Tesla Cybertruck: The Future?

[luthj]

Anything more than 2x the current densities is not on the horizon for current lithium ion batteries. Lithium air batteries could easily do 1000w-hr/kg, but I haven't seen anything consumer ready at all. A few proof of concept lithium air batteries have demonstrated energy densities over 1400watt-hours per kg. At that density a model S could get 300 miles from 60kg of battery.

 

[dreadlocks]

if you have the density to have more range than your willing to drive in a day, then you have time you sleep to recharge it.. after having 700m+ range diesel car its pretty easy to go a full day on the road w/out worrying about refilling at all.. if you double the existing range of the Tesla truck to 1k miles, who cares if you cant recharge it in 2min.. you really gonna drive it >16h a day enough its still off the table?

 

[luthj]

Well I am thinking beyond cars. I am thinking Semi trucks, airplanes, etc. But a fast charging 300 mile pack is lighter and smaller, and probably cheaper to make. Which means it would be cheaper to own and drive. So the ideal situation is not needing a 1000 mile pack, but just a 150lb superpack.

 

[Deleted member 9101]

Since when is a 30ft 9-10klb camper a lightweight trailer? None of the F150's of the world could pull those.

Hahahahaha...you are kidding right? There is absolutely no shortage of guys towing trailers than heavy or long with an F150...myself included.

 

[luthj]

Now, should they? That's another question.

 

[shade]

Let's start by being quite absolutely clear that there is no existing range of the Tesla truck, this is a marketing stunt from a man with an inarguable history of conducting bogus marketing stunts and outright lies. If one day the Tesla car company produces a vehicle based around this marketing stunt it will bear as much resemblance to the concept as clothes in Kohls resemble fashion show concepts. We can't talk about the existing range of the Tesla truck because there is no existing Tesla truck and the guy could say literally any number he wants when talking about what it might someday do.

The reason fueling time matters is because the behavior of actual people in the real world differs slightly from what you might ask an idealized servant to do and when you scale numbers up small differences can turn scary really fast.

Take for example supply chains like Ford's F-series - they sold a million of those last year which means that if some failure to deliver a part cost them eight hours they would have a production back-up of 1000 vehicles which means all the parts suppliers delivering all the other parts toward the assembly lines would need to find a place to store 1000 vehicles worth of that part, all the way back up the supply chain.

So if you look at the supply chain of the I-70 highway across the Rockies they get approximately 22000 vehicles per day headed up the hill (that's just based on cutting the reported average of 44k in half) and if we make 10% of those electric (isn't the goal here 100% though?) and we say that 90% of everyone arriving there somehow managed to have plenty of battery capacity to go up the hill and regen all the way back down to Denver (and all of them have the discipline to not "top up" before the climb) ... so only 10% need to fill up in Grand Junction that's still 220 vehicles per day that need a fill up, which - if they're kind enough to arrive at evenly spaced intervals around the clock is still 9 vehicles per hour that need a pretty significant charge. Can they get their ~500kWh charge in an hour by delivering 500kW (!) to 9 vehicles at a time, around the clock? That's 4.5 megaWatts even if we generously forget that thermodynamics takes its share. Or if we can't deliver 500kW per vehicle because that's some "one point twenty one jiggawatts!!!" madness then the vehicles are going to stack up... and since they don't stop coming they're going to stack up a lot. A lot a lot. How many of them are going to get stuck in the traffic jam with their heat or a/c running and use up all their battery and also need an unplanned charge? Then what do we go send a whole bunch of very-diesel-powered earthworks machines to dig up half of Colorado clearing wilderness habitats to make solar farms and refine millions of miles of steel and copper to make high tension poles and cables to deliver all this power? Is that how you save the environment?

As before, I'm not opposed to electric vehicles in principle. I'm prone to do a little napkin math now and then to determine how far outside the ballpark something is.

Setting aside your MuskLove, what is it you're proposing with regard to the adoption of EVs?

