For the USA Going All Electric Semi Trucks is Like Getting All of Iraq’s Oil Without War

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Jordan of the Limiting Factor goes into detail on electric semi trucks and the megacharging that will be needed. I will go over the scale of the shift for electric trucks. The motivation is that it will make trucks about 30% cheaper to operate by saving 80% of the fuel costs. It also means countries like China will import a lot less oil and can be energy independent. This is a huge deal in terms of the security of a country. China can be cut off from the 10 million barrels per day of oil that they import but they have access to their own coal and their own solar, wind and hydro. It is a economic and strategic no-brainer for companies and countries to shift to electric trucks. As much effort as the US put into conquering Iraq would go into getting off an Iraq level of oil with electric trucks.

There is a 300-member industry group called Charin that is working on standards for charging electric trucks. Those standards are to start rolling out in 2024. Their proposed standard is a 3.75 Megawatt charging system.

Tesla Megacharger will be about 2 to 2.5 megawatt charging. Tesla may increase it later.

Jordan notes that if 24 electric semi trucks charged at four stalls and their were six megapacks then the peak and overall electricity drawn would be equal to a 400,000 square foot commercial office building. This would draw 24 megawatt hours per day at 1 megawatt all day.

If there were 500 electric semi trucks charging at a major distribution point then all of the power of a nuclear reactor or two coal plants would be needed for the peak load if all trucks were charging at the same time for a half hour. However, using all of the power of a nuclear reactor for a year is 8.76 TWh of power per year. 24000 electric semi trucks driving 100,000 miles per year would not charge every day. They would be driving 273 miles per day. Average US large trucks drive 60,000 miles per year which is 164 miles per day. This means the electricity for 50,000 electric semis driving 100,000 miles could be handled with 1 gigawatt nuclear reactor and about 10,000 megapacks and 83,000 electric semi trucks driving 60,000 miles could be handled by 1 gigawatt nuclear reactor and 10,000 megapacks. This would be $210M of megapacks and another $200-500 million of extra installation and other infrastructure.

The United States added about 90 TWh of electricity from wind power and 35 TWh from solar in 2022. China added 160 GW of wind, solar capacity in 2023. The US makes 4000 TWh of electricity every year.

The fastest ramp of electricity energy at the scale of 200-400 TWH per year is pushing more natural gas and coal through existing coal and gas plants. There is under-utilized capacity at those existing plants to perhaps a 1000 TWh addition over 4-6 years. This also involves using mostly existing grid and power distribution. The net climate impact would be close to neutral as we reduce oil needs. The fastest option when pushing to get new power production involves solar and wind. The solar farms and solar over commercial buildings and parking lots would be positioned in the right spots. Building a new power plants (nuclear, coal, natural gas) would take many years and would require long power lines. Substations also take years to get planned and made.

5 TWh of renewable energy was curtailed in 2020 in Texas. 30,000 semi-trucks driving 100,000 miles per year with megapacks buffering the charging in Texas would take up the total spare overflow of unusable power. There is also some other spare power where systems are not running all out.

Tesla plans to make 50,000 electric semi trucks in 2024. Those trucks will need 100 gigawatts of power. This would be 876 terawatt hours per year of power.

Adding 800,000 electric Semi trucks every year from 2027 onwards means the US must scale to China levels of new solar and wind. 800,000 electric semi trucks per year would soak up all of the solar and wind power added each year. The average semi truck actually only drives about 60,000 miles per year. This would mean 1,200,000 electric Semi per year could be added with a bit more than doubing the solar and wind added for other reasons.

The shift of all 4 million diesel trucks in the US to solar would take 5-10 years at around this pace. There would also need to be all of the electricity for light and medium trucks. This would offset about 3-4 million barrels per day of oil in the US and 20-30 million barrels per day globally.

The largest solar farms in the US produce 400-600 megawatts.

Globally there are three solar farms over 2 gigawatts and few more over 15 gigawatts.

39 thoughts on “For the USA Going All Electric Semi Trucks is Like Getting All of Iraq’s Oil Without War”

  1. These numbers don’t work for over the road truckers.
    I commonly drive 600 miles per day and occasionally drive over 700.
    If I can’t drive these distances I really can’t afford to be a truck driver.

