to make-up for lost tax revenue as governments are already broke.
All predictions assume little change in the ‘costs’ they would save but the world does not work that way.
For every action there is a reaction.
Expect change but not necessarily what is ‘predicted’.
The only thing preventing us from reaching Utopia is figuring out who pays for it. The costs of our “convenience”, our ultimate leisure, created by the elimination of most productive means of “earning” a living, has never been calculated in, as it has continually been passed forward using debt and the promotion of the idea that the technology used to destroy our jobs will somehow save us.
It will cost trillions to upgrade the Eastern and Midwestern grids to support this kind of heavy usage; it is already notoriously rickety. Texas may be OK because their grid is protected from chain reactions by the DC tie…As one who wrote wholesale power contracts, these are always concerns….As a side observation, when we lived on the North Shore in Illinois, there were numerous blackouts due to substation failures, due to age and being overloaded.
I lived there also pyrrhus, before I escaped from The State Where the Governors Make the License Plates. What burb where you?
The smart solution is a DC generator connected by wire to a DC motor. Chinese bicycles and railroad locomotives both use this technology.
Chinese are smart….they print worthless paper money to buy our worthless paper US dollars and then use those dollars to buy all our real estate.
Years ago i sat quietly as a member of the transportation Committee listening to the truckers complain about their road taxes. I was asked, why does the committee feel the need to impose more taxes on their industry everytime the road needs repaired? My response was..because you are rhe ones that do the most damage. Longer trailers. Heavier weights. Equal more damage. Equals more taxes. Self driving electric trucks or not. Where ever there are savings, there are new government taxes.
Yes James, but tell me: where will the road maintenance taxes come from with electric or nat gas or hydrogen fueled vehicles? Hydrogen can be put in a storage tank to fuel a vehicle in anyone’s garage with generation from solar panels. Nat gas is usually used to heat homes & heat stoves etc. Electricity also has many uses that are hard to separate for tax purposes. I see a real problem here if those fuels become popular to fuel vehicles; how can road maintenance taxes be sorted out?
I think battery driven cars are just a transition method to the ultimate technology which is H fuel cell. Filling infrastructure is being built out now and time to fill-up is similar to a gasoline car. A number of manufacturers have Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, GM and others have fuel cell cars.
==========
The Fuel Cell Isn’t Dead Yet
It’s been a flop in the consumer market, but hydrogen still holds a little promise in industrial and defense applications.
April 7, 2017
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604115/the-fuel-cell-isnt-dead-yet/
===========
I drove Honda’s stunning hydrogen-powered car — here’s what it was like
Danielle Muoio
Apr. 15, 2017
http://www.businessinsider.com/honda-clarity-hydrogen-car-review-photos-2017-4
Hydrogen will never work in the US. It would require massive government subsidies while the infrastructure was put in place and the fleet converted. Americans would never stand for it. Solar subsidies are pennies in comparison.
Electric powered vehicles have operating cost advantages similar to natgas vehicles as well as a similar set of problems:tank/battery size/cost/weight,short cruise range,lack of refill points, refill time. Plus electric has a few more problems: battery life, and disposal cost and upgrade of electric infrastructure to handle higher load and different peak loads.
It’s a chicken and egg situation with both systems, until there is a large number of users there won’t be a dense enough fuel point network and vice versa.
Until/unless there is a massive shift to electric vehicles the existing power network should be adequate to meet increased consumption but maybe not peak load depending when and where these vehicles are recharged. If the utility network needs to be upgraded, probably with new substations needed for trucks, (with higher utility charges for all) there will be long contentious rate hearing battles. In the short term, if electric vehicle recharging stations are blamed for brown/black outs – then good night Irene!
We’ve been fed a lot of fantastic Buck Rogers stories about super batteries and speedy recharges but it’s just stories so far. A dual fuel natgas & gasoline vehicle only needs a single engine while a gasoline/electric hybrid needs two propulsion systems with additional cost, weight and complexity.
Short/medium term more pervasive use of natgas & electric delivery vehicles with deeper penetration of automated freight trains into metro areas would reduce delivery costs and pollution.
And how about using subway systems in idle late night hours for freight delivery, an idea mulled for decades. An automated system on rails , overland and metro is a small fraction the complexity of open roads.
If driverless vehicles become accepted they should happen first with tracked vehicles, much less complexity and most are still limited to airport type shuttles.
Insurers will reap windfalls insuring automated vehicles, premium cuts will not keep apace with 90% reduction in accidents for automated vehicles and one-off reduction in human operated vehicles.