 

[Boatbuilder79]

What We need is pu238 batteries like satelites have for overlanding.

 

[shade]

What We need is pu238 batteries like satelites have for overlanding.

lol - Thanks, but I'll wait for chemical batteries to get the job done.

I'm ok with nuclear fission, though. Reactor designs from this century seem worth more consideration than they're usually given.

 

[Deleted member 9101]

 

[F350joe]

If storage density is improved there is still the matter of delivery; both in terms of rural availability and rate of charge. At 33kWh/gallon i fill my 850kWh tank in two minutes flat, at a busy gas station with six dispensers that's somewhere in the vicinity of 150 megaWatts equivalent.

ICE is not synonymous with fossil fuels and an ICE running on biofuel is a solar powered engine. Every existing ICE on earth could be retroactively made into a solar powered vehicle for a fraction of the cost of replacing them all with whole new electrics and the infrastructure to deliver that solar energy is already in place. That is if we actually care about environmental considerations from a practical position and this isn't all just a conspicuous consumption exercise.

You make a great point. I wonder if that is indeed a lower hanging fruit and easier to pull of than rebuilding the grid and redesigning vehicles. Electric motor are better for a lot of reasons but maybe not when you consider the infrastructure that is already in place.

 

[shade]

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

 

[Boatbuilder79]

As a civil engineer I look forward to the opportunities to be provided by fixing up The infastructure.

 

[luthj]

Investing in infrastructure is against the current longstanding political climate. But when corporations can't get the cheap solar they want, and start leaning on their minion..., I mean congresscritters, it will happen. They didn't wait for the interestate system to build cars capable of long hauls for example.

 

[F350joe]

F450 Vs Cyberthing

 

[shade]

Setting aside your MuskLove, what is it you're proposing with regard to the adoption of EVs?

I didn't suggest we can't do it, I didn't suggest it wouldn't be profitable for some individuals. Global warming is good in the short term for arctic countries like Russia, too.

I suggested that reworking our national infrastructure around a "green" technology may have the unintended consequence of entirely cancelling out any "green" benefit we may hope to realize. Zero tailpipe emissions isn't zero impact.

But if we focused instead on renewable fuel technology there's nothing sexy about selling you your own car that has already been manufactured and that you've already paid for, you can't introduce it with pyrotechnics and dancing girls and say "Hey consumers! Here's your same car but now the liquid you put in it is renewable and carbon neutral! Introducing the CYBER-NEW-SET-OF-FUEL-INJECTORS-AND-A-LITTLE-COMPUTER-BOX! You won't be able to flaunt it in front of the poors because it's all hidden under the hood and besides they could afford it too! " so, since what we really care about is flashy toys and empty virtue signaling I guess this cybertruck is the future. Not a particularly good one but we are the same species that still hasn't fixed Flint's water. Speaking of that it's coincidentally another promise Musk made and didn't deliver on.. well finally last month he provided UV filters to 12 schools which might be coming on line by the beginning of the new year.. but UV doesn't filter out chemical contaminants so they don't address the problem that actually exists. Hey there's a trend here!)

So no chance of setting aside the usual drivel about Musk. Oh well.

Maybe I missed it, but has anyone in this thread said that other sources of renewable energy shouldn't be pursued? Has anyone claimed that simply using an EV makes it a "zero impact" option?

How far is the U.S. from having "renewable fuel technology" in place for widespread retrofitting and adoption?

Why are you so quick to dump all of that virtue signaling baggage onto prospective EV owners? Maybe they just want a vehicle that works better for them than an ICE powered vehicle, and an EV fits that requirement. No need to look down on anyone. One of Tesla's goals has been to make their EVs more affordable (which they've done). That runs counter to what you've said, doesn't it?

I see the need to improve electrical grids for more EVs as a good thing. A modern power system is a flexible asset that would seem to have more benefits than widespread adoption of "CYBER-NEW-SET-OF-FUEL-INJECTORS-AND-A-LITTLE-COMPUTER-BOX".