Tesla semi-trucks

[Czar]

Obviously Tesla is the world leader in electric automobile technology. Today Tesla announced that PepsiCo had signed a contract for 100 of the Tesla Semi-trucks, to be delivered in three years. That time frame will also coincide nicely with Volvo's announcement that they will no longer make internal combustion engine cars by 2019. BTW, Tesla's stock rose 3% with the news. I see this snowball rolling downhill and gathering lots of momentum.

[Jesla]

If it rolls down that hill too far it will melt...Good luck with that.... Natural gas Baby....

[proxieken]

I am no sure the charging cycle will fit in to the usual work cycle on trucks. Some of those things are run almost continuously by just swapping drivers. If you have to stop and wait 8 hours to charge that will need to be factored in to the duty cycle. They will most likely have a battery changing station to quickly swap batteries and keep them running.

I am not too happy with the huge subsidies that Tesla has sucked out of the tax payers. At some point they need to stand on their own.

[dw5555]

Not sure how the trucks batteries are going to compare to the cars but Tesla's supercharging stations will do a complete charge in an hour on the cars. Tesla's goal was to put a charging station about 200 miles from each other so the cars could make the longer trips.

Dave

[DaveKennedy]

Trains should be doing this job...

[Czar]

[slothead]

Most of us love just about everything about cars, including the earthshaking rumble of internal combustion racing engines. Sometimes I go on Youtube just to listen to the raw sound of a Trans Am car, or more recently a Can Am McLaren. Gas and diesel engines aren't going away anytime soon, but new technologies have a place too, especially in urban areas. This is the sort of thing that's been on on the cover of Popular Science for decades, so it's about time.

Also, how vehicles recharge is another place where technology may change things - Inductive charging of electric vehicles at high power levels enables charging of electric vehicles while in motion (also known as dynamic charging). Wkipedia

[Czar]

When local race tracks close, it is often the noise complaints from neighbors (many of whom live more than a mile away from the track) that pushes the closure. I used to live about a mile away from a local race track that had a lot of history in the southern stock car scene. On race night (Friday) the walls of the house would sometimes shake due to the noise. When a luxury hotel was built on the grounds of the Biltmore Estate (also about a mile away, in the other direction) the Biltmore Company bought the track, closed it down and gave it to the city with one condition: never again would there be an automobile race on the track. There was one reason for the purchase and closure: NOISE. The track is now used for bicycle racing and general recreation. It has become a real asset to the park system of Asheville and is in use almost everyday. Noise is one of the biggest problems that race tracks face.

[DaveKennedy]

[FC47]

Right, square on the head of the sad nail Dave!

[Czar]

Again, it was Dwight Eisenhower who brought the idea of a national, high speed road system to the American public. He saw, as Allied Commender of Europe (during WW II) how the whole "efficient" rail system was crippled and devastated when one bomb took out a key bridge, or other part of railroad infrastructure. At the time (in the 1950's) the idea if an Interstate system was hailed as a brilliant step into the future. Of course Detroit was on board. Even if we could (and we can't) build more rail service there is still the problem of getting the product from the train terminal to the customers. Surely that is best handled by a vehicle that is sustainable and non-polluting, i.e. electric cars and trucks. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Elon Musk is developing electric trains also. Musk is a visionary. Have you heard of (or thought of) any realistic plans to implement more rail service?