US Trucking Foyer Group Ignores Battery & EV Charging Enhancements In Congress

Two items of stories crossed my desk previously couple of days, one a fantastic piece of stories concerning the present actuality of batteries for transportation, and the opposite a bravura efficiency by Andrew Boyle, first vice chair of the American Trucking Associations (ATA) in entrance of Congress, the place he spouted remarkably inaccurate issues about electrical vehicles whereas apparently managing by no means to say local weather change in any means, form, or kind.

The primary piece of stories invalidates 50% of Boyle’s statements, so let’s begin there. CATL, a battery agency which owns about 34% of worldwide market share, simply introduced a 500 Watt-hour per kilogram (Wh/kg) battery for aviation use instances, and that it will be offering an automotive variant this yr as nicely. For context, the Panasonic batteries which have dominated Teslas previously few years are 269 Wh/kg, whereas the brand new, simpler to fabricate and assemble 4680 batteries run at 244 Wh/kg.

That’s about double the power density by mass. The Tesla Semi has a 500-mile vary, and those delivered to Pepsi have been working 500 miles with chips and not less than 400 miles with full a great deal of Pepsi. The load of load doesn’t kill semi-tractor efficiency that a lot, with a full 80,000-pound gross car weight on the street representing over 20 tons of freight solely decreasing gas effectivity about 20% over a really gentle load, in Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory testing in 2011. On flattish terrain, the Tesla Semi possible can do 500 miles totally loaded, and it’s assumed to be utilizing the Panasonic batteries with 269 Wh/kg power density. With the CATL batteries, its vary will possible be over 900 miles.

CATL has delivered what it guarantees when it guarantees it, and it’s delivering over a 3rd of batteries used at the moment. This isn’t a VC-backed hype fest, that is the world’s greatest producer and credible supply delivering massively extra power density. And battery power density isn’t at finish sport both. There’s an incredible quantity of labor being completed within the house globally, so we’ll see 600, 700, and 800 Wh/kg batteries quickly sufficient.

So what claims did Boyle make? Nicely, the primary is that present battery-electric semi vehicles have solely 150-330 miles of vary. That is outstanding when the Tesla Semi is already delivering vastly greater than this. Is Boyle unaware of the Tesla Semi’s precise vary in service with Pepsi? Or is he delivering stale or just deceptive information to Congress?

Subsequent, he claims that massive semi vehicles would require two 8,000-pound battery packs, which is to say 7,273 kg. That’s a tremendous quantity. As a ratio to the 625 kg 100 kWh battery pack in a long-range Tesla, meaning he thinks massive vehicles require 12 MWh of batteries to function. How a lot does the Tesla Semi battery have to attain 500 miles of vary? 850 kWh, about 14 occasions smaller. The battery within the Semi is heavy, however nowhere close to 7,000 kg, and CATL’s introduced batteries would ship over 900 miles of vary for a similar weight. Even considering Boyle’s declare of 1,200 miles of vary for a contemporary diesel with Tesla’s present power density you wouldn’t get to the load Boyle claims.

One other declare Boyle made is that vehicles would take ten hours to cost. Provided that the Tesla Semi with the Megacharger can get better 70% of cost in half-hour, it’s additionally hyperbolic on Boyle’s half to say that charging will take that lengthy.

Boyle additionally claimed that battery-electric vehicles would price $300,000 greater than new diesel semis. A mid-market semi prices $150,000, whereas the newest information from Tesla’s delivered vehicles point out that they price $250,000. That’s a $100,000 distinction, which isn’t rooster feed, however is, as soon as once more a lot, a lot decrease than Boyle’s claims.

Lastly, Boyle claimed that electrical vehicles couldn’t get cheaper, which is a outstanding assertion. Why? Nicely, he misrepresented how Wright’s Regulation or the expertise curve works, and even misnamed it. He referenced Moore’s Regulation, which is about computing and has little to do with manufactured objects getting 20% to 27% cheaper with each doubling of producing quantity. The costly half about electrical vehicles lately are the batteries, not the remainder of the truck. And vehicles will share batteries with automobiles, ships, trains, and plane, so each doubling of battery manufacturing for transportation use instances will trigger the value of batteries for vehicles to drop. Boyle’s assertion, or maybe pretense, is that with just a few hundred thousand vehicles yearly, the effectivity curve didn’t apply.

It’s troublesome to take Boyle critically when he will get so many issues so incorrect in entrance of Congress. And Congress folks appeared to assume he was an authority, versus a supply of great disinformation.

