Electric Freight Trucks Mean Higher Consumer Prices?

Biden wants more big trucks to go electric.

 

One Trillion just for the charging infrastructure.

I'm assuming someone in the Biden administration has done the proper calculations on all of this?

 

First of all, Fox only tells the side of the story they want to tell. It's not Fox news, it's Fox's version of the news for whomever pays most for the story and how it's spun.

That trillion just doesn't evaporate, it circulates. It feeds an entire new industry. Jobs. Installation/maintenance, construction, electricians, engineers, aluminum, steel, plastics, cable. The charging systems will be built with US content in US factories by skilled US workers. Our 1950's generation and power transmission infrastructure will get an upgrade - it's not secure and it is in disastrous shape. Thousands of independent grids can be unified so we can efficiently ship power where it is needed at a reasonable cost and prevent things like the great Texas freeze. I think the long haul trucks probably make the most sense for electrification for the best ton/mile cost next to rail freight. Anybody remember how the truckers got squeezed with $7 diesel?

How much money was spent on the rural electrification program in the 30's and 40's? Or the Tennessee Valley Authority? That electricity modernized half of the south, created jobs and got many many people out of poverty.

Next thing, we'll be spending money to fix our 1860's technology rail system. 70% of our rail lines are in excess of 50 years old and falling apart.. Then it's our crumbling water and gas systems that were put in after WW2 and are made of rusting cast iron. Municipal water water systems routinely lose 25-30% of their water to system leaks and it's considered just the price of doing business...well, water is free, plentiful and who cares? It isn't and it's only going to get worse.

Yes we need to spend money. Yes we need everyone to pay their fair share of taxes. Why does nobody bitch about the trillion tRump racked up in debt giving his wealthy buddies a big tax break that we and our children will be paying forever? We got nothing out of it. I'm still waiting for the trickle down from Regan....seems the only thing that trickles down is warm, wet and yellow.

Should we continue finance the record profit making oil and gas companies' pipelines to the coast so they can export US oil and gas overseas and make a killing - yet pay little tax? Exxon stock and profits are at an all time high - yet they pay the same puny dividends - they won't even share their good fortune with the shareholders who really own the company...

 

Investment in infrastructure always pays off. How about the US highway system started by a republican president, Eisenhower. Imagine life in US without that!

 

The Environmental Protection Agency chose Good Friday to roll out its burdensome electric truck mandate, no doubt so fewer people notice. Biden officials well know the damage they are doing, but the damage in the name of climate change is the point.

EPA’s new emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks will effectively require that electric semi-trucks make up an increasing share of manufacturer sales from 2027 through 2032, similar to its recent rule for passenger cars. The difference is that the truck mandate is even more costly and fanciful.

EVs make up less than 1% of U.S. heavy-duty truck sales, and nearly all are in California, which heavily subsidizes and mandates their purchase. EPA’s rule will require electric models to account for 60% of new urban delivery trucks and 25% of long-haul tractor sales by 2032. The harm is predictable in return for no climate benefit.

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Start with the fact that no electric long-haul tractors are currently in mass production. Most electric trucks can’t go more than 170 miles on a charge. Electric semis require bigger and heavier batteries, which means they must carry lighter loads to avoid damaging roads. Fleet operators will have to use more trucks to transport the same amount of goods.

OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH
Biden's EV Truck Mandate/What's a 'Fair Share' of Taxes?


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This will increase vehicle congestion, especially around ports and distribution centers. EPA says its rule will reduce pollution in “environmental justice” communities near major truck freight routes. But more traffic will result in more pollution. Electric trucks also generate more soot from their wear and tear on roads and vehicle braking.

Power generation and transmission will have to massively expand to support millions of new “zero-emission” trucks. An electric semi consumes about seven times as much electricity on a single charge as a typical home does in a day. Truck charging depots can draw as much power from the grid as small cities.

By 2030 electric trucks are projected to consume about 11% of California’s electricity. The additional power to fuel electric trucks won’t come from renewables, which can’t be built fast enough to meet demand. Most trucks will recharge at night when solar isn’t available since drivers don’t want to waste prime daylight driving hours.

Some 1.4 million chargers will have to be installed by 2032 to achieve the EPA’s mandate, about 15,000 a month. This will require major grid upgrades when there are shortages of critical components such as transformers. It could take three to eight years to develop transmission and substations in many places to support truck chargers.

Truckers estimate the EPA rule will cost utilities $370 billion to upgrade their networks. On top of that, truckers will have to invest $620 billion in their own charging infrastructure. This doesn’t include the cost of electric trucks, which are typically two to three times more expensive than diesel cabs.

Replacing diesel trucks with electric will cost the industry tens of billion dollars each year. Truckers will pass on these costs to customers—meaning U.S. manufacturers and retailers—which will ultimately pass them on to Americans in higher prices. This is President Biden’s trickle-down economics.

EPA says its big-rig quotas are feasible because the Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 infrastructure law include hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for EVs. This includes a 30% tax credit for charging stations, $40,000 tax credit for commercial EVs, and a tax credit for battery manufacturing that can offset more than a third of the cost.

