Posted on 03/04/2023 10:24:31 AM PST by aimhigh
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway paid $8.2 billion to acquire Pilot Travel Centers in January. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway quietly acquired $1 billion in January and promises to boost its exposure to the fast-growing electric vehicle industry.
Renowned Investor’s Group bought 41.4% of Pilot Travel Centers on January 31 for approximately $8.2 billion. The transaction boosts Berkshire’s ownership of the business to 80% since it originally bought a 38.6% stake in 2017. Pilot is the largest operator of travel centers in North America with more than 650 locations. Truck-Stop Group grew its revenue from $20 billion in 2017 to $45 billion in 2021, and now generates more than $1 billion in annual pre-tax earnings.
Pilot last year partnered with General Motors to set up a national network of 2,000 EV charging stations by 2026. It also intends to work with Volvo to develop a similar network for battery-powered trucks. Bloomberg magazine had an article in November, 2022 that electric truck stops will need as much power as a small town. “Think of electricity like water flowing through a hose. You could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool with a garden hose if you had a few months, but filling it in a few hours would require a firehose. In the world of electric vehicles, an 18-wheeler is like a swimming pool—and the connections available at today’s highway stops are akin to garden hoses,” Randall wrote.
Electrifying a typical highway gas station will require as much electricity as a sports stadium. Sysco Corp. plans to convert a third of its fleet to electric trucks. Pilot and Kodiak Robotics have a strategic agreement to develop services for self-driving trucks at Pilot and Flying J travel centers.
The first such autonomous truck port is being built at a Pilot center near Atlanta, Ga. where the companies will evaluate what services make the most sense for self-driving trucks. Pilot vice president of strategy and business development John Tully imagined autonomous truck ports wouldn’t look much different than the rest of the companies locations
On the bright side, maybe Buc-ee’s will expand nationwide, now...
A girl can dream.
>fly ash (solid waste)
Use in concrete formulations.
Good to know.
I wont ever stop at any pilot truck stop again.
There are a few companies looking into that. I was involved with one seventeen years ago. To transfer the electric power, you need to either uses brushes or similar for DC, or coils for AC. Brushes get dirty too easily in a driving environment. So you can transfer with AC, but the problem lies in the coupling of the AC. If you use say 60 Hz, like your electric tooth brush charger does, then you need to be near stationary. If you are moving at highway speeds, the change in the electric field at 60 Hz is too slow. You’ll be long gone before you get any useful power transmitted.
You then have a choice, go to higher frequencies (MHz), or have the coils travel along side your car at your speed while you charge. Higher frequencies work, but high power transmission at MHz is expensive (think radio tower transmitters). Having the excitation coil travel along your car is physically possible, but mechanically complex. It needs to sync to your speed, it needs to be returned, and the wires powering it need to move as well. Not feasible.
Sending power by microwaves (GHz frequencies) has been demonstrated say to power airplanes from the ground, but it is quite inefficient. But I think that would be the most likely to work of all electrical options of the style you suggest.
I won’t be going to Pilot’s or Flying J anymore. Frankly Love’s has way better coffee.
Knoxville is the corporate headquarters of Pilot, or at least it was. Most of the Pilots around here have become Casey’s or Good Stop.
I thought it was because the Haslam family has lost money lately - on the Cleveland Browns maybe that lawsuit too.
ABSOLUTELY!!! My first thought when I read the title!!!
I misread the the title as “Jimmy Buffet Buys Pilot Truck Stops....”
Hmmm... I thought he wanted to make money.
There must be a LOT of subsidy involved.
Begs the question:
Who is REALLY paying for this ‘electrification’???
Well...as long as he doesn’t get rid of those little pecan roll candies.
This sh!t is getting out of control.
I wonder if that had anything to do with the increase in the price of diesel fuel?
Diesel in 2017 $2.65 per gallon.
Diesel in 2021 $4.98 per gallon.
Of course you can just cover the top of the truck with solar cells and reduce its cargo capacity to something like 100 pounds, and make sure it has a coefficient of drag of something like 0.2, and only a few wheels for less rolling friction, and a driver that weighs less than 150 pounds and the whole thing can just roll along on solar power on a clear day.
At this point in time, I want nothing to do with EVs. The ecology attendant to battery manufacturing, and the uncertainty of sufficient range depending on heat or cold conditions, is too shaky. But things progress inexorably. And one of these days somebody, possibly named Musk, is going to come up with a cheaper, long life, mega powerful new battery, and the lid will be off. Buffet does not spend billion$ willy-nilly. He sees a future for EVs.
It will be interesting to see how they react when someone blows their horn screaming at them while flipping them the bird with a case of "road rage"......run that by the IA people when you get a chance... Im sure they are working on it ........./s
” But apparently it’s no problem to have self-driving 40-ton vehicles on the road.”
The AI devices controlling the self driving 40 ton vehicles won’t be high on drugs or dead tired from piloting the truck down the highway for 8 hours without a break.
It's not going to be like his Occidental deal.
-PJ
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