Electric truck

[Witness]

Just so Rob can bitch some more…

Designed by the former Chief Designer of Isuzu’s commercial truck division, Steve Jennes, now Chief Designer of Nikola Motors, the 'Nikola One' has received over two billion dollars in early pre-orders as one of the most advanced electric trucks on the market.

It's a long-range vehicle with a methane range extender and a 320 kw battery pack, getting up to 1,200 miles on a full charge (with the range extender).
[…]
The truck boasts:

6X6 100% Electric drive
Zero idle
Many times cleaner than diesel engines
1/2 the fuel cost per mile compared to diesel
3,700 FT. LBS Torque
2,000 Horsepower
1,200 Miles range
320 kWh Battery
1 million miles fuel free
Regenerative braking
Never plug-in – Turbine charges batteries automatically while driving

http://www.thinkerspost.com/2016/11/nikola-motor-receives-over-23-billion.html

[Rob Lister]

did i bitch?

[Anaxagoras]

I don't understand the "never plug in" bit.

[Anaxagoras]

How far does a typical truck drive in a day? 10 hours x 60 mph average would be 600 miles.

[Rob Lister]

I don't understand the "never plug in" bit.

all the articles on it are a mess, because the original press release from the maker is also a mess. Best I can figure is that it is a CNG hybrid. All electric drive can still be true but is somewhat misleading. The 'fuel free' part is bogus unless we define CNG as ponies.

[ceptimus]

The 'turbine charges batteries while driving' part seems a bit dodgy. If they mean a gas turbine, then at the sorts of power output required by a truck (maybe 200kW average load) any existing turbines are much less efficient than a comparable diesel engine.

For a pure battery vehicle, trucks are unsuited for current battery technology as trucks tend to run long distances with fairly constant reasonably high power loads and the energy density of available batteries is too low.

Local delivery vehicles are a different matter: we used to have electric milk floats running off lead acid or nickel ferrous batteries sixty plus years ago. Trucks or vans just doing local deliveries could be good candidates for battery power.

[Witness]

Yep, lots of ponies: 2000 hp, 1 million miles fuel free…

[sparks]

A 320 kWh battery, even assuming some very pony-like variant, could at best provide 2000 hp for about 12 minutes, assuming it didn't explode by putting that kind of load on it.

Very Mildred-esque indeed.

[Anaxagoras]

A 320 kWh battery, even assuming some very pony-like variant, could at best provide 2000 hp for about 12 minutes, assuming it didn't explode by putting that kind of load on it.

Very Mildred-esque indeed.

So the "methane range extender" is actually the primary power source?

It's more a hybrid, isn't it? Except fueled by natural gas rather than diesel or gasoline.

[sparks]

Hard to tell from the info, but it sure seems that way to me.

[Anaxagoras]

Someone should take a closer look at this to figure out where the marketing and hype ends and what this actually means compared to other trucks on the market.

I mean, first of all: "Nikola Motors" What a blatant copycat of Tesla Motors.
I'm sure they use the term "electric" rather than hybrid or alternative fuel as a marketing decision. They want people to think of Tesla for trucks.

[sparks]

Being an avid sailor, I can only add that a 320 kWh battery, when being used to provide that kind of horsepower (even giving them the benefit of the doubt re internal combustion vs electric efficiency) simply doesn't make sense.

In order to motor for ... say ... a couple of hours on electric power, a 30 to 40 foot sailboat needs an 18 kW electric drive. You'll need at least 36 kWh of battery capacity to do that. And as you know, 18 kw is the same as a 24 horsepower at the prop shaft. And to do that, what you'd really need in terms of an infernal combustion engine would be more like 40 or 50 horsepower. That's just how much gets lost in all the inefficiencies with infernal combustion and a transmission and the fact that infernal combustion efficiency is wildly (badly) dependent on rpm. Add to that that propeller efficiency can only be maximized at one point when you know it's connected to an infernal combustion engine. In short: It's a clusterfuck of trade-offs and compromises that end in a very shitty system.