IRA tax credits for electric trucks aren’t conditioned on the source of battery material, so expect most to come from China. By the way, China’s BYD was California’s top-selling electric truck maker in 2022. Biden officials say Chinese green-technology manufacturers are flooding the U.S. market, but their mandates and subsidies are the reason.

Cue U.S. truck manufacturers, which are pleading for more handouts. “The EPA’s new heavy-duty emissions rule is challenging,” Ford said on Friday, noting they will require more “incentives and public investment.” So the Administration uses subsidies to justify a burdensome mandate, which then causes companies to lobby for more subsidies. What a racket.

Here’s another one: EPA projects its rule will “avoid” one billion metric tons in CO2 emissions from 2027 through 2055—about as much as emissions from China and India rose last year alone. The truck mandate will do nothing to reduce global temperatures.

 

I'm not a big fan of EV, but I'm not a big fan of truckers having to eat $7 diesel either. Maybe there should be an intermediate step, like hybrid or a clean diesel design. Gotta start someplace and filling Exxon's pockets isn't helping anyone.

 

It is the nature of government to pick winners and losers, to fund research into some technologies and not others, and to create mandates, subsidies, and taxes that favor some technologies over others.

I was disappointed that the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles lost out around 20 years ago (although Toyota and others are still quietly working to develop such vehicles), and I don't see battery electric vehicles as the best replacement for the petrol-fueled internal combustion engine. However, many of the early horseless carriages 110-130 years ago were battery electric vehicles, and that technology lost out, for a time as it turns out, to what most people drive now and what powers most trucks.

As to its effect on the environment, make an electric vehicle without plastics (which are petrochemical products), and with the production, recycling and disposal of batteries that do not despoil the environment, and with an electricity source that does not involve the burning of natural gas (which most of the electricity we use, including the charging of electric vehicles, still does), and I might be able to give these things the thumbs-up. Battery electric vehicles are still full of plastics and otherwise terrible for the environment. We ought to at least recognize that and not give too many pats on the back to those promoting and subsidizing such vehicles.

Living, growing (farming and fishing), building, selling, and buying locally is the solution to the motor vehicle exhaust problem, not building long-haul, large capacity vehicles that are still an environmental nightmare. Battery electric vehicle are in no way sustainable. They still put too many scarce resources into transportation, and the parts and energy production still despoil the environment.

The population of the Hawaiian Islands today is about equal to what it was when the first Europeans arrived in that archipelago. The difference is that the population there now depends on container ships, mostly bringing goods in, and the population previously had to be totally self-sufficient without the use of electricity, petroleum products of any kind, or goods from California, or East Asia. Moving goods brought in on container ships around each island by battery electric vehicles is in no way a solution to a long-term sustainable economy.

The move to battery electric vehicles seems to me to be a feel-good distraction from more difficult decisions that have to be made, not a stepping stone to a brighter future. Remember, the burning of fossil fuels was once thought to be a brilliant and promising solution to the burning of wood and the near-total deforestation that resulted in many places. North America is 34 percent forested today, vs. the low point of 29 percent in 1900.

As we look at the diesel-powered, tractor-trailer truck today with contempt, our grandchildren will one day look with the exact same contempt at the similar truck powered by batteries and electric current that replaced it, and at the lack of vision by those who called it "progress."

 

To those who have issues with Fox News reporting on this. The Los Angeles Times highlights some of the concerns touched on by Fox News.

What will shift to zero-emission trucks cost? $1 trillion for charging alone, study says

 

Don't be silly, Biden worked it out himself, so it must be correct.

One thing that amuses me, is that to date, the UK has paid consultants around three million to work out how many additional power stations we will need. This is now in it's third year.
Meanwhile, I worked it out in 20 minutes. Just take the total road fuel consumption, a figure easily available. convert it into megawatts and divide by 150.
The bright consultants are still arguing about a figure between 10 and 30. My answer is 8.

 

Look on the bright side. You will get barbecued burgers without having to light the barbecue and the rolls will already be toasted.

 

So, how much did it cost to develop the entire gasoline infrastructure?

>>also where was the outrage when big oil was screwing truckers with $7 diesel prices??
- that alone contributed to half of the inflation.

I'm also thinking maybe there should have been an intermediate step with clean diesel cars while we were jumping to hybrids and EV. 1980's diesel VW's got over 50mpg..what could they do today? My shit little car in 1981 got 36mpg with a carburetor...why is that such a big stretch today? The only reason we did not have popular diesel cars in the US is the connection of big oil to Detroit..it's more profitable to sell gasoline.

I was curious how they charged them since there were no semiconductor rectifiers at the time. Generator sets?

 

Ah, I thought it was some kinda tube solution. How I would love one of those old control boards.....amazing how much was left exposed.

 

We had big ones of those in the theatre, providing up to 400 amps at around 100 volts for the arc lamps. They needed to be ballasted to prevent the current from surging.

 

Ah, that is beautiful. 3-phase? Well, an arc lamp is pretty much a short circuit, hence the ballast. Alas, all replace by LED's at a fraction of the power.