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Page added on August 17, 2013
T. Boone Pickens Is Wrong: Electric Vehicles Can Haul Cargo
T. Boone Pickens supports electric vehicles—as long you don’t claim that electric propulsion can work for big-rig trucks, locomotives or cargo ships. The business magnate and corporate raider, who made his fortune in the oil and gas industries, stated that “the battery will not move an 18-wheeler” and that internal combustion engines using natural gas or diesel are the only way to haul cargo. Is he right?
While there are a number of companies, like Smith Electric Vehicles or EVI USA, building medium duty all electric trucks, Class 8 18-wheel trucks are much bigger. Class 8 trucks have 80,000 pounds of hauling capacity versus the 20,000-pound capacity of smaller trucks. Yet, there are several companies experimenting with electric Class 8 trucks.
For the most part, these trucks are for around-town use rather than long hauls. The clearest use-case for an all-electric Class 8 truck is hauling containers between a shipping facility, like the Port of Los Angeles, and rail terminals. Thousands of diesel powered Class 8 trucks operate daily in that corridor, and are a major contributor to local air pollution.
Balqon’s Nautilus XE30
In the Electric Drayage Demonstration—a project begun in 2012, and extending to 2015—Class 8 trucks from four companies are in daily use in test fleets operating between the Port of LA and nearby rail terminals. Three of the models are all-electric trucks, built by Balqon, US Hybrid and TransPower. These have battery pack ranging up to a huge 380 kilowatt-hours; high powered charging units up to 160 kilowatts; recharge time as low as 1 hour; and a driving range up to 150 miles.
Another idea for electric trucks comes from Swedish truck maker Scania, and German electronics giant Siemens. Borrowing the overhead wire system normally used for electric trains, the companies mounted a system on an electric truck, so you don’t have to carry a large battery pack. The system is undergoing testing in Germany, and could see deployment in a few years.
Electric trains in daily service around the world prove that electric vehicles are capable of handling large loads—even if they don’t carry their own electricity in batteries. Electric high-speed trains travel at speeds of 200 miles an hour, or faster. They can go anywhere that wires can be strung.
The Nordled / Siemens electric ferry
Then, there is the MS Tûranor PlanetSolar, a large solar powered electric catamaran. In May 2012, it became the first solar electric vehicle to circumnavigate the globe. The solar panels on board are big enough to generate several hundred kilowatt-hours of electricity per day.
Siemens Norway is also working to put an all-electric ferry into service in Norway in 2015. The full size car ferry, 80 meters long, is powered by two 450 kilowatt electric motors, and carries a 1,000 kilowatt-hour battery pack. (Not a typo.) That’s enough for a few trips across the fjord, each trip taking 20 minutes for a six-kilometer crossing. Carrying capacity is 360 passengers and 120 vehicles. To avoid swamping the local power grid when the ship docks to recharge, a 260 kilowatt-hour energy storage unit located on shore is used to recharge the ferry boat.
Long-Term Trends
A conventional ferry traveling the same route consumes about 1 million liters of diesel fuel, and emits 2,680 tons of carbon dioxide and 37 tons of nitrogen oxides each year. Because local electricity is produced entirely by hydropower, it’s carbon-free—answering Pickens’s challenge that the electricity for electric cars “has to come from somewhere.” Siemens claims there are 50 routes in Norway where such electrically powered ferries could operate profitably, especially considering falling battery pack costs.
While current electric vehicles can’t handle every use case for heavy shipping, the possibilities are expanding every day. Battery pack prices are falling, and their energy density is expected to significantly increase in the coming years. That will be the key to making all-electric shipping economically and technically feasible, and widely deployed—beginning the long-term process of displacing natural gas and diesel with cleaner transportation fuels.
28 Comments on "T. Boone Pickens Is Wrong: Electric Vehicles Can Haul Cargo"
bobinget on Sat, 17th Aug 2013 11:38 pm
The problem is not that electric motors are not up to the job. How does one think Nuclear powered submarines or aircraft carriers are driven?
Electric trains in Europe are the norm.
I hate to even mention turn of 20th century trolly cars,
or 19th century underground subways. Obviously, buried electrical cable under heavily traveled motor-ways is hardly a new idea.
GregT on Sat, 17th Aug 2013 11:39 pm
” The clearest use-case for an all-electric Class 8 truck is hauling containers between a shipping facility, like the Port of Los Angeles, and rail terminals.”
Would it not make a bit more sense to install rail lines between the port, and the ‘rail terminal’?
” Because local electricity is produced entirely by hydropower, it’s carbon-free”
The day that someone figures out how to build massive hydro electric projects, and all of their required infrastructure without fossil fuels, will be the day that they become ‘carbon-free’. That day has not come yet.