Having said all that, 2000 horsepower from a 320 kWh battery ... alone ... just doesn't add up. Like I said, that might work for about 12 minutes, provided the battery didn't melt. But let's say they really meant the 'equivalent' of 2000 horsepower of infernal combustion compared with the much more efficient electric drive. In that case, 2000 horsepower of infernal combustion translates into a 600 horsepower electric drive. That's still 450 kW and so the 320 kWh battery will move that beast for not more than one hour before it's toast. Regenerative braking will help, but not to the extent they claim.

Same thing is true on a sailboat: If you 'crack' the throttle just a smidge while under sail, the forward motion of the boat caused by wind power will force the prop shaft to turn faster than it would just because the throttle is 'open' in which case the motor becomes a generator and puts a charge back into the battery. I've never seen this done with my own eyes and am therefore skeptical. But, in theory, it works. How quickly can one recharge a battery this way? I have no clue. Not very damned fast is my guess. Like regenerative braking, it's a great idea. But I expect it doesn't really work all that well at recovering energy.

I bleeve they're trying to sell a hybrid here and the idjits who wrote the hype are ... Trump-esque ... in nature.

[Rob Lister]

Someone should take a closer look at this to figure out where the marketing and hype ends and what this actually means compared to other trucks on the market.

I mean, first of all: "Nikola Motors" What a blatant copycat of Tesla Motors.
I'm sure they use the term "electric" rather than hybrid or alternative fuel as a marketing decision. They want people to think of Tesla for trucks.

From their site
https://nikolamotor.com/
It appears they are in the business of taking pre-orders. They've never actually made anything other than pony content for shallow tech and environmental sites.

Doing the math, I get
150 MJ/gal = actual energy in diesel (google)
.5 = Max theoretical efficiency of a diesel engine
75 MJ/gal = energy used over that actual mile (150 x .5)
7 = mpg for a typical fully loaded semi (google)
11 MJ/mi = energy used over a typical mile (75/7)
3.6 MJ/kwh = joules to kwh conversion (google)
3 kwh/mi = kwh required to move the truck one typical mile (11/3.6)

350 kwh = energy in the fully charged aforementioned battery.
.85 = rough efficiency of a battery and all electric drive
300 kwh = useful energy in same said batter (350 x .85)

100 miles to a charge. (300/3 )

So, one and a half hours of highway driving.


yor welcome

[Abdul Alhazred]

One of those yes but not just yet things.

[Anaxagoras]

Someone should take a closer look at this to figure out where the marketing and hype ends and what this actually means compared to other trucks on the market.

I mean, first of all: "Nikola Motors" What a blatant copycat of Tesla Motors.
I'm sure they use the term "electric" rather than hybrid or alternative fuel as a marketing decision. They want people to think of Tesla for trucks.

From their site
https://nikolamotor.com/
It appears they are in the business of taking pre-orders. They've never actually made anything other than pony content for shallow tech and environmental sites.

Doing the math, I get
150 MJ/gal = actual energy in diesel (google)
.5 = Max theoretical efficiency of a diesel engine
75 MJ/gal = energy used over that actual mile (150 x .5)
7 = mpg for a typical fully loaded semi (google)
11 MJ/mi = energy used over a typical mile (75/7)
3.6 MJ/kwh = joules to kwh conversion (google)
3 kwh/mi = kwh required to move the truck one typical mile (11/3.6)

350 kwh = energy in the fully charged aforementioned battery.
.85 = rough efficiency of a battery and all electric drive
300 kwh = useful energy in same said batter (350 x .85)

100 miles to a charge. (300/3 )

So, one and a half hours of highway driving.


yor welcome

So, not an outright scam, just overhyped?

[Rob Lister]

Someone should take a closer look at this to figure out where the marketing and hype ends and what this actually means compared to other trucks on the market.

I mean, first of all: "Nikola Motors" What a blatant copycat of Tesla Motors.
I'm sure they use the term "electric" rather than hybrid or alternative fuel as a marketing decision. They want people to think of Tesla for trucks.

From their site
https://nikolamotor.com/
It appears they are in the business of taking pre-orders. They've never actually made anything other than pony content for shallow tech and environmental sites.

