[Music] transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the us and within Transportation medium and heavy duty trucks account for 23% making these trucks battery electric will reduce emissions I'll put links to reputable studies in the notes some of the use cases are actually quite easy to achieve with electric trucks local driving lots of stop Ando I've covered many of these success stories in my other videos but the one application that naysayers love to point to are Long Haul trucks over the road Logistics responsible for getting the things we buy to the places they need to be most of the battery electric tractors available today weren't designed for this use of course Tesla has their semi and has demonstrated it can haul loads hundreds of miles a day and they have plans to build out a network of chargers so they can quickly reach charge away from their home base but that hasn't happened yet and the Tesla semi is currently not a sleeper cap which is a must have for those drivers enter Revo they have a concept no it's not a concept they have a working solution that turns any diesel semi- into an electrified plug-in hybrid you can see how it works from their videos the vehicle is 100% electric it attaches in between the tractor or the semi TR and the trailer carrying Freight the swap happens autonomously like Tesla's summon feature on its cars the driver then needs to make the connections for the air brakes and the electrical signals and perform a safety check when the tractor drives away the revoy vehicle helps to push the combined weight along using electricity greatly reducing the load on the diesel engine and improving fuel economy they claim emissions can be reduced by up to 85% and efficiency increases to 20 to 35 m per gallon those are all really impressive numbers it has regenerative breaking to help recover the energy It's Made in America compliant with fmvss and compliant with all the length and weight regulations it has a range of about 250 Mi your miles may vary and once the batter is empty you can keep on trucking using only the diesel engine then at the next swap station you grab a new one okay it's probably ridiculously EXP expensive right how about zero upfront expense just sign up and your trucks can be turned into plug-in hybrids in like five minutes revoy is based in San Francisco and like most tech startups they don't just want to sell a good product they want to disrupt the way of doing business you don't buy their vehicle you sign up like a SAS business model I guess it's a e power train as a service just pick the tier that best suits the mileage needs of your Fleet and you pay pay for that revoy pays for the vehicles they stage them at swapping stations along your routes they pay for the charging equipment the electricity and all the maintenance I've talked a lot about how great this thing is now let's talk about some potential limitations first the logistics of placing these electric vehicles at swapping stations along major highways revoy has stations currently in Dallas and Arkansas where drivers can drop off their EVS with an empty battery and pick up a fully charged one that means for every diesel truck that signs up you're going to need more than one of these EVS deployed in the field maybe the number is 1 point something per diesel truck that's a lot of assets and a lot of upfront Investments that needs to be made by revoy and their investors and they'll be at swapping stations that revoy builds with charging equipment and mechanics to keep them running use of telematics to know where the EVS are where they're going and the state of charge will help to maximize the efficiency of all these assets but it's still not a cheap operation the next thing I question is why didn't they make a tandem rear axle two axles would allow them to carry more weight more payload but looking at the numbers I think I know why diesel trucks are limited to 80,000 lb Max vehicle gross weight in order to travel on us interstate highways let's configure a setup for a long haul over the road truck start with a sleeper cab tractor weight varies based on the engine and the cab length let's use 19,000 lb because we want it to have dual axles to carry more a 53t dry van trailer weighs about 10,000 lb empty so that means we can carry up to about 51,000 lb of freight right wrong because we're going to hook up one of these Revo EVS to save money and pollute less that extra weight needs to come at the the expense of the cargo weight trucks are limited by the amount of total weight but also the amount of weight on each axle and other details to ensure that roads don't crumble and bridges don't break I'm going to make an edicated assumption here and say that this EV could weigh about 14,000 lb compare that to a Freightliner easa 4x2 Long Range model it has a larger battery but not as much body and Chassis as the Freightliner tractor truck so I think 14,000 is a fair estimate but it's only an estimate with that attach you now have to reduce the payload and things balance out to where it really only needs a single electric drive axle adding a second would just add cost and weight without increasing payload capability Revo says they meet all the requirements and it's on the road today so clearly they have it figured out but yes payload needs to be significant ific L reduced for this setup battery electric trucks like the Tesla semi are also heavier than a traditional diesel truck so they also suffer from lower payload but they are allowed to run a higher GVW of 82,000 lb because the rules were modified for them revoy could have argued that with this add-on it's running primarily on electricity so it also could get that added weight limit this would help them I don't have enough details about the revoy or the Tesla semi weights to confidently say which one can carry more payload but both have to lighten the load to make up for the batteries on board the Tesla semi has a battery about 900 KW hours the revoy vehicle has a smaller 525 KW hour battery but it's attached to a tractor that still has a diesel engine fuel tank and transmission and that all adds weight so it's not clear clear which combination weighs less another detail that has not been fully explained is how this EV drives the connections made at hookup are the standard air brakes and electrical for lights from the description it seems like their vehicle senses how much to push forward or in Reverse based on the forces at the Kingpin connection they call it a smart Kingpin they say it automatically adjust reversing using intelligent Computing so this thing has some kind of intelligence that's not fully explained maybe it's like a a hoverboard how it senses you're pivoting forward or backward it then knows how much to push and in which direction with the additional fifth wheel articulation backing up seems like it could be a challenge but they say intelligent Computing takes care of that in the video you can see that the rear wheels articulate to make them more maneuverable that adds cost and complexity and maintenance of having that rear drive axle articulate for steering ing but I assume it's necessary for maneuverability the last thing to consider is overall length again another Trucking detail that is governed by federal laws you wouldn't want to take this into cities or on tight roads and it doesn't need to this is meant to take Freight to distribution warehouses over long distances and then have smaller daycab battery electric trucks with less range take it from there eventually I believe that battery electric trucks will be capable of longdistance trucking sorry hydrogen but it won't happen quickly or be cheap at first so in the meantime significantly reducing diesel emissions and improving fuel efficiency of the existing trucks on the road is a great idea it won't come for free someone will have to pay for The Upfront investment to make this happen and it won't come without sacrifice less payload and longer trucks on the road I'll do a second video once I get more information about this interesting idea so how about you hit that like and sub subscribe button good buddy and thanks for watching
