r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/guyoffthegrid • 4d ago

Hybrid truck recharges from overhead wires Video

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5.6k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/Marsweep 4d ago

So it's just a tram without tracks, right?

438

u/BertLemo 4d ago

yeah, a trolley

129

u/Obvious_Reaction_182 4d ago

Let’s just hope it dose not have the same problem as the other trolly did

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u/GeneralZaroff1 4d ago

This is a trolly problem joke about killing people, right?

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u/sugaaloop 4d ago

Might just be about killing a person, depending.

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u/Obvious_Reaction_182 4d ago

Why not both

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u/military-gradeAIDS 4d ago

MULTI-TRACK DRIFTING

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u/PoolRemarkable7663 4d ago

If you put a knife on a pole you can get everybody

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u/GeneralZaroff1 4d ago

Or 5, give or take, depending on your views.

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u/certainlynotacoyote 3d ago

3 on average

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u/ItsBaconOclock 4d ago

It doesn't even have to be about people, you could have a trolley problem where you are about to run over and destroy the only USB drive with the cure for cancer.

Or, if you pull the lever, you switch over and destroy all the greatest works of art ever made.

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u/GeneralZaroff1 4d ago

Hey happy cake day

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u/crooks4hire Interested 4d ago

Pull the lever or his cake day cake gets the trolley!

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u/GoBuffaloes 3d ago

Eh they could repro the cancer work, and it's the only USB drive not the only digital copy. Use the cloud backup.

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u/Professional_Age_665 3d ago

I will preserve the arts even if the other end was the entire human species, art means more than life !!

Ps: That's certainly not about the art

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u/shadow_229 3d ago

The greatest works of money laundering ever?!

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u/penileerosion 3d ago

In the Saint louis subreddit, our trolly is just a headache in regards to taxes and hitting cars lol

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u/batdog20001 3d ago

Not a joke, just a thought experiment regarding morality and whether means or consequences matter more.

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u/robobloz07 4d ago

This uses catenary rather than trolley wire, so it should probably be a bit more reliable

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u/OneEye007 3d ago

A trolly problem

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u/OutragedCanadian 3d ago

Ah inventing problems we never had before I see?

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u/Radiant_Dog1937 4d ago

If a tram could get on the highway, take side roads, and deliver goods directly to the loading bays of different stores and warehouses.

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u/LordNibble 3d ago

No, this is just a one mile strip which the truck uses to load it's battery.

It replaces a gas station, not a tram track.

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u/NastyBanshee 3d ago

this is useless. At 50mph, it takes 1.2 minutes to go a mile. There is NO WAY, that you can recharge a heavy duty BATTERY in 72 seconds.

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u/influencer00 3d ago

It’s in pilot phase right now; the idea would be to have this infrastructure in place on highways which have the most heavy duty traffic. The trucks would be able to use the power lines as a direct power supply to drive the engine and even charge their battery. Then use that battery or ICE hybrid for the rest of the route off the highway.

From the article:

“Because heavy duty road freight is normally concentrated on main routes, only a small percentage of all roads would have to be electrified to make the system work. In Germany, for example, 60 percent of heavy truck CO2 emissions occur on only two percent of the road network, while almost 90 percent of truck trips after leaving the highway only cover 50 kilometres or less, according to Alan McKinnon from the Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg. …

Making and building the infrastructure would also consume a lot of energy, but once it is installed, it could be used for decades to come - surviving many generations of battery-electric trucks. An additional advantage of catenary systems is that companies already have decades of experience with the technology in trains, trams and buses. The technology has been proven to work, and has relatively low maintenance and repair costs.

In a landmark study on cutting climate-damaging emissions, Germany's most important industry association BDI recommended electrifying 4,000 - 8,000 km of the country's 13,000-km autobahn network as the cheapest way to decarbonise road freight.

"Despite the necessary infrastructure investments, this option is currently the most cost-efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the study said (p.183).”

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u/OkSyllabub3674 3d ago

Thanks for that info, it does sound like it would be some manageable numbers as far as being able to make the largest impact with least overhead.

