The Electric Bluebird Wanderlodge

This has crossed my mind several times lately.  I have an FC35.  I love it.  I drive a few hundred miles to a racetrack and plug into a 50 or 30 amp service.  I spend a few days there and then motor back home again.

I have 35 feet of potential cargo bay battery storage.  The thing already weighs 30,000 pounds so.....

Could this be a thing?  I've been waiting for the first crashed Tesla tractor trailer to come on the market.  Is there a viable way to move this much metal through the air with enough battery space?  Has anybody thought about this on this scale?  This is a thought that has a 99.9999% chance of going nowhere, but...

LG is replacing 770 kWh of Lithium batteries at the off the grid poultry farm we put together a few years ago under warranty. That's enough to run the farms and keep 130,000 laying hens happy for roughly 12 hours depending on the time of the year and demand before we need solar or a generator to kick in. I bet it would push your old motor coach pretty far down the road and would fit (the 7 racks take up about 8 ft of a sea can from floor to ceiling with room to walk and service in between. 50A continuous at 120V or 240V would take roughly 70 hours to recharge from empty  if you weren't drawing anything off of them. 

Now all you have to do is intercept the truck dragging the old ones away in some sort of original Fast and  the Furious type heist and then come up with a suitable inverter that can handle the sort of power you would need to move that thing along with a motor (or two? or four?). EPC Power out of California is who made the inverters for our project (and they are pretty impressive) and could probably help you out with something like this based on some things they have worked on in the past.

I think if you budget a million bucks you could have a pretty sweet electric bus without the high stakes heist to get the recalled batteries 

Y'all aint alone. Moby's max gross weight is 30k, 22k empty.  The engine is almost 2000 lb, the trans is around 700, the fuel tank is Ginormous and weighs at least half a ton when full. Seems not unreasonable to think 2, maybe 3 or so tons of battery and elec motor that puts out more hp and tq than is currently there could be installed and have sufficient range for the task.... but um you first ;)

The pricetag on that much lithium ion.. man I don't eeeeven wanna think about it.

jh36 said:

Could this be a thing?  I've been waiting for the first crashed Tesla tractor triler to come on the market.  

Why wait for Tesla? Philadelphia has 25 electric buses sitting in storage because the chassis's have cracked. Maybe you can score one of those for cheap? Probably not, but you never know.

Link to news story

The short answer is that the tech to do what you want isn't available.  You may have noticed there are basically zero Tesla semis in service. The electric bus program I'm involved in has been far more successful than the one in the Philly article but even with the super-expensive batteries and drivetrain they won't cover a few hundred miles on a charge.  Hybrid systems are available but would be more difficult to package in an existing coach and are also better suited to stop and go traffic.  You are still a few years away from an affordable, fully electric over the road conversion.  

There have been several Smith Electric Trucks come up on GovDeals that sold for amazing prices. Logistics of dealing with 2 or 3 box trucks was what kept me from buying them. But they have LiFe batteries and big electric motors. Controllers, chargers, etc. I think are all off the shelf stuff. Batteries are housed in fiberglass boxes that hang below the box like a gas tank. Buy a few of the trucks and use the batteries from all of them and there you go!

It was a bummer to pass on them. A local one even went for like $1800-$2000. But I live in a nice area where a derelict box truck would probably trigger a phone call in nothing flat. I even looked at renting space but it's all too expensive or sketchy. 

There's a reason that there are no Tesla semis being sold. It was somewhat shocking when Musk recently claimed the semis were only around 500kwh of capacity. Based on their current offerings, most were expecting closer to 1000kwh needed for their range claims. If Musk is being truthful, that indicates they're not using current battery tech. Doing this with current battery tech requires insane amounts of batteries, so they're banking on newer (lighter) battery tech to become more mature before they make financial sense and actually become available.

A Tesla Model 3 long range has an 82kwh battery that weighs basically 1000lbs for reference. Ballpark 10 times that to go around 400-500 miles in a heavy brick towing another heavy brick. Range drops in cold temps. Range drops if you want heat or AC. Range drops if you're going uphill. Combine any of those things and the drop in range is compounded.

Most of the commercial truck/equipment makers offer some sort of EV power train these days so their bases will be covered for sales in situations where customers may want EVs right now, or for locations where ICEs may be banned in the mid term future. But most of these corporations are avoiding tons of additional battery development work, and instead focusing a lot of energy and money on hydrogen fuel cell development because batteries struggle so much with duty cycles like this.

You would likely need a secondary series-hybrid system like an attached small diesel as a generator to get what you're looking for. Wind resistance alone kills range terribly.

There's vehicles that used LeTourneau wheels, whom powered them via a diesel engine as a generator that exceeded over 60 tons.

OR POWER IT BY WIND! Huge sail!

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

Well, it would seem that technology is not quite where I need it to be today for immediate action. But I wouldn't be jumping on this tomorrow anyway. I'm going to leave this seed planted.  In a few years, I plan to dust it off. Solar panels on the roof, batteries in the bins, five year wiser me might be quietly rolling down the road. 