Doing the math, I get
150 MJ/gal = actual energy in diesel (google)
.5 = Max theoretical efficiency of a diesel engine
75 MJ/gal = energy used over that actual mile (150 x .5)
7 = mpg for a typical fully loaded semi (google)
11 MJ/mi = energy used over a typical mile (75/7)
3.6 MJ/kwh = joules to kwh conversion (google)
3 kwh/mi = kwh required to move the truck one typical mile (11/3.6)

350 kwh = energy in the fully charged aforementioned battery.
.85 = rough efficiency of a battery and all electric drive
300 kwh = useful energy in same said batter (350 x .85)

100 miles to a charge. (300/3 )

So, one and a half hours of highway driving.


yor welcome

So, not an outright scam, just overhyped?

I can't say it is not an outright scam. They don't have a product yet. But they are taking money for "pre orders". More likely scam than not IMO.

p.s. google nikola motor company scam and see what others think
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/30/ni ... ll-trucks/
is a good example.

[ed]

How much copper and other crap not used extensively in real cars would this thing require? What is the environmental impact of mining and refining said stuff?

[Rob Lister]

How much copper and other crap not used extensively in real cars would this thing require? What is the environmental impact of mining and refining said stuff?

Zero. Because it does not exist.

But if it did exist, probably not much more. It would clearly use more cooper, for instance, but far less iron. Most of it would be recyclable (with the exception of the lithium in the battery pack, which is recyclable but not cost effective to do so)

Call it a wash.

[Anaxagoras]

p.s. google nikola motor company scam and see what others think
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/30/ni ... ll-trucks/
is a good example.

The same journalist posted an article about their "unveiling":

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/02/ni ... emi-truck/

The Nikola Motor Company held an unveiling event last night for its zero emissions semi truck concept, the Nikola One — a hydrogen fuel-cell/battery-electric hybrid that will reportedly feature 1,200 miles of range; 1,000 horsepower; and 2,000 lb-feet of torque.

Notice that 1,000 horsepower; and 2,000 lb-feet of torque is different from the figures cited in the OP.

There were a number of things notable that are worth discussing here, even if the future and viability of the startup will probably remain an open question for a long time still. To start things off, it should probably be noted that the CEO, Trevor Milton, closed things off with this statement: “This truck will come to market, I promise you that.”

Well, we’ll see. The company’s plans are interesting, though, and seem to have involved some thought.

Notably, the unveiling event didn’t feature any demonstration of the truck itself, so presumably what was on display wasn’t a working prototype.

Here are several key points made during the unveiling:

the Nikola One will be around 2,000 pounds lighter in weight than a “traditional” semi;
the purchase and lease prices will reportedly include 1 million miles worth of free hydrogen fuel;
the company will be making, condensing, and transporting this fuel itself;
. . .

Autoblog (which had someone onsite) provides more: “The on-board hydrogen fuel cell will feed energy into 320-kWh lithium battery built into the frame rail that will power the truck’s electric motors. … By getting rid of the diesel powertrain, the Nikola One will also eliminate the need for much of the maintenance that is currently required for semi trucks, from oil changes to DEF refills. … Milton said that the Nikola One will get the equivalent of 15.4 miles per gallon, which is around double the average diesel semi.”

A few final points:

The unveiling event in Salt Lake City also revealed that, as Nikola doesn’t have its own manufacturing facilities yet, it will be partnering with Fitzgerald for production of the first 5,000 semi trucks.
These first trucks are currently slated to be delivered in 2020.
Plans are in the works for a dedicated production facility, according to Milton — with an announcement relating to the planned $1 billion facility set for mid-2017 according to the CEO. This planned facility will allow for production of 50,000 semis once at full capacity, Milton said.

Hmm, the company owns no manufacturing facilities, there is no working prototype apparently, but they say they will partner with another manufacturer who does have the facilities. And the first trucks aren't scheduled to be delivered before 2020. But already people are preordering them.

Well, I remain skeptical.

[Anaxagoras]

The 'fuel free' part is bogus unless we define CNG as ponies.

It means buying the truck comes with 1 million miles of free hydrogen fuel. Apparently. Not "fuel-free" but "free fuel". (or to be realistic, it's not really free but is included in the price of the truck, so you commit to buying your first million miles of fuel from them)