“beginning the long-term process of displacing natural gas and diesel with cleaner transportation fuels.”
Long term process for sure, longer than we have, before we no longer have, the fossil fuels necessary to built all of the batteries, vehicles, and infrastructure. At least the author has the wherewithal to use the word ‘displacing’ instead of the more commonly used word; ‘replacing’. Electricity will never replace fossil fuels, in modern industrial society. Modern industrial society will end.
DC on Sat, 17th Aug 2013 11:51 pm
Well, Pickens is nothing but a fossil-fueled, USgov subsidy seeking old windbag. No, N.A. does not have electric transport in any capacity-largely thanks to the multi-decades efforts of guys exactly like pickens.
-He can be safely ignored.
Fossil-fools like pickens and his ilk are too firmly entrenched in gov’t to allow any meaningful shift to an ‘electric’ economy, even if we had the funds and resources to do so-which is anything but clear at this point.
This article asks the wrong question. There is little doubt an electric economy would work just fine, the real question should be:
Why didn’t we do it in the first place?
Well, we all know the answer to that question-but that is a whole other can of worms…
actioncjackson on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 1:26 am
Peak everything, that uncomfortable moment when everyone wakes up and realizes what the fuck we’ve done.
MrEnergyCzar on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 1:41 am
He must have a huge position in Natural Gas…
bobinget on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 2:03 am
Long before horizontal drilling and MULTIPLE fracking was a reality, during Bush’s first term, ole Pickens was pioneering wind power. Then, as gas prices began to fall, still during a Bush Administration, T Boon comes up with the idea of CNG as, wait for it, a ‘bridge fuel’.
He pioneered NG powered long haul by floating a stock issue for a string of refueling stations, along US Interstates. Two major US truck manufactures have duel fuel pick-ups to semi tractors available. Most of this is because of his determined efforts to convert from oil to gas.
Congress would never give hims tumble because;
1) he bankrolled the Swift-Boating of Sen Kerry’s presidential run. Even Republican senators don’t wish to be seen with him.
2) He went up against our shadow government, Exxon.
3) He’s not right wing enough for climate deniers.
rollin on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 2:30 am
T Boone Pickens is wrong about NG being the bridge fuel. There is just not enough there to be a significant transport fuel and prices will rise.
The electric car has a huge advantage. As solar and wind power become significant providers of power, the car batteries can absorb the surges that inevitably occur on windy and sunny days.
rollin on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 2:31 am
@ actioncjackson
Wouldn’t that be peak realization?
BillT on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 2:52 am
And I still ask: “Where does the electric come from to build and maintain the so called ‘clean, renewable’ electric generators not to mention the batteries and the motors they power?” Hydrocarbons, that’s where. No ‘renewable’ has enough NET energy excess to do it.
And why do we have to haul stuff anyway? 90% of the stuff in trucks/containers are NOT necessities. They are just ‘consumer stuff’ designed and sold to make money from fools.
DC on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 4:00 am
Spot on Bill, electric transports would be more than sufficient if most food and consumer goods were grown\built in local production facilities and destined for local consumption-and mostly consisted of essential goods. However, as we know, everyone is bought into the falsehood that globalization is the only possible economic model. Like you say, an economy, predicated on the idea that shipping poorly built, mostly trival plastic garbage all over the globe and ijunks etc is the end-all-be-all.
If the world wasnt so invested in fossil-fueled powered private transport to move single persons no place important AND mega logistics systems to transport stuff all across the globe that we are more than capable of making locally, well, wed have had more than enough oil to produce all the efficient electric transport options wed need for a long long while.
Except of course, we didnt. We could have one or the other-never both. But we want both, and some still think were going to get them too.
GregT on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 4:18 am
And if I might add BillT,
90% of the stuff that we are transporting all over the world, also requires fossil fuels in resource extraction, refinement, and manufacturing.
So what exactly are we trying to accomplish with so called ‘renewable’ energy anyways?
mike on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 5:13 am
I’ll post this again. Once someone sets up an experiment where they only use solar energy to mine, transport, feed and transport workers, build , distribute, fit and fix more solar panels and it’s not a net energy loss, then I’ll take it seriously. At the moment it’s not only subsidised by governments, it’s also subsidised by the oil and coal industry. I think we’ll find when all is said and done that this form of solar energy is actually hastening the net energy decline.
mike on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 5:15 am
Plus source is unreliable. It’s like getting GMO info from the monsanto website, oil info from the opec website or financial info from the fed.
rollin on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 8:49 am
What fossil fuel company source are you guys getting info that PV or wind has a negative net energy loss. Any reliable references to these claims?
