Researchers identify near-term opportunity for heavy-duty electric trucks

Diesel’s days are numbered?........................

Of course they're numbered. The question is how many digits are used to number them.

Tesla debuted their Tesla Semi in 2017. Have you seen it on the road yet?

The switch to BEV fleets would offer a significant reduction in fuel costs and require less routine maintenance, another key advantage for fleets.

True, electric engines do require less maintenance in general than combustion ones. But cost savings are temporary - what do you think will happen to the price of electricity when everyone has an electric car? Especially for companies that have massive power draws? Overall cost per mile will eventually balance out close to the same as it is now. Plus you'll be paying way more for your AC and lighting and so on!

The team found that most (~80%) of the substations studied could supply the time-varying loads of 100 trucks charged at 100 kW/vehicle without any upgrades, and an additional 10% of substations could avoid upgrades if fleets used "smart" charging.

Time-varying loads of 100 trucks? So what does that mean, no more than 4-5 trucks per hour per substation? How many truck depots / warehouses are there per substation? How many trucks does each yard have? Does each company only get to charge one truck for one hour at assigned times of the day?

So the substations can handle the load, but what about further local distribution? Are the lines going from the substation to the businesses that'll be using the power big enough to deliver that much power? Or do all of those need to be upgraded, and who pays for that? The companies that need it? The power companies (everybody!)?

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