    • The Tesla Semi gets a fair range right now and that will be improved by 20% with updates that are already known.
      However there are lithium sulphide batteries that have just been experimentally developed and which will be in production in 2 years. This is ahead of solid state battery Technology. The Li S batteries weigh half as much as the current Tesla batteries for the same power output.
      Thus the range will be able to be doubled 2yrs from now. This will give more range than can be legally driven in any state. And more range than any long haul driver might require.
      So for now the local haul trucks will be converted and the city charge infrastructure built out. But 2 years from now they will need the interstate system infrastructure added.
      I would not expect that more than 10 to 20 percent of the US fleet can be changed to EV each year even with gigafactories working full out. Thus expect a Decade long process.

    • The Tesla Semi gets a fair range right now and that will be improved by 20% with updates that are already known.
      However there are lithium sulphide batteries that have just been experimentally developed and which will be in production in 2 years. This is ahead of solid state battery Technology. The Li S batteries weigh half as much as the current Tesla batteries for the same power output.
      Thus the range will be able to be doubled 2yrs from now. This will give more range than can be legally driven in any state. And more range than any long haul driver might require.
      So for now the local haul trucks will be converted and the city charge infrastructure built out. But 2 years from now they will need the interstate system infrastructure added.
      I would not expect that more than 10 to 20 percent of the US fleet can be changed to EV each year even with gigafactories working full out. Thus expect a Decade long process.

  2. Why is no one considering range extention Technology? These systems produce electricy at half the gramsod CO2/kWh of the grid and can be fueled with existing infrastructure. They can cogenerate providing cab heat and are refuled in minutes not hours. And no need to build new power plants or charging infrastructure.

    • and with tesla semi’s current efficiency
      4,000,000 trucks in the USA × 60,000 miles/truck/year × 1.7 kWh/mile = 408 TWh/year

    • 4,000,000 trucks in the USA × 60,000 miles/truck/year = 240 billion miles
      240 billion miles × (900kWh/500 miles) = 432 TWh/year

      432 TWh × 0.08 gallons/kWh = 3.456 billion gallons of petroleum liquids to produce the electricity needed to power the trucks.
      https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=6

      https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/01/summarizing-us-trucking-statistics.html
      Mileage:
      302.14 billion miles travelled by all registered trucks in 2020.
      177.26 billion miles travelled by combination trucks in 2020.
      Fuel Consumption:
      44.8 billion gallons of fuel were consumed by those trucks used for business purposes in 2020.
      35.8 billion gallons of diesel fuel.
      9.0 billion gallons of gasoline.

      44.8 billion gallons/302.14 billion miles × 240 billion miles = 35.59 billion gallons of fuel

      3.456 billion gallons of petroleum liquids VS 35.59 billion gallons of fuel to travel the same distance

      Therefore switching to electric trucks could save ~32.14 billion gallons of petroleum liquids.

      • Therefore switching to electric trucks could save ~32.14 billion gallons of petroleum liquids per year.

  4. How many miles are those Electric Semis going to be able to handle with gross weight of 80,000 lbs. With temperatures in the 20’s or in the negative 🤔 this last cold snap we had, there was people reported they couldn’t use there Tesla cars because it was to cold to take a charge☹️

  5. I have a few questions the story is very interesting to me but left a few questions unanswered.
    Over 90% of trucks on the road are owned by truckers who have less than four trucks . Where will the .money come to afford new trucks? The avg. Electric truck will be over $250k . (Truck drivers and small fleet owners will not be able to afford that cost of capital).
    Over 75% of freight is delivered within 48 hours. How long will it take to charge the trucks?
    If truckers have to wait hours to charge their truck every 200 miles it will put them out of hours of service compliant. This will then result in higher prices that will be charged to the consumer . This will also means truck drivers will make less money which will result in higher turnover rates.
    How can these issues be fixed while also going electric?

    • By going to battery swaps, instead of charging. You’d need to standardize the batteries, and design them for quick swaps, but it’s certainly technically feasible to swap in a charged battery in a matter of a minute or so.

      Then the charging stations could charge the batteries on a less aggressive schedule, monitor their condition, replace them as necessary.

