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digestives | 3 years ago

Engineering Explained made a good breakdown and analysis video on the physics of the truck:

"Does The Tesla Semi Make Any Sense?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv44W7xa4IU

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yourapostasy|3 years ago

The TL;DR of that great video goes against Betteridge's Law: yes it makes sense ("no fatal flaw found"), with the known information at the time Jason made the video. The charging infrastructure is likely not trivial, though; in the comments it was pointed out the infrastructure likely makes heavy use of batteries to avoid stressing out local substations and avoid abusing grid peaking.

oxplot|3 years ago

> the infrastructure likely makes heavy use of batteries to avoid stressing out local substations and avoid abusing grid peaking

From Tesla's presentation, it looks like that.

sytelus|3 years ago

An important question for me was how do you defeat massive energy density of desal. This is a great video to answer that. TLDR; Semi will need at least 4 tons of batteries. But this works out because it is still probably around just 10% of weight of the fully loaded truck. It occurs to me that economy degrades if you have to haul big but less heavy loads. Cost wise you still make profit as long as truck is loaded and electricity remains cheap. Overall, this would be good solution for short haul heavy load.