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u/Camnorand 3d ago

The premise of solely electric is about like the communist utopia. Both sound nice but in practice it's pretty damn terrible for everything involved. Everyone responsible for this global push for solely electric vehicles needs to be beaten with a sock of d cell batteries for their claims of being better for the environment.

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u/straponkaren 4d ago

Corporations will do everything they can to invent everything they can except for a train, and the reason why is the taxes on the value of train tracks vs the government owning the roads. If the government owned the train tracks and managed them, we would have trains again.

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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 4d ago

A train is limited to rails. These trucks use the power line to either drive electric on the highways or to even extend their battery range when they have full electric drives. The main advantage is that these trucks only need a road. They are much more flexible. You can put a lot of load on rails but the last kilometers are more efficiently done with trucks. You can't replace all trucks with trains efficiently but you need to find solutions to make them more eco-friendly.

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u/Dragonfly-Adventurer 4d ago

Imagine UPS or Amazon delivery trucks in rural areas, go battery when they go down a driveway or small road, then back on the grid up at the highway again, all seamless for the driver. Solving this is a huge part of making services like Amazon eco friendly. Then we gotta solve for tire and brake dust.

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u/yellekc 3d ago

If it's electric it can use regenerative braking, so at least it would use less brake dust as long as the regenerative braking makes up for the heavier vehicle.

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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 3d ago

This is only a half-baked truth. Yes, if you break most of the time just by recuperating, you have less break wear and tear but that requires you to drive it like you are or at least should be taught in the driving class. Not everyone drives like that and the higher mass, at least in the current state of the art, means more wear and tear by hard breaking. It also means to have a much higher wear and tear of the tires at the moment which is why tire companies try to develop EV tires to solve that issue. The high torque at low rotations of the motor increases this issue. So, yeah, it still is a problem to solve.

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u/NastyBanshee 3d ago

the US has the largest amount of roadway of any other country in the world with over 4.17 MILLION miles of roads. Installing these battery jumpers would not only be cost prohibitive, but take HUGE REPEAT HUGE amounts of energy/ carbon footprint to mine, manufacture, install and maintain/upgrade. Let’s just give the Delivery people a rickshaw and a few Red Bulls. Would be just about as useful as electrifying 4.17 MILLION MILES of roadway.

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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 3d ago

You misunderstood something, didn't you? No one said we should build these power lines on all roads. They are designed only for important highways.

Additionally, you misunderstood the point about the power lines: they are meant to convert trucks into battery-electric vehicles. This concept will extend the range and allow trucks to:

  1. Reduce emissions by switching from fossil fuels to electric drives. This concept doesn't require a large battery, which keeps the truck's weight down and saves fuel during high-energy phases, especially for motors designed for low speed but high torque.

  2. Reduce battery size for battery-electric trucks, minimizing resource usage while still providing a significant range.

Furthermore, you have a significant oversight regarding battery requirements. While current battery technology is quite harmful to the environment and has a high carbon footprint, EVs are already more eco-friendly in the long run due to lower CO2 emissions while driving and reduced maintenance resource needs. However, your main oversight is missing the potential for battery development. Scientists are working on various solutions to existing battery problems. Milestones include removing cobalt from the list of necessary resources for battery production, which slightly decreases range but makes them more eco-friendly and increases recharge speeds.

In the end, much of the cargo will still need to be moved from roads to electrified tracks. Trains are far more efficient for large cargo transport and are much easier to electrify.

Yes, building new infrastructure is costly, has a significant ecological footprint, and takes a lot of time. Still, it’s necessary to improve our lives as well as our situation with climate change in the long term. Failure to modernize in the past and significant political, economic, and social mistakes should not be an excuse for not taking action now. Repeating the same old mistakes that got us into this situation in the first place is not an option. Our way of doing politics has to shift from short-term views to long-term strategies. So, if we want to debate this solution, then please do so with good and detailed arguments.

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u/NastyBanshee 3d ago

How is this “green” when you factor in all the carbon footprint to rip up the road and install electric wire OR to make and place all those poles and wires?

