re: TESLA unveils semi truck (500 mile max range, 0-60 in 5 secs, 400 miles in 30 mins charge)

You realize that legally they can log 700 miles a day, right?

I laugh every day at the people stuck at the tesla recharging station in a strip mall. Everyone else driving to work, while ur stuck sitting in the car waiting for the charge.

quote:

---

If you think a driver is going to pull over and spend a half hour to charge up, while on the clock, keeping him from maximizing his daily travel, you're crazy.

---

If you think the end game is to have a driver in that truck, YOU'RE crazy.

At 60 mph and an on-duty limit of 11 hour a day, a driver can legally move a load of cargo 660 miles a day.

If Tesla's truck can go 400 miles without a charge, at 60 mph it runs for about 6.5 hours before it needs a half hour charge, so that's 7 hours to go 400 miles. But it doesn't have a daily limit, so it keeps going. The driverless truck can move 24 hours a day and it can move the same load about 1350 miles in those 24 hours, so twice what the human driver can do. Even if the numbers are wildly optimistic and it can only move loads 25% farther, that's still a huge difference. The cherry on top is that there's no driver to pay.

Don't believe the Diesel Driving Academy commercial. The day is quickly approaching where "if you can drive a truck, you've got a job my friend" is a lie.

Ask Detroit, and more importantly the UAW, what happens when you fail to recognize how technology is going to streamline and revolutionize your industry and, more importantly, HOW SOON. Robotic long-haul trucks are coming. I'd put my money on I-10 being the first route, too. It connects all three coasts, hits many ports, and generally has favorable weather for the trucks to operate in during the early days as the technology begins to mature. Tesla builds an autonomous charging station every 300 miles or so and the trucks just pull off the interstate, onto the charging stand, and 30 minutes later, they're on their way again.

Even better, the charging stations would probably also serve as the transfer stations between the short-haul and the cross-country routes, so no more infrastructure other than the charging stations along major highways would be needed. When the autonomous truck would get to the closest charging station to where its load is heading, it could just drop the trailer off for handoff to the local trucker, charge itself, and move on to the next load.