alt Hacker News> Class 8 trucks
Half of the "heavy duty vehicles" (which I believe is roughly similar to the classification you are using) sold in China in December were electric. Between rapidly improving batteries and maturing technology for swapping batteries as a refuelling strategy electrification of trucks is the obvious and inevitable future. They are simply cheaper to operate.
Replies
Good for the Chinese. The rest of us do not have the upfront capital to purchase these trucks. And there is still the matter of fertilizer, concrete, bulk chemicals etc. And solar panels. There is a very good reason why solar psnel factories (like JinkoSolar run off coal or hydro and not solar power.
>They are simply cheaper to operate.
We don't know that. Beijing might have been investing in them as insurance against its not being able to get enough diesel fuel to run an all-diesel fleet of trucks, so countries that are self-sufficient in oil shouldn't just blindly imitate Beijing's move.
> maturing technology for swapping batteries as a refuelling strategy
This seems like a non-problem to begin with. There are electric semis with a 500 mile range, which at 60 MPH is over 8 hours of driving, i.e. the legal maximum in most places. The same trucks can also add 300 miles of range in 30 minutes, which adds five hours of driving in the time it takes for a typical lunch break. Why do you even need to swap the batteries?