193 - The Logistics Episode

is expected to have two and a half percent growth between 2021 and 2026. Now it's not a lot in percentage terms, but in terms of miles driven and greenhouse gas emissions. It's huge. So if we want to get rid of diesel and replace everything with zero emission vehicles,

how do we do that? Well,

it's not as easy as you might imagine. One issue we have at the moment is the batteries themselves. Now I can drive my Volkswagen ID three on a run in summer and get anything up to four and a half or even five miles per kilowatt hour efficiency on the run. That's because it's a smallish, fairly streamlined card that doesn't weigh a great deal in the big scheme of things. It's certainly lighter than the two Volkswagen SUVs my neighbours have got. But if you'd end up scale up to the size of a 40 tonne truck, complete the trailer on the back full of your favourite Morrison's foodstuffs. The amount of energy needed to push that vehicle forward on its trip from the warehouse in Kent. To a store in, say, Newcastle is quite large. In fact, it's measured in kilowatt hours per mile. Famously Elon Musk's Tesla semi one of the first fully electric artics to be launched and which is currently in service with Frito Lay/ Pepsi Cola in the US will need two kilowatt hours of energy to move a vehicle one mile along the road. On average, my ID.3 will do eight to 10 miles on that same two kilowatt hours of energy.

However, data coming out from the US indicate that the Tesla semi trucks are performing as well as expected, with one in particular, transporting cans from the Pepsi range, drove 1500 miles over two days. The stats for this are available online, and it appears that the vehicle stopped after 12 hours for a three hour charge, which tops it up to 100% from around 20% state of charge. It also did a couple of shorter stops to extend the range slightly. In a continuous run it covered around 400 miles on the little over 80% of the battery. Now given the huge payload it was carrying, that's not too shabby. What this shows, however, is it for any appreciable distance in an electric truck, you'll need huge batteries. If you've got a truck that does a specific route most days or have the ability to stop fairly regularly, you're going to be able to handle batteries with good charge speed.

So what's out there at the moment? Well,

the Mercedes Benz eActos 600e truck recently did a 600 mile journey through the Alps with a 40 tonne load in a single day. That easily covers Kent to, say, Newcastle with range to spare. Engineers have designed the eActos 600 to deliver 1.2 million kilometres on the road over 10 years. Other manufacturers such as Volvo are also getting into the electric trucking business.

So the rolling stock is getting there. The issue as always, is the charging infrastructure.

To manage the sort of charging needed to keep a fleet of eActos trucks on the road you need lots of infrastructure designed to handle the specific needs of trucks and this means long charging bays with side mounted chargers. This also means very fast charging. The standard is referred to as MCS - megawatt charging system. This means good, well designed hubs that can handle lots of trucks, lots of drivers, and provide the facilities they need with charging at the speed they need. Now I spoke to CPOs on this programme and asked several of them about charging for trucks. None of them have a comprehensive solution for this. Although both Osprey charging and Gridserve charging can handle long vehicles at several of their locations, but nobody has MCS charging at the moment. However Gridserve did announce recently that they were leading a consortium dedicated to designing and implementing what they're calling the Electric Freeway. Within the first two years of this seven year project Gridserve's committed to installing over 200 high powered chargers across key motorway service areas and more than 10 commercial depot charging locations. Within this they'll also be deployed at least one megawatt capacity high power chargers. This means that batteries don't need to be as big as some of those already designed because on the EU laws, HGV drivers must stop every four and a half hours for 45 minutes. The hope is to better use that 45 minutes to recharge and get the driver on his or her way. Again, with a full battery. That will best of luck to that project. We'll keep an eye out on it.

they aren't zero. Now I posted on the platform that used to be called Twitter

recently, that this is the equivalent of being run over in a stampede by 1000 smaller people, rather than 100 larger people or being bitten by lots of little venomous snakes rather than one huge one. It's probably less painful at the time, but the end result is the same.

When they stopped using whale oil to provide the oils for streetlights. The whaling industry disappeared almost overnight. The replacement was better, cheaper, and easier to get.

Wouldn't surprise me if the same thing happens with trucks. It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing share with the listeners. Stockholm is banning fossil fuel vehicles in the city centre. From early 2025 in area of 180,000 square metres or about 20 blocks that form the Swedish capitals finance the main shopping area will only allow electric cars, some hybrid trucks and fuel cell vehicles. Dementia comes on the back of booths to turn the capital into a walking city or a biking city along the lines at places like Utrecht and Amsterdam. To further reduce all car traffic. Public transport is to be advanced while personal mobility in the city is to be proved for pedestrians and cyclists so that car trips are largely unnecessary. Any goods vehicles may also come as low emission hybrids when entering the new zones. Other exceptions include emergency and health care vehicles, and drivers with a disabled parking. I'd love to see this

it's never that simple. Is it Gary?

Thanks for listening. Bye

Volkswagen Id

Tesla Semi

Volkswagen Id3

Land Range Drove

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