It takes about 15 minutes to pump enough diesel into a truck for 1,200 miles of range, and between 6 and 10 hours to charge a battery for an electric truck to go about 200 miles, according to Dana Perino on Fox News’ “The 5”.
I’m not sure Perino, who served as President George W Bush’s press secretary for about a year and a half, knows much about electric trucks in Europe, but her remarks had the ring of truth to me after driving about 30 electric sedans and SUVs over 3 years.
Manufacturers blatantly overstate the battery capacity of their vehicles. For example, an Audi e-tron with a 95-kWh battery was supposed to offer 240 miles of range. After 5 refills from my home charger, it filled up to an average claim of 180 miles. And my data shows that once electric cars hit more than 60 mph, there’s a dramatic fall in their efficiency.
As Peter Wells, Professor of Business and Sustainability at Cardiff Business School said in an interview earlier this year.
“Range falls off a cliff at high speed. For an electric car, the extra energy required getting from 60 mph to 75 mph is astonishing and virtually doubles energy consumption to move all that air out of the way,” Wells said.
Electric cars need to have outstanding slipperiness through the air. Audi has spent extra money even designing wing mirrors to cut drag. Trucks might not often go as fast, but the huge bulk of the vehicle pushing through the air will hold back efficiency. Electric cars also detest pointing uphill, and batteries drain as they climb mountains, but admittedly win much of it back coming down the other side if they have well-designed regenerative braking.
My data doesn’t consider the penalty inflicted on range by extremes of hot or cold weather, the requirement to fill batteries to only 80% of their capacity because over-filling threatens longevity, or the need to make sure you never stay on the highway with less than 50 miles of range remaining.
Carrying 4 big passengers will also ruin range claims, so it would seem logical to suggest trucks with their massive batteries, huge loads and less than aerodynamic shape would represent impossible challenges.
Not so, said Alexander Krug, Partner and Head of Automotive and Manufacturing Practice at consultants Arthur D Little.
Asked to comment on the Perino remarks, Krug said electric trucks in Europe wouldn’t necessarily need a range of over about 1,000 kilometres (625 miles).
“The daily driving distance is limited by existing transport and driving rules and regulations, allowing for an average distance of 300–350km (187 miles to 219 miles) between stops. After 4.5 hours of driving time, a 45-minute break is obligatory.”
“Therefore, recharging for the next 4.5-hour trip on a 1MW charger takes approximately 45 minutes. E-charging is slower than filling up with gasoline, but it can be done at multiple locations along the trip and at the depot,” Krug said in an e-mail response to questions.
Krug has just co-authored an Arthur D Little report “Truck Electrification – Profit Booster Or White Elephant”.
The report finds that truck electrification will be a big boost for DC (direct current) charging manufacturers, even more than for cars and SUVs. The market for medium to long-distance trucks might be more of a challenge but shorter distances and lower payloads will boost the near-term and large-sale rollout of battery electric trucks.
The report said Traton Group, Volvo and Daimler all foresee at least 50% of new trucks being battery-electric by 2030. Volvo and Daimler are pursuing “dual-pronged” battery-electric and fuel cell technologies. Italy’s Iveco is primarily betting on natural gas technology.
Truck electrification will outpace the process for sedans and SUVs.
“By the end of 2022, only around 4,000 electric trucks were registered in the EU. This number is projected to grow more than twenty-fold until 2025, reaching almost 600,000 units by 2030. These numbers show the truck segment electrification hockey-stick is likely to be much steeper compared with passenger vehicle electrification,” the report said.
Growth will pose huge questions for the charging infrastructure.
“Until 2025, we will see almost exclusively short-haul electric trucks on the streets of Europe, whereas by 2030 these trucks are predicted to only constitute around 50% of the fleet, with the remaining half consisting of medium-haul (35%) and long-haul trucks (15%). The infrastructure that will be needed to fuel these trucks poses a big, important question,” the report said.
“Electric trucks will have significantly larger batteries than passenger cars and will require significantly higher charging power. The vast majority of these chargers will rely on DC technology and towards the end of the decade, truck charging will constitute a bigger market than passenger car charging in the European DC segment,” according to the report.
An “immense amount of energy” will be required.
“By 2030, electric trucks could require close to half of the energy needed by passenger vehicle counterparts (45 TWh versus 95 TWh) despite an expected fleet size of only around 1% of passenger vehicles comprising electric and plug-in hybrids,” the report said.
Won’t this all provide an impossible task for Europe’s electric grid?
“The grid would become an issue if all vehicles were charged at once and completely uncontrolled. But that will not be the case. Most European countries are requesting intelligent charging devices for home and destination charging so they can control charging speed and duration during peak times,” Krug said answering e-mail questions.
“Future charging schemes will also be monetarily incentivized to encourage charging during off-peak times. The challenge will be in supplying fast public chargers for trucks. Therefore, a grid upgrade or new dedicated charging grids will be essential,” Krug said.
Won’t these trucks demand monster batteries that will be hideously expensive?
The battery for a truck with range of about 190 miles would be about 550 to 650 kWh. That’s not as large as some had expected, he said.
Does the regenerative braking concept provide a disproportionate boost to these monsters?
“Yes, regenerative braking is a key technology for range increase and efficiency.”
Won’t fuel cells be a better bet for long-distance trucking?
“No, we don’t believe so. Generation of hydrogen/fuel cell technology is three times less efficient than battery electric vehicles, due to energy losses during conversion into hydrogen and back.”
“In addition, building up hydrogen infrastructure will be much more complex and costly – plus, there will be not enough green hydrogen available for all possible applications, and stationary applications will have a much bigger effect on the CO2 footprint as that of trucks, such as aluminum and steel production and chemicals,” Krug said.
This electric truck agenda seems almost utopian in its scope. The electric revolution for cars also imagines colossal changes, with shortages of key minerals and electricity said by some to pose impossible challenges. The combination of car and truck demand suggests this is inevitable.
A Chalmers University of Technology of Gothenburg, Sweden report said booming electric cars require a big increase in the use of critical metals for components like electric motors and electronics.
“Electrification and digitalization are leading to a steady increase in the need for critical metals in the EU’s vehicle fleet. Moreover, only a small proportion of the metals are currently recycled from end-of-life vehicles. The metals that are highly sought after, such as dysprosium, neodymium, manganese and niobium, are of great economic importance to the EU, while their supply is limited and it takes time to scale up raw material production,” the report compiled for the EU said.
“The EU is heavily dependent on imports of these metals because extraction is concentrated in a few countries such as China, South Africa and Brazil. The lack of availability is both an economic and an environmental problem for the EU, and risks delaying the transition to electric cars and environmentally sustainable technologies,” the report said.
