Cited on HN 16 times, 2021–2025, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
The standard reference whenever threads discuss electrifying trucking via overhead lines instead of big batteries.
Tom Scott visits an eHighway test in Lubeck, Germany, where electric trucks with pantographs draw power from overhead wires. He explains how this could electrify road freight.
“Charge them on the go. See the Tom Scott video” (HN, 2022)
You don’t have to put them on rails. We could have highway lanes that power vehicles for long distance travel, and then they rely on battery for local use. [this video] This could have some big advantages to cramming larger batteries into vehicles and trying to charge them at higher rates. Cheaper, lighter and safer vehicles, and batteries that last longer.
> Electrified highways solve the issue for Trucks. In principle sure[0], but the devil is in the details with anything like this. You could also solve the intermittency of PV with a planet scale HVDC grid, much cheaper than batteries, but doing so would need a long time just to mine the metal ores out of the ground (someone asked me to do the math, and I did, it’s hiding somewhere in my comment history). [0] of course Tom Scott did a video about this, in some ways he is the vlogger equivalent of xkcd: [this video]
Tom Scott did a video[1] on this that tackles the problem of electric trucks in a different way. Instead of charging somewhere or swapping out a battery, what if we charged them while they were in a specific lane of a highway. [1] [this video]
It seems like AI truck driving, at least hub-to-hub, is already pretty well solved. Here's a test example (in Germany) that incorporates electric trucks which only need enough onboard energy to deliver "the last mile" : [this video]
Test example of electric trucks needing only last-mile battery
Tom Scott did a video on it: The highway where trucks work like electric trains [this video] Its interesting if it could be used in combination with self driving truck technology for long haul train style trucking.
Pantographs and catenary wires long ago solved the energy supply problem for heavy transport. They are 99% efficient and cheap to build. [this video] Diesel and hydrogen is only needed on extremely long and thin routes like road trains in northern Australia or Alaska. This is greenwashing.
> Imagine there're 20 trucks charging at 80kW on a single autobahn rest area. Why would they need to stop to charge? Charge them on the go. See the Tom Scott video "The highway where trucks work like electric trains": * [this video] And if they do want/have to stop, imagine charging at a rate of up to 3750 kW: > The Megawatt Charging System (MCS) is a charging connector under development for large battery electric vehicles. The connector will be rated for charging at a maximum rate of 3.75 megawatts (3,000 amps at 1,250 volts direct current (DC)). * [link]
Electrification of trucks might be almost more reasonable - and it's been proof-of-concept'd: [this video] Many people do NOT realize just how empty most trucks are - and major intercity trucking can be relatively easily "trained" - [link] - but the vast majority of local deliveries are trucks that aren't even half full. When shipping (trucking is just shipping) each "transfer" costs you money and time, so you want to reduce those as much as possible. To encourage trains, you just make the transfer cost "worth" it - interstate road-mile taxes, for example would do it.
Long haul could "work" but the effort needed is immense, compared to replacing delivery/short-haul trucking (which is doable with equipment we have today). For long-haul the best may be something like [this video] (Trains have advantages and disadvantages compared to long-haul trucks)
Pantographs for trucks has been shown in operation, and we've had trolley-busses forever - [this video] While it's unlikely to be adopted for cars, it seems a cheaper and more reasonable first step at electrification (though the USA can't even electrify its rail and that sits there and goes nowhere and is a minimal cost). Electrification of rail is something like $5m a track/mile - electrification of all rail in Los Angeles could be done for something in the low few billions. Add electric trucks for $20-50b more, and suddenly LA is much cleaner, and you've not touched a single car.
and/or add overhead power delivery to major motorways, allowing trucks to have (relatively) small batteries for the non-motorway parts of their journeys: [this video]
It's an option. But short-range trucks can operate with batteries just fine, and for long-range trucks it might end up being more viable to just construct overhead wires[0] above long-distance highways and avoid the problem altogether. [0]: [this video]
Overhead wires over highways for long-range trucks
Its a lot easier than you think. Just like trains, but on roads. The highway where trucks work like electric trains: [this video] And, there is electrification happening along highways, producing energy. German highway PV could generate up to 200 TWh a year: [link] Also, battery swapping will become a thing. You don't have to haul a ton of batteries, you can swap them in seconds along your route. There will be (eventually) a ton of battery plants replacing peaker natural gas plants, these will be built along the highways, also serving a second function of battery swap stations.
> Nobody needs a kind of AI that consumes that much energy. Rather: nobody needs to spend that much on current quality AI. Say for the sake of argument that the accelerationists are correct about the timescale for future capabilities (I hope they're wrong in the short term, but run with it): If we had an AI that could drive robots — cars, androids, surgical machines, industrial equipment — at least as well as any human, but the compute meant that it took 10 kW to do so, at electricity prices of $0.1/kWh that AI is cost-competitive with $1/h human labour. If that happens and there's enough compute but not enough energy, energy prices rise to match human wages (so at least a factor of ten for this arbitrary example). To avoid energy price rises, and for current economic output, that would require the USA to have about 170 million (workforce) * 10 kW = 1.7 TW ≈ 3.9 times current US electrical production. (For the avoidance of doubt, 10 kW is a completely made up number with no real justification beyond it being simultaneously a relatively small number for an isolated valuable industrial device while also much more than a human brain). > A better justification for more nuclear energy is to electrify transportation and residential heating/cooling while navigating the climate catastrophe, don't you think? Not really, the reason for nuclear rather than renewables is more about the relative cost compared to time-shifting power generation with storage, and (most*) transportation alrea
Sweden and Germany have phantograph-powered semi-electric trucks [1] that would make this less of a factor. The trucks do the bulk of their driving off grid power with batteries for exits/lastmile components of the drive. [1]: [link] Tom Scott video on the subject: [this video]
Overview of semi-electric trucks on overhead lines
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