      Under this model, actually charging the battery in the vehicle would be a fairly rare event.

      • Yea this is what they should do for electric cars too not just trucks. But doesn’t seem like it will happen anytime soon.

        • My tire shop told me the new Tesla the complete bottom is battery. They had a woman come in with a slow leak and when they tried to jack it up, there was nowhere safe to put the jacks. All they could do was air it up and send her 4 hours down the road to a dealer.

  6. Another solution for storing power at much cheaper cost.

    A Durable, Inexpensive and Scalable Redox Flow Battery Based on Iron Sulfate and Anthraquinone Disulfonic Acid

    https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/ab84f8

    Since the solution can be charged and stored in a tank with no need for extra electrical production equipment, you could easily store a large amount of active material at low cost. Maybe we could use all the diesel and gasoline tanks we won’t be needing anymore.

  7. America don’t believe this lie!!!
    We can not afford this. There isn’t enough parking spots now to charge these trucks. Plus our grid can’t handle it.
    You guys are just making America weak with this ideal.
    Don’t you understand our foes are just laughing at us!?

  8. If fusion power somehow becomes a reality sooner rather than later, where we get the extra power supply be an issue. That might be for a different topic entirely, though.

    Still, it’d certainly help. If we push too many large EVs like that into service too quickly, there could be problems. Even if they were incredibly viable, you’ll never he able to twist enough politician’s arms in the U.S. [where I am] to get them to pass legislation allowing for more wind power generation unless it generates income (I have such a fantastic level of trust in politician’s, can’t you tell?).

  10. “Adding 80,000 electric Semi trucks every year from 2025 onwards means the US must scale to China levels of new solar and wind.”

    Put down the Koolaid, Brian, before you OD on it! We need lots of new electric infrastructure whether or not we do a mass adoption of electric vehicles, and solar and especially wind are about the least cost effective approaches here, as they require storage conventional sources of power don’t.

    • The easily rampable electricity energy is pushing more natural gas and coal through existing coal and gas plants. The net climate impact would be close to neutral as we reduce oil needs. The fastest option when pushing to new powerplants involves solar and wind. The solar farms and solar over commercial buildings and parking lots would be positioned in the right spots. Building a new power plants (nuclear, coal, natural gas) would take many years and would require long power lines. Substations also take years to get planned and made.

      • The problem here is that you’re treating solar and wind as though they were reliable. As though you can actually count on them to be there on a predictable basis. Your entire discussion above tacitly assumes that: You omit any discussion of the random factor.

        Just forget wind, it’s so radically unreliable outside of a few locations that it’s almost never a sane choice.

        Now, I’ll grant that the Sun at least comes up every day. But on overcast days a solar panel may produce only 10% of its rated output. And it’s sometimes overcast for weeks at a time!

        Are the trucks supposed to stop running at those times? Are you planning on each charging farm having weeks worth of storage? Or having 10 times the necessary capacity in good weather? No, of course not. There’s not enough tricky accounting in the world to make that look sensible.

        Really, you’re planning on having enough excess conventional capacity that the system will work without the solar. And then just idling that conventional capacity most of the time. Driving up the cost of conventional power. Only, you’re not charging all that excess capacity against the solar plant. You’re just tacitly assuming you’ll have it, despite your having driven up its cost by idling it.

        Deliberately using an unreliable source of power, that has to be backed up by reliable power sources deliberately left idle most of the time, is never going to be a sane energy policy. I’m disappointed in you pretending that it would be.

        Modern civilization requires RELIABLE energy to function. Solar, deployed as you propose, simply isn’t reliable. Never mind that it looks good if you average everything, totally ignoring the unreliable availability.

        You’ve cooked up a recipe for civilizational collapse every time the weather gets bad. It’s simply irresponsible to discuss solar power without explicitly explaining how you’ll cope with a cloudy month. Or this annual thing we call “winter”.

        • Here’s an idea: Forget the huge batteries which would only handle good weather, but fail to be any help when it got cloudy. Co-site the solar panels with natural gas turbines and all the infrastructure necessary for their functioning, and then calculate the costs fully accounting for the need for them to make the system reliable.

          Don’t price out a system that only works in good weather. Price out a system that works 24/365 with real world weather. And see if you’re not financially better off just omitting the solar panels.