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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 3d ago

These are above-ground power lines. You hardly have to dig up any roads. You also don't need to cover all roads, just the most important ones. The cables are also made of a material that's not that rare or that deep in the earth.

It's greener than fossil fuels because it's much more efficient. Electric motors are the most efficient motors out there. Transporting electricity also doesn't consume that much energy when you use AC. On the other hand, fossil fuels are limited and cause direct emission of CO2 that isn't supposed to be in the atmosphere for millions of years now. Even when we have enough oil for 300 or 400 years, we have a growing need for fossil resources, not just for fossil fuel but also for materials, medicine, etc. As species, we'll face a huge shortcoming soon or later. Changing it now saves a lot of time to find solutions.

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u/NastyBanshee 3d ago

Only juicing SOME roads is not feasible to actually make a dent. And I’m seeing an awfully LARGE amount of metal in those wires and poles. Metal which requires an extremely LARGE amount of energy to mine, smelt, fabricate, and transport. Copper smelts at 1200C/2192F. This will take NUCLEAR or FF based energy, not someone with a magnifying glass trying to heat up water.

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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 3d ago

You're right about the fact that this has a footprint but it's much slower than fossil fuel trucks or battery-electric trucks with huge batteries. This is what I meant by saying "long-term strategy". You build them once, maintain them over decades. Here on there you need to replace some wires and poles but not that often. But the energy we save in the long run makes it still more sustainable than other solutions, at least for the parts we can't use trains.

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u/Desperate-Goose7525 3d ago

But... hear me out.. wherever tracks are is where the businesses, factories are laid to minimize truck usage.. like a main street but for logistics? Yes, no?

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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 3d ago

Sounds great but isn't always possible. Most bizz is done in cities and when the city players fucked that up at the some point, you can't just build a railway. Also, a railway cannot be built into any smaller village but some companies go to these smaller villages because they take the space they can get. Also, you need some flexibility. Sometimes, you need a delivery as fast as possible. But trains have to stick to a strict plan in order to be as efficient as possible.

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u/thesauciest-tea 4d ago

I think part of it is that trains especially for cargo dont have as many stops and the routes are static. That means you'll end up having to pay for a truck anyway once it gets to the distribution hub. Trucking gives much more leeway in finding the more efficent route especially shorter distances. Also its much easier to take trucks on and off the road compared to trains which means its more elastic with changing demand.

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u/Victormorga 4d ago

“We would have trains again”

What are you talking about? When / where did trains cease to exist?

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u/dudeaciously 3d ago

I agree with the demise of trains. e.g. Public transit in Los Angeles was consciously killed by corporations. Similar unbelievable crippling of public transit in the New York area, same villains (Hassan Minhaj did a show on this).

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u/Victormorga 3d ago

Freight trains are still in constant, heavy use across the entire country, and most major cities have subway / train systems that are a significant part of their public transportation.

I will look up this special by the credibility-free established teller of tall-tales Hassan Minaj.

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u/Mr_FJ 3d ago

You should move to europe :P

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u/Floepiefloepie 3d ago

American...

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u/Right_Composer_9502 4d ago

America. We ain’t got no real trains anymore just Amtrak which uses freight lines in 95% of places. You could go from small town to small town by train years ago but the car companies bought all the land and turned America into a stupid land of highways and now we suck compared to everywhere else oh we suck. Just go to Europe and get a Eurail pass and see what I mean

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u/binz17 3d ago

This thread is about cargo, not passengers. The US still extensively uses cargo trains. They are the cheapest way to move cargo long distances overland.

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u/Sakuran_11 3d ago

Did you miss the part where this is a truck meant for taking cargo and meant to go to more than set locations, it needs highway travel and this is simply a charging convience, its meant to carry goods and serve as a normal truck with extra utility.

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u/Floepiefloepie 3d ago

Costs of track vs cost of road...road is much much much cheaper in all aspects

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u/theinsideoutbananna 3d ago

This is just not true, rail is significantly more efficient and generally cost effective. Roads cost a shit ton to maintain.