Insurance, along with government mandates will be the primary motivator. The imposed costs of personally driven vehicles will be pushed to nosebleed heights guaranteeing that self driven vehicles or Uber type non-owned transportation are the only viable option. We will see a drastic reduction in privately owned transportation, and it will tickle the greenies fancy to no end.
Yep, and that’s really what all of this is about. Then the self driving cars will vanish, too. You will be left with electric bicycles, if you’re lucky.
Pass regulations (IF necessary) to get trucks to recharge in low-load periods (usually late at night) for load leveling on the power grid. Regs might not be necessary if lower cost watts are offered to them during low-load periods.
Same old arguments about how this won’t happen from the same naysayers. Of course autonomous is going to happen. Because as discussed above, the benefits to the vehicle owners are too big to pass up. People and companies do what is in their best interest.
As far as the electrical grid goes; it will be improved as needed over time, as it always is. Not all autonomous vehicles will be electric anyway. The source of power isn’t too important. Plenty will be diesel and natural gas.
I look forward to millions of lives saved, countless accident injuries avoided, lower insurance costs , lower delivery costs, etc.
This will not require more road expansion, it will require less, as improved efficiencies reduce the actual number of vehicles on the roads.
Besides the benefits to individuals, society benefits as well. Lower health care costs, lower road expansion and repair costs, less congestion on the roads, less pollution etc.
Bring it on!
I expect legislation before long that will require an emergency driver go along with all commercial vehicle for safety concerns etc. in addition another attendant required at all charging stations for safety concerns. Politicians will need to provide as many George Jetson positions as possible in the budding industry.
Will we have enough coal and oil to produce the electric demand? Oops, an oversight?
oil is not used to produce electricity
Can the electric grid handle a small solar storm? This was only a K6 event. One wonders what a Carrington level event would do?
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/g2-moderate-geomagnetic-storm-levels-observed-2
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-22/yesterdays-broad-power-outage-likely-caused-geomagnetic-storm
Yes! To assure long term survival , we need to become even more dependent on electricity for our “just in time” way of life.
What I want to know is where is the necessary increase in electric grid capacity going to come from. Tree hugger political power already stymies infrastructure build / rebuild necessary to handle current requirements.
I have my doubts about the grid handling our transportation energy budget. Losses in electric power delivery run around 20-30% but are never discussed. Besides, the car should charge the house, not the other way around. Vehicle engines are improved and redesigned yearly for top efficiency. Charging the house battery takes 30 minutes of vehicle run time…30kwh/day from a vehicle that can generate 100kw. Elon Musk has it right, the house will get the battery.
In urban areas, the electric grid can barely handle a heat wave. And it’s not like additional electricity can be generated in the suburbs and conducted through wires. The power wires are near their limits too. Adding trucks and cars that recharge at high wattage could very well cause brown outs or even blackouts. Saving a few dollars in wages and fuel could end up costing consumers in the long run.
This whole electric vehicle thing will come, only made possible my massive .gov subsidies in addition to tax penalties for not cooperating. In other words, boondoggle intervention. I can already see the glass and steel skyscrapers going up with plaques next to entries that read “US Department of Autonomous Transportation.”
That said, if .gov got the hell out of the way, and stopped subsidizing fantasies like Tesla, this is likely the future of auto propulsion,,,,,
https://automobiles.honda.com/clarity
Too many variable and unintended consequences.
Never work in my lifetime.
Probably not yours either.
But keep dreaming. It’s good for the soul.
You may be expecting to die in the next year or two, but I’m not.
There is a better chance of Israel and Palestine merging into one nation and living happily ever after than there is of a massive rollout of self-driving vehicles in the next 20 years, let alone the next year or two.
I have no idea how you people come up with these outlandish fantasies.
I guess if it feels good – do it.
The Pepsi generation!!! heh.
Sorry old-timer. This is definitely going to happen. In fact, it’s already happening! The only question, is how quickly. I am not quite as optimistic as Mish, and a few others on this site, regarding the time line, but I am looking forward to the benefits of this technology. Much like I looked forward to personal computer technology in the 1970s, and Internet use in the 1980s. This will have a large net positive benefit for society.
Have a Coke and a smile LF!