          • Make sure your calculations are based on the power plant performance at it’s lowest point of the year, rather than it’s maximum theoretical. A study in Turkey shows that the monthly solar plant output (kWh) over the course of a year may vary by a factor of four between winter and summer. Also, you better do regional calculation of requirements based not on average number of trucks, but take into account seasonal maximums, such as the harvest seasons, when trucking requirements spikes in the Midwest.

            https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/chem-2022-0190/html?lang=en

            Brian isn’t wrong that you will get permits to build wind and solar faster than coal, gas or nuclear and the builds happen quicker too. But Brett is certainly correct that your transition to EVs must be based on reliable power sources.

            • These are all good points about the intermittent behavior of solar, but I bet they will build them anyway because they will be cheaper whether we have power blackouts or not. Not saying this is good. A bad thing, but whatever brings the most profit will win. All the continuous power plants, fossil fuel, will go bankrupt and we will have no backup.

              If part of the solar was used to make some sort of fuel for back up, what would the easiest to synthesize and then utilize in turbines or in fuel cells? Alcohol? Methane?

              • That was the problem that produced the Texas blackouts: Their electricity “market” had no provision for paying more for reliability, the utility had to buy whatever was cheapest at any given moment, even if that meant dropping a baseline plant in favor of a wind gust in a field of windmills somewhere.

                It was almost precisely designed to drive reliable sources off the market in favor of unreliable.

                Maybe it even was designed with that goal in mind. A lot of the ‘renewable’ theorists make no bones about the fact that they want to crash the grid system and force everybody into relying on locally produced power.

        • I agree with your main point buuuutttt… I thought the numbers show that wind is MORE reliable than solar.
          Though this is probably highly location dependent. Which is OK if you’re hooking the windmills up to the grid, but not so good if you want a self contained “recharging station” halfway along a remote highway.

          Remember, we USED to have a wind powered transportation system that covered the whole world.

      • “…Building a new power plants (nuclear, coal, natural gas) would take many years and would require long power lines…”

        There’s a pro solar site I linked to before where he has a very interesting take on why solar will be ramped up far, far faster than conventional power sources. Regulations and speed of improvement. . Solar has next to no regulations and any efficiencies, improvements, etc are immediately moved tight into production. This means it’s way faster to add solar than any other energy source. I think he has a point.

        “…Solar is competitive because it’s cheap, easy, safe with unskilled labor, and not a proliferation risk. Nuclear construction today can be done safely. But solar is safe by default. Solar is cheap because it is simple. It doesn’t require X-ray weld inspection of stainless steel containment vessels. It requires only generic foundations and a generic electrical connector.

        But I think this comparison neglects the single most important reason why solar is crushing nuclear. After all, a much simpler and cheaper nuclear plant could be invented tomorrow!

        The reason solar is winning is because the manufacturing technology can be iterated every six months, so the learning curve is much faster…”

        https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/is-nuclear-power-a-solution-to-climate-change/

        • Back when we were first building nuke plants, and hit the peak build rate, nuclear had a similar advantage. It’s not something that nuclear is inherently incapable of enjoying.

          The problem is that nuclear power is regulated today by people who want to shut down the industry. It’s one of the rare cases of regulatory capture where it was an industry’s enemies, rather than the industry itself, that captured the regulatory agency.

  11. Best cost efficient way to encourage companies to electrify their Semi fleet is government low cost financing new ones rather than direct subsidies. The savings will become apparant this way at a lower cost.

      • Passing the atmosphere through a white-hot heater in an open Brayton cycle is the only viable path forward with a 10MW mini nuke that fits on ONE trailer. Such a thing would be a tremendous hazard and not use the fuel well.

        • I don’t think what’s meant here is that the entire system fits in one truck load. Just that every part of it will fit on a truck for delivery to where it will be installed.

        • Sure it would be more expensive compared to normal electricity and normal fission plants but that is probaby OK because it isn’t competing with grid electricity. Power from a 10MW plant is in competition with diesel which on a kilowatts to kilowatts basis is very expensive.

          There are obviously massive hurdles in terms of regulation, politics, etc and these probably can’t be overcome.

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