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u/Hopeful-Battle7329 4d ago

A train can't go everywhere. Trucks are more flexible. As long as there's at least a mediocre road, trucks can take it. But trucks need to become more eco-friendly. This one concept to do so.

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u/L44KSO 3d ago

Trucks will likely turn EV very quickly. There are already a few models available and charging infrastructure will be set up fairly quickly (privately).

The overhead charging was a nice trial in Germany and Sweden but it's just too outdated as technology to make any sense.

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u/NastyBanshee 3d ago

maybe in a small, flat country, but the US is just way to big for EV trucks to be valid. It is AVERAGE for a US OTR (over the road) trucker to do 400-600 miles PER DAY. Thats 650-965 km per day. The battery to make this even SLIGHTLY feasible would be size and weight prohibiting. At a certain point, the energy needed to just to move that big battery would have diminishing returns.

0

u/L44KSO 3d ago

Well, if only there were alternatives that could pull a lot of weight with electric power...like trains.

Anyway - the theoretical maximum of 10h driving (usually 8) so no more than 712-890km the maximum in one go is 400km which they can charge in 45 minutes to that mileage (one hour fast charge for Renault T Electric gives 496km range).

So it's perfectly workable.

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u/TactlessTortoise 3d ago

It's like carcinization in nature. They keep trying to improve trucks and cars, and always end up reinventing a train.

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u/liftoff_oversteer 3d ago

No use to be all smug about it. The railways are important but couldn't take ca considerable amount of road traffic anyway. This is actually a possible solution for electric lorries. After all, they are always in a hurry and if they can recharge without stopping, that's one problem less.

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u/dorian_white1 3d ago

Yeah, they have a few lines like these in Germany, and it’s controversial. Very expensive, and only works if enough specialized trucks use it.

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u/CMDR_BitMedler 3d ago

And the pantograph on the truck is retractable after charging. Brilliant!

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u/Ok_Squirrel_4199 3d ago

It can disconnect itself and drive anywhere if there is enough charge on the battery.

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u/ScotchTapeConnosieur 2d ago

No because it has an internal battery and doesn’t need to constantly be connected to power.

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u/PercentageOk5021 22h ago

It can peel away after charging and drive like a normal car though. It’s that novel enough?

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u/Eurasia_4002 4d ago

They should replace the materials on the road from concrete to steel so that it would not degrade fast... yep, that's a train.

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u/CinderX5 3d ago

A train can’t just go down any road.

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u/Eurasia_4002 3d ago

Your not getting it.

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u/CinderX5 3d ago

You’re not getting it. This isn’t a track that the lorry can’t leave, it’s a charging station. It lasts a set distance, then the truck can disconnect from it and continue driving around like any other truck. It’s not a train.

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u/Eurasia_4002 3d ago

And? Do you have more?

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u/CinderX5 3d ago

And you were wrong.

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u/Volkmek 4d ago

This. Just reinventing trains.

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u/LazyIncome5292 4d ago

Looks like it. I wonder how that really does on the highway, like it cant really change lanes when necessary can it?

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u/NSFWFM69 4d ago

Yes, it can

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u/VealOfFortune 3d ago

Yep, so even less "stability" than a train, plus you get added bonus of other drivers who also are not on tracks, fucking shit up even more than the use of a pantograph already does in ideal conditions 😂

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u/CinderX5 3d ago

No. This is a replacement to a petrol station. The charging section is temporary, it still functions as a regular truck.

-2

u/VealOfFortune 3d ago

Stop. This is a SUPPLEMENT to a petrol station, given this truck (according to the title), is a HYBRID.

Wanna guess how much it costs to operate and maintain the Northeast Corridor in the United States?

Anyone who has ever ridden NJ Transit or Amtrak is VERY familiar with pantographs, and their propensity to fuck shit up.

Yet another climate change pipedream that uses more resources than 150 years of innovation to the diesel engine 😂😂

ESPECIALLY WHEN HAULING, DIESEL IS CLEANER AND MORE EFFICIENT THAN ANYTHING ELECTRIC AND ITS NOT EVEN CLOOOOOSE. 🤦