I would say that around 90% of the people buying SUVs absolutely do not need them. It is idiotic to try to build giant electric cars, because the weight of the battery compared to the car gets way to heavy. Suck up your ego and buy small city eletric cars, problem solved.
All this quibbling about cars and nobody's butchering their family pets or children yet... a mid-sized dog puts a Jeep to shame for its total environmental impact, and raising a child is even worse! Swallow your ego and kill your kids, problem solved. In all seriousness a lot could be improved by having cities planned in rational, modern arrangements instead of doing what my local state capital of Melbourne does; placing all major services, infrastructure and employment opportunities as far as possible from where people can actually afford to live. We've got a huge problem with traffic on the roads leading between the city and everywhere else, compounded by inadequate public transport. It's so difficult to actually reach employers that it's having a notable impact on unemployment figures, since some people just can't afford to spend 3+ hours a day on the road. And the state government paid 1 billion+ a few years back to cancel a road project that would have eased the congestion by allowing freight to bypass the city. Gotta love it when politics and bad urban planning undoes 90% of all the little efficiencies people build into their lifestyles to help the environment.
Well that wouldnt change the emissions of the truck. The idea of a hybrid car / truck engine is, that you can drive solely on the electric part of the engine to avoid emissions and only run the diesel engine when needed. But to have an electric motor with enough power to run a fully loaded truck you need a big electric motor and a battery with enough power. Maybe you dont need them for their exact purpose, but when you get older its nice to not to bend over much when getting stuff from your trunk. And not everyone has a use for small electric cars.
I feel like the Old World of Darkness handled firearms pretty well. Sorta helps that their system was also leaps and bounds superior to the D20 system. Well, Neo didn't necessarily die so much as become one (hur hur) with the Matrix, so he could just be alive inside of it. And Trinity doesn't have to be alive to exist herself as a construct he/The Matrix built. Shit, if they do what I would want to do to continue a franchise like that, Neo is currently playing Architect against the will of the Matrix and it used her mind to build an adversary to challenge him/throw him off balance. Would help to continue the themes they wanted to shove down our throats with the previous films and would keep a fourth film from just being another stale sequel.
The batteries are there to further increase efficiencies. Why use brakes to turn the energy spent accelerating that load into heat when you can use the electric motor as a generator to recover that energy and use it to accelerate the load again? You could probably get away with a Tesla-sized battery, 350V and 75kWh. That is ~1200lbs, of course, but that can actually improve traction on the vehicle. Also, note that one of the prototype hybrid semis was running a 4.3L V6 on propane for the engine, with a ~150hp electric motor for power. That combination was a lot lighter than the Caterpillar 3408 diesel engine originally in the truck (1800kg), adding a 1200lb battery gets the total powerpack weight back to about the same as the big diesel.
Energy recovery is already done in hybrid and fully electric cars. But the best efficency i heard of (BMW 3 from 2018) is between 62,5 and 64,2 % cause you still lose energy through friction, heat etc. But as you are int the US take a look at the Peterbilt Trucks. I heard they are doing some of the first hybrid / electric models. Those trucks will noone buy in the EU, as they are to long with that bonnet. It takes to moch of the overall lenght so the trailers have to be shorter.
If the technical (and economical!) side of the design should prove sound, I believe someone will follow with a truck designed to fit the European market. We have enough companies that make semitrailer trucks here.
Oh, sure, but when truck companies are chasing 5% improvements in fuel consumption via aerodynamic refits, you'd better believe that they are paying attention to hybrid trucks! Series-hybrid aka diesel-electric is much simpler mechanically than the parallel hybrid systems cars are using. Engine spins generator, electric motor spins wheels. US truck companies do make 'cab-over' designs, they're preferred for short-haul trucks in the US due to shorter overall length. Basically, typically you see those long 'conventional' trucks for long-haul Over The Road shipping, 'cab-over' trucks working in the ports and in cities, with the occasional exception for moving companies using cab-overs for long-haul work to save changing trucks/drivers.
