Shrimpbox
Gold Member
OTR trucks will not be electric. Rules on driver ability to drive won’t allow 5 hr or longer recharge stops. Also, moving 80,000 lbs will be incredibly energy consuming. A lot of mechanics think Elon Musk is a con artist.
New trucks being produced today with tier IV engines are not lasting the common 1 million miles before overhaul, they are only lasting 500,000 miles. Owners are running them 450,000 miles and then selling them to independent operators who have to shoulder rebuild costs. In order to get pollution down the engine makers are using extremely high injector pressures and recycling the exhaust which just gums up the engine.
Natural gas, because it is not as energy intensive as diesel fuel has trouble running situations that need a lot of torque. Driving the city bus or general delivery vehicles is light duty. Garbage trucks needing lots of torque for hydraulics are finding that natural gas does not provide enough umph to run the truck. Likewise, a 10 kw generator running on diesel would need a 20 kw natural gas genset to put out the same electric.
Bottom line from this veteran of 30 years of mechanicing, big diesel will be with us for a long time
New trucks being produced today with tier IV engines are not lasting the common 1 million miles before overhaul, they are only lasting 500,000 miles. Owners are running them 450,000 miles and then selling them to independent operators who have to shoulder rebuild costs. In order to get pollution down the engine makers are using extremely high injector pressures and recycling the exhaust which just gums up the engine.
Natural gas, because it is not as energy intensive as diesel fuel has trouble running situations that need a lot of torque. Driving the city bus or general delivery vehicles is light duty. Garbage trucks needing lots of torque for hydraulics are finding that natural gas does not provide enough umph to run the truck. Likewise, a 10 kw generator running on diesel would need a 20 kw natural gas genset to put out the same electric.
Bottom line from this veteran of 30 years of mechanicing, big diesel will be with us for a long time