Fuck yeah it’s time. China is switching over to them. Australia can skim off the side of that.
China was using hydrogen buses back in 2019. But their infrastructure and population density is a different beast. Having said that, so is the topography
Personally I can’t wait for the delicious irony of using them to move fuel.
To run them over Australia-scale distances, you’d need to keep recharging them throughout the journey, otherwise most of the load will be the battery. Recharging takes time, so to be time-efficient, you’d want to do so in motion, by running catenary over the roads and equipping the trucks with pantographs like electric trains (there’s a highway in Germany with such an arrangement). At that stage, you may as well electrify the nation’s railways and rely on rail freight (rail can both go faster and run more efficiently, at the cost of needing to offload goods for the last mile), though much of Australia’s railways are still diesel (the electrified ones are mostly suburban).
The oil price shock (and the reality of climate change) should be motivating countries like Australia to electrify their railways. On any line with more than a handful of trains a day it’ll pay for itself. Though Australians seem to not be into long-term thinking, and can’t get past the immediate cost of thousands of kilometres of copper wire. I can imagine them short-terming themselves into shelling out for fleets of heavy Tesla trucks that will spend most of their time charging, because in the immediate term, it feels like the path of least resistance.
So the Western Australian Government last year didn’t renew the ~40 year contract for the States railways that were sold on lease to private interests 20 years or so ago, and have in large parts been leftvto rot. Another case of private ownership being an inefficient use of reaources, but thats besdies the point. So the WA Government have begun the 20 year process of transitioning the railways back into government ownership.
I’m not sure that they have a clear plan yet, but they obviously have some aspirations for getting a rail network for freight across the wheatbelt going again. So maybe they’re thinking what you’re thinking. But its an example of long term thinking in this area.
I’m a big fan of Janus, especially their diesel engines retrofit.
The battery swapping makes a lot of sense when the infrastructure is established, and I see a lot of potential with trailer mounted batteries, especially when they have powered axles which double as regenerative brakes.
No. The prices are insane.
Now all those folks that bought into the Ford F-150 Lightning are looking pretty chippy and smart, eh ?
The article is talking about real trucks, like freight hauling. Not pickups.
*Ute since we’re talking 'strayan.
I refuse to call those monstrosities utes. Utes have a car chassis.
The Lightning is the worst one you could buy. I say that as someone that put down a deposit on it when it was first announced. The Chevy Silverado is an actual electric work vehicle. I’d never buy Chevy though, US car brands are horrendous.
What’s wrong with the Lightning? I got one because it has the best frunk and it’s compatible with standard ladder racks, and it’s been working pretty well for me.
The Lightning is fine from an EV perspective, besides ford’s software, but fails at basic truck things. Their tow ratings never got close to their claimed distance, and against other trucks are so so terrible. If you aren’t putting weight in the bed of your truck, you do not need a truck.
So if you bought a Lightning and you aren’t having mileage issues then you should have gotten a Hyundai or Kia or Rivian, all of which have better software, better mileage, and aren’t at risk of being discontinued (which was clear was a possibility for ford when they first released the Lightning) because you clearly didn’t need a truck.
If you bought a ev truck because you didn’t want to own multiple vehicles and you needed to tow something every once in a while, well you still should have gotten something else, because EV SUVs can still tow.
I’m curious where you got the data that it tows worse than the other EV trucks, because its larger battery option is pretty big, only meaningfully overshadowed by extremely expensive trim levels of the CT and Silverado, from what I remember. Is there some way it doesn’t just boil down to battery size for long hauling? You pretty much get what you pay for when it comes to battery banks.
For my use-case, I don’t tow much, and when I do tow heavy, it’s across the farm or across town. The trailer I go places with only drags me down by 25% and I can still get three highway hours with it. I got my Lightning for carting lumber and tools around. I don’t put a lot of mileage on the hitch, but there’s always something in or over the bed.
The Rivian’s bed is too short to throw plywood in unstrapped. If they made a two-door option for it with a longer bed, it would have been ideal. The Lightning has just enough bed for that, pretty much down to the inch. The Silverado looked like a solid choice too, but it has those wings that interfere with overhead racks, and predatory software practices, so I passed on it. Then the CT needs a special rack and has no frunk space, plus it costs more and Elon is evil, so I passed on that too.
Except it’s still a wank yank tank. We’re (Australia) not that far behind you in this stupid arms race, sadly. More and more of these stupid pick up trucks are on our streets.
Fuck uncessarily big cars.
The only solution to traffic is viable alternatives to driving.
Sorry to be such a downer, but cities designed for massive personal vehicles should be called out at every opportunity.
All the folks who don’t need to drive and can take public transport are much more chippy. And it saves fuel for the vehicles that actually need to use it (for freight, emergency, disabled, farms etc)
It’s still inefficient and useless for work.
I’m a Yankee, but my lifetime cost analysis has been up and down since I got it. Gasoline went down, power went up, and it wasn’t looking good, but now gasoline is back up and it’s positive versus a similar normal F-150 again. But it’s been a better truck for my use-case the entire time, so I’ll have that anyway.
Yes, high oil prices will speed up the shift.
