I always assumed the future of electric trucking would involve little battery trailers that could be quickly swapped out on a rolling basis by fleets of trucks.
It seems the “refuel” paradigm makes sense for fuels where the majority of the fuel is consumed but maybe not as much for charging.
With a network of truckers in the US a floating number of charging centers with batteries wouldn’t be that tough to create/maintain
> I always assumed the future of electric trucking would involve little battery trailers that could be quickly swapped out on a rolling basis by fleets of trucks.
Maybe the future, but right now, I suspect the battery energy density is not forgiving enough for the battery to just be a carry load. Increasingly, the battery module is part of the structure of the vehicle and further works as weight to increase traction close to the drivetrain. There is also a lot of nitty-gritty details to do with safety, efficiency and cooling that makes moving the battery away from the Semi itself not a viable option ATM.
Also keep in mind that at least for consumer cars, Tesla did try battery swap stations but nobody seemed to show any interest so they canned it.
I worked for a company that builds electric trucks and that have also shown battery trailers with cargo space. The engineers told me that the coupling of the battery on the trailer with the semi caused them a lot of worries. High voltage/amperage combined with mechanical stress and failure scenarios (failing mechanical coupling of the trailer, destroying the battery connection).
However it seems like the European companies heading this way.
Yes, just exchanging batteries is an alternative to recharging. But it requires additional logistics and also the investment into additional batteries.
There are of course scenarios, where battery change is the only practical way. Like it was with horse changes on long distance travel long ago.
This changes quickly, if you have batteries with enough range to make recharging feasible. With electric cars the industry was quickly at the point and looking at the specs of the Tesla Semi, heavy trucks are basically there too. Which probably will kill any attempt at setting up a network for battery exchange before it was made.
This was a thing in the 1970s in parts of Germany. Busses used those battery trailers and swapped them out at charging stations. Diesel got too cheap and batteries where not good enough back then to make it worth the effort.
It seems the “refuel” paradigm makes sense for fuels where the majority of the fuel is consumed but maybe not as much for charging. With a network of truckers in the US a floating number of charging centers with batteries wouldn’t be that tough to create/maintain