Not as much as you think MAN and Scania are part of the VW Company. The other point is politicians and manager of car companies forcing themself to go full electric. Especially car company managers that overslept change and are no in full panic runing incircles not knowing what to do. I know there are "cab over" designs, but i only found the Peterbuilt ones with a hybrid engine. The thing is the max length for a truck with trailer is 16m all over Europe, so if you go for a cab design you lose the length in the trailer which means less cargo, ergo less money earned. The other point is, as i said above, hybrid isnt really wanted from politics to managers, so there are other ideas for fully electric trucks, like catenaries combined with a small battery. (same technic as some city trains or bumper cars use).
I wonder if there's a push for more trolleybuses nowadays, seems like it'd be much easier/cheaper to install than a tram, but avoids the need of whacking great batteries that a full electric bus needs (though still have a small one so they can get themselves back on the wires). They were common in West Yorkshire in the '50s and' 60s but were replaced by diesel buses when they started to wear out, in hindsight I bet a lot of people wish we'd kept them.
Trolleybus systems also avoid the most cumbersome part of installing a tram network - digging up the road for rails. Installing the wires is comparatively simple. With a semi-hybrid system, say, a battery on board with up to an hour or two range, they'd be ideal for a lot of metro systems - especially if there's road closures preventing a tram going their intended route, they can just divert until they reach the power cables again. They also don't turn the road into deathtraps for cyclists, unless the cyclists are extremely tall. AFAIK though one issue is bus and trams, having a wider uptake overall, mean their systems work out cheaper to maintain even after a higher startup cost for the trams. There's like 300 trolleybus services worldwide compared to countless light rail and regular bus services, so spares and replacement vehicles come a lot cheaper.
The ones my dad rode to school on were double deckers, so they'd have to be very tall indeed to be at risk :P Apparently two other main issues were de-lining, where the pole comes away from the line so the conducter had to get out a big stick and hook it back on, and the fact that points were manually operated, but a modern system with pantographs and automated switching would solve that. Spares are obviously an issue but with all electric buses becoming more common it seems like there would be more overlap.
Pure-electric with batteries works fine if you're not demanding a huge range and rapid recharging. Remember how I said a Tesla's battery pack is 1200lbs, and a 150hp electric motor is 1400lbs? A big diesel like a Cat 3408 is ~4200lbs, so pure electric is lighter, even if you use the existing transmission. Personally, I'd have the all-electric truck weigh about the same as a diesel, and use the 'saved' weight (from engine and fuel system being removed) for more battery. UPS trucks average ~25mph in their day (covering ~300miles/day), so you might really need a 500+km range for an in-town delivery truck. But the trucks also have a pretty long downtime at night to recharge.
Our local DHL franchise uses electric vans for local deliveries, but we're not what you'd call a large city, or even a small city, or even a large town really... Let's just say that Gen Con had a larger population than our entire island :P
More public transportation options are always well received. The time I spent in Europe was made great by the fact that between subway and foot you can get to most places relatively quickly and simply. By contrast Miami is downright hostile to public transit. We have buses but they are few and always late, plus they get caught in the horrible traffic caused by the fact nobody takes them. The dealeship lobbies keep blocking MetroRail expansions. It just sucks all around.
A lot of city buses in my region (I live in Western Maryland, but mean the whole state, and I refuse to call it DC Metro or Baltimore Metro, but for those of you who don't know US geography. the DC/Baltimore area) use propane and have for decades. Have you seen the super short haul single-seaters? Google tells me they are called "terminal tractors." I literally live on the 81/70 interchange (literally) and see a lot of those around the local warehouses.
@Section9 Problem is, the political wish here is to have all electric vehicles replace everything, as anything not fully electric is the devil. So cargo trucks like a Tesla 3 etc. I know there are some small cargo vehicles in the range of 7,5 tonnes for postal delivery etc. in the sities. But thats not enough as anything burning fossil fuel is made by the devils even if you need it as a bridge technology. @Brother Smoke You must only been in the bigger cities, going more rural where i life you can hope for tree busses at the best if there is no school. I even know some villages where only to busses go through. Next problem, noone here wants to be a bus driver.
I was mostly in Germany, but did stick to cities. Frankfurt, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, Amsterdam and Prague
And all that does is shift the source of the carbon pollution. Especially since most of Europe went into a brainless panic after Fukushima and shut down their nuclear plants. [expletives deleted] Dumbasses. Not locally, but around Seattle and the other ports they seem to be very common. (I'm like 300miles/500km from the nearest seaport)