Earlier than articulating the one factor he will get considerably proper, let’s take the factor he apparently ignored in his statements, solutions, and the abstract article on the ATA web site — local weather change. Per the EPA’s current proposed Section 3 guidelines for trucking, transportation as an entire is 27% of whole US greenhouse fuel emissions, and heavy obligation Class 8 vehicles signify 1 / 4 of that. Sure, massive rigs produce about 7% of whole US local weather change-causing CO2 emissions. That’s a giant wedge. Underneath the Section 2 guidelines, semis have already turn into extra environment friendly, and common about 7.24 miles per gallon of diesel, up from below 6 a number of years in the past. The very best maintained, effectivity fitted and operated vehicles are over 10 miles per gallon, and 9 miles per gallon is definitely achievable.

In truth, the Section 3 emissions requirements for the goal yr of 2032 quantity to precisely that, 9 miles per gallon, which represents solely a 19% effectivity acquire. Contextually, Class 8 vehicles run about 250 billion miles yearly within the US, at 9 miles per gallon and eight.89 kg of CO2 per gallon of diesel, that’s an allowance of 250 million tons of CO2 per yr for trucking. Not a lot of a win, is it? But that is what the ATA is complaining about outdoors of Boyle’s Congressional hyperbole. At the least that assertion acknowledges greenhouse fuel emissions, and the ATA does have a committee for local weather change.

So, the Section 3 proposals are fairly milquetoast, with the trucking business getting a decade to bolt on extra aerodynamics, put aspect shields between wheels for extra environment friendly operation, incent truck drivers to decelerate and drive extra easily, and enhance the upkeep of their vehicles. These are all extremely cheap actions, and the ATA ought to be thanking the EPA for this achievable purpose. As an alternative, in its formal assertion, it makes it clear that they assume draconian measures are being foisted on them with out dialogue, regardless that the Section 3 guidelines are proposals with numerous public enter to come back.

So why was Boyle making stuff up about electrical vehicles in entrance of Congress, the place as an business skilled and a man who’s co-president of a trucking concern with round 90 vehicles and tens of tens of millions in income he ought to have been considerably correct? Nicely, that’s all about California’s newish guidelines for Class 8 vehicles.

What are they? Again in September of 2022, California introduced that every one new vehicles bought within the state in 2040 and onward must be zero emission. Additional, by 2042, all fleets working in California must be zero-emission. So 20 years from now, all present diesel vehicles working in California should have massive batteries. And whither goest California, so goest the US, as California’s GPD is 12% of all the nation’s. Trucking companies like Boyle’s small agency in Massachusetts may be capable of ignore California’s guidelines, however massive nationwide companies like J.B. Hunt with its 12,000 vehicles and 100,000 trailers gained’t be capable of.

Is that this achievable? Nicely, with the Tesla Semi working 500 miles with 81,000 lb gross car weight, and CATL batteries out there this yr nearly doubling that, there’s little doubt that trucking companies can begin shopping for electrical automobiles from Tesla and different distributors this yr, and yearly exchange a couple of % of their fleets with battery electrical automobiles, and that by 2040, equal efficiency 1,200-mile vary Class 8 vehicles might be current and low cost. This isn’t even a stretch purpose.

Nonetheless, I did give Boyle one level, regardless that he vastly overstates it. That time is the present state of the US distribution grids for electrical energy the place semi vehicles might want to cost up. Delivering a MWh to a truck in half-hour and 5 MWh to 5 vehicles concurrently goes to be a problem within the hinterlands of the US. Nonetheless, between selecting targets of main interstate routes for electrical charging corridors first, beefing up the grids for these corridors, and clever use of more and more low cost batteries to buffer truck draw, this isn’t precisely a stretch goal both.

Will each podunk place an electrical semi has to ship to have adequate juice to cost it? No, in fact not. However these locations don’t have to have the ability to replenish massive rigs with diesel proper now both. Apps like Trucker Path will add megachargers to their diesel stations that may match semis subsequent to pumps. With 1,000 miles of vary a simple goal, it’s not like vehicles should refuel each time they make a supply.

It’s clear that the trucking business within the US is doing what many main sectors are doing, attempting to make local weather motion another person’s drawback. Nicely, at 7% of US CO2 emissions, they’re far too massive a wedge to go away till final. Fortunately, there’s an upside for them. As I identified lately when taking a look at US rail which is refusing to impress, one thing the remainder of the world is doing quickly, trucking will electrify, their working prices will plummet, and in the meantime rail might be pressured into increased priced biofuels and artificial fuels. Because of this, the bizarre overuse of vehicles for freight in comparison with rail within the US will simply improve. Electrification of trucking is a tremendous strategic benefit, however you’d by no means understand it listening to the American Trucking Affiliation.