A good question is then whether a driver can recharge a truck during rest periods. Most jurisdictions dont allow refueling or maintenance during driver rest periods.
Trucks are not personal vehicles. They are run as part of a business. If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately. That isnt happening because the math/money doesnt, yet, make sense.
Cursory research indicates that in the EU, they are:
If charging the battery of an electric heavy goods vehicle or bus requires supervision or involvement of the driver, then this time needs to be recorded as 'other work.' On the contrary, if the driver can freely dispose of her/his time while the battery is charging, then the time taken for the battery to charge has no effect on the breaks or the daily rest of the driver. Any movement of the vehicle from the charging location would be deemed to be an interruption or an end to a break or rest period.
According to the electric trucker channel there are rumblings about altering the last clause, because currently if you end your day at a charging station you can’t free it up and go to a regular parking space when you’re topped up.
The problem is that it is still going to interrupt your rest, and therefore your focus while driving. Getting woken up at all is a problem, the fact that you can go back to sleep after 15 minutes doesn't really matter. I would be quite surprised if the EU was willing to mess with that.
A better solution would be a truck stop with a charging connector per parking spot, and a way for the charger to dynamically connect to the trucks one-by-one. The driver can plug it in when they arrive, and the truck stop will handle the rest.
Alternatively, build a bunch of low-speed chargers instead of a single high-speed charger. When it comes to overnight charging, everyone is going to be there for at least 9 hours anyways. No need to hurry up and finish that charging session in 30 minutes.
> The problem is that it is still going to interrupt your rest, and therefore your focus while driving. Getting woken up at all is a problem, the fact that you can go back to sleep after 15 minutes doesn't really matter. I would be quite surprised if the EU was willing to mess with that.
The problem is that sleeping is not the only activity during the rest period. A "standard" rest period by EU law is 11 hours. Going for a run, getting dinner, doing some life stuff, then moving the truck a few meters, is not going to kill the driver's focus, but currently it's either limiting (because you're now on reduced rest, or you need to rest 11 hours from moving the truck) or illegal.
> Alternatively, build a bunch of low-speed chargers instead of a single high-speed charger. When it comes to overnight charging, everyone is going to be there for at least 9 hours anyways. No need to hurry up and finish that charging session in 30 minutes.
That has its own issues, because it means you need to electrify essentially every truck parking spot where truckers might overnight.
There is a good YouTube channel of a truck driver in Germany who drives an electric truck and he's been praising it all over. The range is enough to go between pauses, and yes he can charge while resting.
>>Most jurisdictions dont allow refueling or maintenance during driver rest periods.
Well good thing recharging is not the same as refueling. Fueling requires an operator to be present and watching the pump for safety reasons. Recharging doesn't have such limitation.
I only recently got a personal electric car not because they only recently got good enough or only recently made sense, but rather because my last petrol car finally needed replacing. I suspect trucks are similar - they're not going to replace them right away when they have an existing one that is working fine and still has many years of use ahead of it. Keep using the existing ones until they need to replace them, then go EV. Otherwise you're losing that amortization of the capex
"If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately"
Real life is not that simple. Depending on your cargo and routes, profitability might be about might be more about capacity (mass or volume), purchase cost, operating cost, max range, torque, reliability etc. And then... businesses have inertia and are only rational actors the extent that the people who control them are.
Businesses are not suddenly going to dispose of their current fleet because something new comes along. For most, I imagine, their trucks will be on some kind of fixed-term lease agreement.
"If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately"
Real life is not that simple. Depending on your cargo and routes, profitability might be about might be more about capacity (mass or volume), purchase cost, operating cost, max range, etc. And then... businesses have inertia and are only rational actors the extent that the people who control them are.
Trucks are not personal vehicles. They are run as part of a business. If an electric trucks can save money, every business will switch immediately. That isnt happening because the math/money doesnt, yet, make sense.