Electric Trucks are coming
According to the radio this morning some trucking companies are getting on with this.
There was a report about a company removing the diesel engine from their trucks and replacing them with electric motors. The company transports between Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane, each are journeys of about 1000km.
No battery will travel that distance on one charge (neither will my car on one tank full) however the driver cannot legally drive that far without a break either.
The company has set up staging posts at a suitable location along the route where the whole battery can be removed and replaced with a fully charged unit while the driver has his compulsory break.
The radio report says that it only takes a few minutes to change the batteries - I presume wth a forklift or some similar device.
According to the report the company will recoup its initial costs in one year as fuel costs are half that of conventional fuel.
There was also an interesting sideline that there is a mine somewhere that is situated at the top of a mountain. Due to the regenerative braking on electric vehicles by the time the truck has reached the bottom and the rail yards the battery is charged up sufficiently to allow the empty truck to climb the mountain and be reloaded. Very little top up charge is required.