Electric Delivery Vehicles

All this talk about the Tesla Semi brought up a question in my mind. Why did Musk  start with a Semi? If his goals are to achieve world domination in a brave new green world, why not start with the ubiquis delivery vehicle. Most delivery vans do not do a lot of miles in one day, live and work primarily in large cities and sizable towns, and rarely see highway use. It seems to me that Tesla could design out a fairly efficient van that could still be slippery enough to get a decent Cd, range, and carrying capacity. Again, the flat roof could carry solar cells to aid in range and recharging, but none-the-less, it would be a clean vehicle for in town delivery.

I know the E350 I drove stuggled to get into double digit MPGs, It needed a big V8 for it's load ability, but that translated into fuel wasted while sitting at stop lights and in traffic. Electric seems the perfect pairing moving bulky items in and around where people live, work, and play.. more so than the hyper-semi he is currently teasing us with

I'd guess because there already are some, like the Nissan eNV200, and brand names have no value in the delivery truck business. Neither do they in the semi truck business, but Tesla has no competition for electric semis yet.

I suspect the semiautonomous features are also much easier to implement on a highway semi truck than a in-town delivery vehicle.

Tesla is striving toward large bulk purchases from JBHunt or Walmart, etc 

A CDL driver is only allowed to work 14 hours a day while driving for only 11 hours. Even a small increase in the hours a truck could stay moving would show a large shift in products shipped and less time to get them transported. If they could get a tractor trailer to stay in motion for most of the 24 hours available in a day, that would be a great benefit to many companies.  Normal delivery drivers are not bound by federal regulations, so there's less to gain there. Then if you figure in truck drivers' salaries and the benefit to a company if you could reduce or remove those, that's another bonus right there.

1. Semis are way more visible target.
2. Easy way to run up autonomous driving miles.
3. Autonomous driving on highways a have much more series of predictable events than cities.

Its basically the low hanging fruit of the autonomous driving tech available/tested at this time while providing a data gathering platform to build on.

There are already a number of companies that will sell you an electric delivery truck. Until a few weeks ago it was generally believed that an electric highway truck was way off. If he’s confident that he can do it, and have a perfect environment to demonstrate autonomous tech, the electric semi is the way to go.  It’s also somewhat easier to have an unconventional design as a power unit because you don’t need to make a ladder chassis to mount a third party body.  As long as the fifth wheel and trailer connections are in the right place you can juggle everything else around.  

In reply to ncjay :I’m sorry but if you are driving commercially you need a commercial drivers license and then are bound by those regulation. Yes that included delivered very drivers in vans etc.  

I can't understand why more people aren't talking about this:

https://nikolamotor.com/one

I'm no engineer, but I think this is a much more sustainable path forward. I like the idea of electric drive, especially if the goal is efficiency, but I struggle to understand how battery technology is going to keep up. Not to mention the extra strain on the already overburdened power grid. I think onboard generation is the way to go, like diesel electric trains... The only trouble I see is fueling but that is an easier problem to solve than recycling giant li-ion batteries or thousands of small ones... From what I understand, waste batteries are already becoming a problem for Toyota from all their hybrids.

In reply to barefootskater :

A few reasons.Tesla has delivered actual products so there's more willingness to bet that they will produce their truck, The Nikola truck is a hybrid using hydrogen instead of diesel. If there's still an engine to fuel and run it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to use a less available fuel.  There are too many chances for things to go wrong and become expensive down time.  We occasionally have a CNG station go down and it turns into a nightmare to get everything fueled before morning.  Now imagine being out on the road and having the hydrogen station quit.  I agree that electric drive hybrids are a good solution for now but the tech for diesel is out there, We've been running them for years with a 5.9 Cummins easily charging a 40,000 lb bus and running the air hydraulic and hvac systems.  

Like this?

frenchyd said:

In reply to ncjay :I’m sorry but if you are driving commercially you need a commercial drivers license and then are bound by those regulation. Yes that included delivered very drivers in vans etc.  

 

Not true. As long as you are local and under 26,000 pounds without air brakes or a passenger endorsement, you do NOT need a CDL. This means that almost all the small box trucks and delivery vans you see are driven by people with an average automotive license

mad_machine said:

 

Not true. As long as you are local and under 26,000 pounds without air brakes or a passenger endorsement, you do NOT need a CDL. This means that almost all the small box trucks and delivery vans you see are driven by people with an average automotive license

Actually, you don't need to be local. Interstate commerce under 26,000 lbs doesn't require a CDL. 10,000-26,000 does require a DOT medical card and you do need to adhere to the hour of service regulations as well as vehicle inspection and maintenance. But no special license.

Meanwhile, battery-powered vehicles for local delivery are nothing new. Britons were using electric milk floats in large numbers half a century ago.

barefootskater said:

I can't understand why more people aren't talking about this:

https://nikolamotor.com/one

I'm no engineer, but I think this is a much more sustainable path forward. I like the idea of electric drive, especially if the goal is efficiency, but I struggle to understand how battery technology is going to keep up. Not to mention the extra strain on the already overburdened power grid. I think onboard generation is the way to go, like diesel electric trains... The only trouble I see is fueling but that is an easier problem to solve than recycling giant li-ion batteries or thousands of small ones... From what I understand, waste batteries are already becoming a problem for Toyota from all their hybrids.

Hydrogen fueling is a vastly harder problem to solve than battery recycling. It escapes through solids, embrittles steel on the way out, and of course can or explode at the right AFR.

Currently there are less than 80 hydrogen stations across the US, almost all in coastal states, vs. gas at every gas station and electricity in every structure. Upgrading the electrical grid will be easier than building and maintaining a hydrogen distribution system.

Battery recycling isn't difficult or new, and battery development will have no trouble keeping up. Look at the next generation of EVs using solid-state lithium batteries, like the Fisker eMotion and I'm pretty sure, the Tesla Roadster and semi. Hydrogen is far from clean right now - the hydrogen you can buy is practically a fossil fuel, it's all produced as an oil extraction byproduct, negating environmental benefits.