The Big Energy Story Today -- EVs -- May 9, 2024

Locator: 47105EVS.

EVs are tracked here on the blog.

Both from Mercedes.

Ouch.

Double ouch.

Link to The WSJ.

Link here. Twitter and then Bloomberg. 

 

From The WSJ lede:

Executives at truck leasing company Ryder System spent years listening to some of their biggest customers say they wanted to switch to battery-electric big rigs.

Now that the heavy-duty trucks are available, the company says, few customers want to pay for them.

“The economics just don’t work for most companies,” said Robert Sanchez, the chief executive of Ryder, which manages 250,000 trucks and vans for tens of thousands of retailers and manufacturers.

Ryder’s experience illustrates the challenges facing state and federal governments as they try to push truckers out of heavily polluting diesel rigs and into zero-emissions vehicles. It suggests that truck makers will need to make significant advances in battery weight, range and charging times if battery-electric trucks are to seriously challenge diesel rigs in a highly competitive freight sector that runs on thin margins.

“Quite frankly, demand has not been as strong as what we would like,” said Rakesh Aneja, head of eMobility at Daimler Truck North America, which released its Freightliner eCascadia battery-electric semi truck in 2022.

Just how much more expensive? Gasp:

The Ryder analysis found that converting a typical mixed fleet of 25 commercial vehicles, including about 10 heavy-duty trucks, from diesel to battery power in California would raise a fleet’s annual operating costs 56%, or $3.4 million a year. The same transition in Georgia would raise annual operating costs 67%, or $3.7 million.

The company found that light-duty, battery-electric vans raise annual operating costs by several percentage points. As trucks get heavier the cost difference becomes more pronounced, according to Ryder’s analysis, with annual costs of operating battery-electric big rigs about twice as expensive as diesel trucks.

And something everyone should know by now:

Penske Truck Leasing, which is running pilot programs with battery-electric trucks, has found that because battery-electric rigs are heavier than diesel trucks their tires wear out faster. The company has also found some maintenance costs are more expensive than diesel trucks because parts are rarer and so more expensive.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as they say down under.