BillT on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 9:44 am
Well, since logic is not acceptable for a ‘reliable reference’ try this one:
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/machines-making-machines-making.html
or:
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/01/energy-in-real-world.html
To get ores usually requires moving mountains of rock just to get the ores. And if you think that scrap will be reused, forget it. The cost to recover, separate, and transport the millions of tons necessary to provide even a small percentage of today’s metal needs would take huge amounts of energy and huge heavy duty trucks over well maintained roads.
GregT on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 10:41 am
The industrial revolution was brought on from burning coal. Pre-industrial revolution we were using hand tools,hard manual labor, and animals. Without coal, oil, and gas, industrial society ceases to exist.
We will not be exploiting the remaining resources on the planet Earth with solar panels and wind turbines. Even if by some miracle we could, many of those resources are also finite. We would only be postponing the inevitable for a while longer, while continuing to destroy what remains of the Earth’s natural ecosystems.
Alternates are a product of industry, they require cheap fossil fuels, as do our entire economies. Our economies will be the first to crash, it has already begun. When our economies are no longer solvent, we will no longer be able to afford the 3000 mile diet. Food will be next, followed by a complete break down of society.
There isn’t going to be a George Jetson future, we are going back to the age of the Flintstones, minus the dinosaurs, or worse.
Kenz300 on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 11:12 am
Proof That Renewables Can Out-Compete Coal | Peak Oil News and Message Boards
http://peakoil.com/alternative-energy/proof-that-renewables-can-out-compete-coal
dashster on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 12:22 pm
“Well, Pickens is nothing but a fossil-fueled, USgov subsidy seeking old windbag. ”
Pickens used to be the only guy you saw on CNBC who talked about Peak Oil. Because he was a billionaire they didn’t ridicule him the way they would an ordinary person, but they were always skeptical. However, after fracking took off, he inexplicably appeared on the show one day and apologized to the host – Joe Kiernan – and said that he had been wrong about Peak Oil. To which Kiernan “knowingly” responded – “All Malthusian predictions are always wrong”.
dashster on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 12:26 pm
Besides a nationwide electric rail system (both freight and humans), I would like to see the freeways “electrified”, assuming it would be possible to have cars that ran off of overhead power lines (in addition to batteries) the way light rail does, and some way to meter their usage and charge for it.
J-Gav on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 2:10 pm
It doesn’t matter whether EVs can haul cargo or not – they’re not sustainable. See Tom Murphy’s latest article on the subject on his Do the Math blog …
rollin on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 2:29 pm
Sorry BillT but your references are a juvenile as your logic. I was speaking about references that use actual data not unsupported claims and hand waving.
Those who use actual data come up with about 10:1 EROEI for PV (net energy is 9 times intrinsic energy). Wind energy is even higher.
Since electric motors are 80 to 90 percent efficient that gives up to a 6:1 advantage over ICE use, therefor the total energy needed will be far less for those converted processes.
GregT on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 3:17 pm
J-Gav,
Thanks for the link!
bobinget on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 4:14 pm
As a new poster, I love the diversified viewpoints here.
Rather then simply repost other people’s opinions,
this group seems to be able to think for itself.
Like a ‘holy book’ of any religion, if we look hard enough we will always find passages that will sustain any long-held belief system.
My mind is open to any strategy getting us out of this ‘long emergency’.
One thing I’m sure of is that there is No One Solution.
If you were told that eating ONLY carrots would give you extra years of life, you might spend time looking for other foods that had similar values.
As a DYS plumber I’ve observed there may be one
absolute correct way to get the job done but short that particular fitting, another two will serve as well.
GregT on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 5:03 pm
We face a series of predicaments. Predicaments do not have solutions, only choices.
Modern industrial society is coming to an end. What we have enjoyed for the last 60 years of human existance was a one time deal.
It is time to make some choices for ourselves. Nobody else is going to do it for us. Learn how to grow food now while you still have the opportunity. Learn how to live sustainably yourself, because the societies in which we live are not sustainable. Those that do, might have a chance at a future, if environmental tipping points are not reached. If they are, there is little hope for any of us.
Steve on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 7:40 pm
Works with Nat Gas also: http://www.fleetsandfuels.com/electric-drive/2013/06/axion-and-epower-18-wheel-hybrid/
Steve on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 7:47 pm
How about rail? http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2013/08/axion_powers_potential_for_explosive_growth.html
rollin on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 9:09 pm
Purchase as little as possible. Make what you have last longer. Produce locally what is possible. That will take the top 30 to 50% off the transport and manufacturing problem.
Put the money you save into insulating and sealing your home, making food gardens, and solar hot water collectors. Sit back and enjoy the long term results.
Gerald Shields on Sun, 18th Aug 2013 10:59 pm
Not to say that Pickens is wrong, but the batteries would have to be awesome to power a 18 wheeler and the battery bed would have to powerful enough to aid a neighborhood, hence I don’t blame him for hyping Natural Gas for trucks.