I have nothing to add to the discussion, but I will be interested to see if you're able to come up with options.   
Also, "The Electric Bluebird Wanderlodge" would make a fantastic band name. 

In reply to eastpark :

Well there you go. My generic band name I've used for the past decade is "Rocky Mountain Stoneflies". Perhaps it is time for a change. Hyperfest 2022. Be there. 

The technology is certainly getting there. 

https://www.kamloopsbcnow.com/watercooler/money/news/Business/Electric_bus_to_set_world_record_on_Kamloops_to_Vancouver_trek/

This bus has done the trip between Vancouver and Kamloops with passengers several times now. And for those who have never done the Coquihalla highway, it is 6 to 8 per cent grades over two mountain ranges. It is a real slog in a commercial truck or an older RV.

In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :

I was hoping you would find this thread. Your project weirdly helped launch this thought. 

Personally I feel like the best implementation of battery powered vehicles is in vocational trucking.

Cement mixers, dump trucks, local delivery trucks, school buses, etc. Even contractors in pickups and vans once they get over the range anxiety. Vehicles that need 100-200 miles of range in a day and return to the same place each night. That will make it easier for them to have their own charging infrastructure and eliminate them having to use a public charger in a parking lot somewhere.

As STM317 stated above, the battery packs required to move a 80,000 lb truck for any distance are going to be huge and heavy. This cuts into payload which skews the economics of the whole operation. And having a driver sit for long recharges isn't going to pencil out wage-wise. 

I see long haul trucking going with hydrogen. The trucks will be lighter and the fueling infrastructure can be strategically placed at truck stops along the interstates. 

Just my opinions. 
 

One way to use battery powered vehicles in long range trucking might be to swap the "truck" portion at truck stops. I mean trucking isn't about trucks it's about the cargo.

A trucker could pull into a truck stop, drop the trailer and get into another cab/chassis, hook up the trailer and continue on. The truck left behind goes on a charger for the next guy. Might be easier than a battery swap operation.

They might even be able to figure out the logistics of not only swapping trucks but swapping drivers so the original driver would haul a different load back to his original starting point. Being home every night might make it easier to attract drivers to the profession.

What do you think?

In reply to jh36 :

I am not sure I should be an inspiration for sensible projects, but when you sign up on GRM I think there is a box you tick by which you promise to enable anyone and everyone and never to provide sober second thought. 

In reply to 67LS1 :

My dad says in London when he was a kid you could take your electric car into a service station and they would swap out your depleted batteries for fresh ones while you waited. 

In reply to 67LS1 :

And call it the Pony Express. I like it. 

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to jh36 :

I am not sure I should be an inspiration for sensible projects, but when you sign up on GRM I think there is a box you tick by which you promise to enable anyone and everyone and never to provide sober second thought. 

The further along in life I get, the more I want attempt things that haven't been done, and probably shouldn't be done. Which is why GRM is my digital sanctuary. 

After readin' up on that electric bus, spect the answer here is to buy one from MCI and then send it to Marathon for RV conversion. Coming up with 2 to 4 mil gonna be eadier than DIY...  Come onnnn powerball!

https://cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php/Motor_Coach_Industries_J4500e

67LS1 said: hydrogen

If you have access to a h2 station, you can get a Ballard or Plug fc today and get rolling. Range is only limited by tank size. 

In reply to Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) :

I just spent an hour researching hydrogen and where it is in the implementation timeline with commercial trucking. That's intriguing. 

dculberson said:

There have been several Smith Electric Trucks come up on GovDeals that sold for amazing prices. Logistics of dealing with 2 or 3 box trucks was what kept me from buying them. But they have LiFe batteries and big electric motors. Controllers, chargers, etc. I think are all off the shelf stuff. Batteries are housed in fiberglass boxes that hang below the box like a gas tank. Buy a few of the trucks and use the batteries from all of them and there you go!

It was a bummer to pass on them. A local one even went for like $1800-$2000. But I live in a nice area where a derelict box truck would probably trigger a phone call in nothing flat. I even looked at renting space but it's all too expensive or sketchy. 

I came here to post the same thing. A few smith trucks would get you off to a good start. Any of the govt surplus failed bus fleets would work as well. They weren't quite ready for normal fleet use, but a dedicated individual owner could make something work.

IF The government locator map is right, my nearest station is in Canada. I'm in Maryland. But if Toyota, Volvo, Hundai etc are seriously developing Commercial Powertrains,perhaps Pilot or some such fueling chain will see an opportunity within a decade or so. 
If so, maybe the thread changes to Hydrobird or Hydrolodge. We could do a Kickstarter and begin a GRM-centric biz dev group and convert fleets of old birds into hydrogen race support vehicles. 
We could. 

RV's are a booming business, and when you read through any of the general and site specific forums the most popular topics are probably horsepower and MPG's. And coupled with the fact that most people do not travel much farther than the local lake, I expect this a segment that is ripe for electrification.