alt Hacker NewsBut that's the thing: you already have to pay a driver to sit around!
In Europe there's (simplified) a mandatory 45-minute rest break after 4.5 hours of driving. Similarly, there's a mandatory 11-hour rest period after the daily maximum of 10 hours of driving. And it is very strictly enforced, with every commercial truck having been equipped with a sealed and certified data logger, plenty of random checks by traffic police, and heavy fines for any kind of violation.
If the truck is already sitting idle ~half of the time due to driver rest requirements, why not take that opportunity to charge it as well? Similarly, if you are building the usual highway-side rest stop with truck parking, a petrol station, and a restaurant, why not add a charging station as well? It can even do double-duty as rapid car charger!
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At least from the truckers I watch on YouTube from Germany, there is already a shortage of rest stops for trucks. Sometimes you can see them even in the entrance of the rest stops, parked in a dangerous spot. If they all have to charge, then that becomes a problem, because they can’t find a space even „creatively“.
Not saying that electric trucks are bad, just one more problem to solve
In the US, truckers outside of truck stop have very few places to park. Truck stops and rest areas are already crowded st night. Trucks often have to park illegally on shoulders and offramps, because a lot of times they don't have the hours to make it to a destination. If we don't even have parking infrastructure for trucks how are we going to build enough charging for all of them. You gotta park before you can charge.
I think many long-haul truckers work in pairs for this reason?
Not all trucking is the super trucker pissing in a jug OTR stuff you see on youtube (those are the guys with the most down time to make youtube content though). There's god knows how many LTL and reefer fleets doing local delivery and mostly home at night that could benefit from something like this.
That said I don't the cost is low enough for them yet.
In Europe (at least in Germany) we already have a lack of truck parking spots along many routes. And that's with parking spots that are just a bit of Asphalt and maybe a portapotty, or big asphalt parking lots attached to a rest stop
If we had enough chargers that any trucker could pull into a truck stop at their prescribed rest period and find a free charger, electrifying trucks would indeed be a no-brainer. But in the world we currently live in we don't have enough chargers to make that reliable. We barely have enough non-electified parking spots, and in your world they would all have to be electrified as well. It's a mix of a chicken-and-egg problem on the commercial side and a lack of will on the government side
But there is never a lack of will from the government to try all kinds of pilot programs that look cool but are mostly caused by the need to somehow sidestep the lack of sufficient charging infrastructure