Electric is so yesterday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cars/article/Toyota-puts-fuel-cell-semi-truck-to-test-at-Los-11083889.php
Firstly, automation (capital investment) is accelerated when interest rates are near zero. This is a conundrum of trying to boost employment in a zirp environment. Low (no) cost capital + innovation replaces humans. If interest rates were to rise significantly then the investments may no longer be justified. However the likelyhood of a significant interest rate rise, barring some catastrophic event, is low.
Secondly, I don’t think that the power grid is a concern here. Recall that about 70 trillion BTUs are lost in the transmission system each year in the USA. If I were going to invest in automated electric-power trucking, I would also invest in power plants at strategic locations, where there would be no transmission losses.
For these reasons I don’t think that the electricity grid capacity is an issue in this discussion.
I’m served by the Jersey Shore line, all passengers have to transfer from electric to diesel trains in Long Branch about 40 mi from midtown Manhattan in the most densely populated state in the nation.
If we can’t handle this type of technology challenge forgive me for being skeptical about nationwide self driving electric tractor trailers.
Nonetheless, in contrast to what you describe, Dubai has an automated, driverless, electrically-powered mass transit system that has been successfully used for several years now. Granted it is on rail, not road, but the adoption of these technologies elsewhere is just a matter of time and investment.
Using New Jersey as an example of anything automatically disqualifies you from consideration.
So this self-driving electric truck, covered in LIDAR, radar, and ultrasonic sensors and cameras, and chock-full of computers, a gigantic mess of software systems, communication systems, complex electrical control systems and electro-mechanical sensors, and many of the mechanical systems of normal trucks (suspension, wheels, tires, bearings, break pads, etc) is going to be cheaper to maintain than a diesel truck?
Yep. Technology always brings prices down in everything it touches. A computer in 1970 filled an entire room and cost hundreds of thousands. Today a much more powerful computer is on the phone in your pocket and costs a few hundred. The parts of the truck that won’t drop in price are the parts that aren’t affected by technology.
So, you’re saying around the year 2060 a self driving truck will be economically viable.I do LIDAR research. I would never get in a car that depends on it.
400kWh battery? That’s a 5-ton battery!!!
Dr Goodenough recently increased the energy density of his latest battery by a factor of 3 over current lithium ion batteries. In other words, if a truck needed a 400 kwh pack, the weight of that pack with this new battery would be about 1/3 less. Using your your 5 ton weight, that would be a 1.7 ton pack. While I am not holding my breath, “this could be a game changer”.
Mish, The answer to the question “Can the grid handle…” was not answered by the the utility engineer. I have wondered if the grid could handle the demand that would be created by automated electric vehicles. There is something else that I don’t see much discussion on and that is that for this brave new future of autonomous vehicles to reach their full potential you will need a huge new infrastructure that networks the roads and all the vehicles on the road. Until that happens all we will have is an experiment. Or think of it as the birth of the PC. Nice gadget at the time but it took the networking of PCs and the internet to get it’s full potential.
Are Teamster pensions fully funded? If self driving trucks eliminate teamster jobs and the pensions go bust then that in turn busts PBGC. Congress provides emergency refunding for PBGC with higher insurance premiums and more private employers end pensions.
So Joe Sixpack who makes electric motor gear for the self driving electric behemoths on the interstates maybe loses his private pension too when PBGC premiums soar
PS maybe interstate trucks that are limited in total length and number of trailers will be allowed more trailers and length because they are 90% safer and with stronger electric motors we’ll have virtual untracked trains, everybody will feel like FIAT 500 drivers on the interstates!
I do some work in AI. Frankly, I see self driving vehicles, ones that won’t kill people when conditions are less than optimal, as a very long way off. I also see using 300 million Americans as lab rats to get the inevitable kinks out of such an AI system as morally reprehensible.
What makes alot more sense and is much more easily and cheaply done, would be to SET UP AN AI TRAFFIC LIGHT SYSTEM. I live in DC and half my commute is spent sitting at traffic lights: the backup in my lane is 1/2 mile long while a car goes by every 10 seconds in the other road; or, you have 50 cars waiting at a 10 second green light, or, you’re sitting at a red with no cross traffic in sight at all.
But you see using 300 million Americans as reluctant participants in the current deadly game of vehicular Russian Roulette as morally upright? Interesting.
I also suspect that there are more people working on AI than just yourself. People doing things you are completely unaware of.
Interestingly, we’ve had quite a few power outages in my Seattle area neighbourhood in the last several years due to blown transformers. I talked with some of the guys fixed a transformer and they told me it is all the electric cars that have become popular around here that are really increasing the electric load far beyond what the neighbourhood grid was originally designed to handle.