• Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
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      19 days ago

      Yes, this is how the biggest of them looked at the time, competing between electric, diesel, gasoline, wood, and coal power (all by far exceeding horses even in poor countries where the scale justified the purchase of such a “logistic device”, ie where there was more to transport than a few horses could manege).

      I’m just saying that the electric option was killed (and actively kept dead!) by some very market manipulative means, not by product capability or market intrinsic needs.

      I mean, look at OPs link - nothing in that achievement is really “new”, batteries of 10 years ago would just be much heavier, but not prohibitivel so, just less efficient. The charging infrastructure is what is new. And that tech is also not “new”, we just “fought against it” bcs of reasons.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        Oh, gotcha. Yeah, that documentary on this topic was good: Who Killed The Electric Car.

        tbf, my dad was right to question how feasible battery life would be when hauling tons like is the norm today. But going as far as “impossible” I thought was silly and would undoubtedly turn out to be wrong.

        • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
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          19 days ago

          Well, it wasn’t feasible for internal combustion trucks either, it took decades of very gradual r&d to get to this point. Imagine trucks in the 80s, they could barely move, much less stop.

          120 … or at least let’s say 70 years of quick charging tech development (especially fueled by such a massive industry) would surely mean no issues with power by now.

          Big electric trucks are actually easier to develop on a grand scale if we (eg via gov policies over a decade) decided so compared to adopting electric cars (individual use, less frequent stops at fueling/charging stations, spontaneous use, etc - it should be electric cars benefiting from electric truck tech, not the other way around.)
          The environmental consequences are also at the very least comparable to fossil fuel powered ones but without the greenhouse gases (which are a very important aspect of it all).

          Also for heavy loads (:)) you can config electric motors to give way more torque compared to diesel, so scaling up trucks would be easier over the years (we were constantly hearing about engine developments & optimisations each gen, but you don’t hear anything about research into electric motors for road use … bcs it has been just about logistic & mass production, the actual tech needed very little advancement, controllers mostly I would say).
          Fuel efficiency of engines is part of that story tho (in the sense that more efficient batteries per weight do affect the overall hauling capacity of a truck, but with freight trucks I think we could have reached today’s standard quicker if trucks would have gone the electric way).

          Still, environmentally speaking, it all pales in compassion to rail tho (or any combo of putting road trucks in trains for at least the main part of the journey).