Comparing a semi to an electric train powered by high voltage lines or a ship powered by onboard diesel or nuclear generators is just silly. While it is not in doubt that electric motors could move or assist in moving a semi, the question is how big would they have to be and where are they going to get their power? Even if electric motor assist allows you to reduce the "size" of the diesel engine, it is still going to be a massive engine. Then you've got to find room for a very large electric motor. THEN you've got to think about the size of the battery pack and where you are going to put that. And we haven't even gotten to costs yet.

It would probably make more sense to redesign semi's shapes altogether and make them more friendly to airflow. Giant boxes on wheels aren't exactly aerodynamic.

-Tim

2006 Mercury Mariner Hybrid AWD
Black with Pebble interior
Premium Package with Nav & Moonroof



Current ODO: 26,152
Typical Drive: 20 min crosstown in heavy traffic (3.5mi there and back twice a day)


532 Gallons of gas saved
That's 10,642 lbs less CO2 emitted

Don't worry about size or torque or power for an electric motor - superior to an ICE in all three by a fair margin, for instance the Tesla's 248 hp pk electric motor is 10" diameter by 14" long. The fuel burning engine powering a generator in the series hybrid truck would only need to supply average power which is mostly rolling & air resistance at highway speeds. The battery pack size or cost would be no problem whatsoever, since it mostly only needs to supply the energy of acceleration - a 55,000 lb truck would only require a 6 kw-hr battery pack to supply the energy to accelerate it to 60 mph, the small Tesla sports car has a 44 kwh battery pack. In addition you would need to store enough energy to get up big hills (mainly in the mountains) at speed - how fast can a fully loaded truck go up a steep grade? Typically you would need about 5x the energy for that purpose, meaning a 30 kwh battery pack, still smaller than the Tesla electric sports car. You've seen the series hybrid buses I've linked to, using old technology:
http://www.fevehicle.com/services.html
Believe me it is no problem to do this and truck efficiency is likely to at least triple, or more if you can then replace the diesel engine with a much more efficient turbine (terrible at torque & acceleration - don't need it - the electric drive takes care of that). All that is needed here is the will to change & start taking fuel economy seriously, it would also help if large Li-Ion battery packs were produced in quantity, since the scum-of-the-earth arseholes at Chevron have killed the large NiMH battery packs.

I read the petition and had to wonder how much of this bill is really about reducing pollution and how much is about tapping a new revenue source....

And then California will wonder why all the ships are unloading in Mexico and everything going to Wally World gets loaded onto trains and trucks to be distributed in the U.S.

Long Beach port tariff
Well, either it would eliminate shipping altogether - eliminating pollution there - or it will have no impact on how much shipping goes on there - doing nothing to pollution. So it can't both do nothing for pollution and send all shipping contracts to Mexico.

The truth is it will probably cause a mix of the 2 to occur - basically it causes cost-benefit to tip slightly more one way for companies, and they'll route accordingly. I don't know that it's the best way to reduce the pollution at the port, but it is a good way to reduce the growth of how much of it goes on there.

What I would really prefer to see is a tariff on air pollution created by each of the vehicles, but assigning those fees could be an enforcement nightmare. However, such a tariff would do less to discourage volume of shipments and more to encourage less pollution.

Thanks for having a look nitram, I'm surprised at how much interest people genuinely show on this forum. Very cool.

MACK hybrids
Way cool evone - that makes a lot of sense to me. So far as batteries, they could either use LiIon as Tesla chose to, and suffer the long-term life issues (there would have to be a replacement midway in the truck's life - but a recyclable replacement), or they can make arrays of NiMH batteries to get around the size limitations, much the same way Tesla intends to use arrays of LiIon batteries rather than one single giant one. According to Tesla, arranging batteries in arrays like this actually provides easier access to high voltage (power) when you need it, because you can tap them in sequence or all at once, and the voltage adds when it's all at once.

Prius 2006, bought September 14:

I should have expanded on my point more - it is late.

What I was getting at is that by imposing a per container fee, shippers might feel it is less costly to unload in Mexico only to have the goods shipped to California by other means, thus causing more pollution overall than there is currently at the Long Beach port. Of course I am guessing and could be way off.

Much of the imported goods destined for Boston get unloaded in Maine or Canada and are trucked south rather than deal with the Port of Boston and the things that go on there. Other than a few container ships, a weekly LNG tanker, Volkswagens and some outbound scrap metal, there is very little activity in Boston, a formerly busy port.

Modern cross ocean ships are powered by diesel-electric series hybrid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary_2#Technical
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom...eas_%28ship%29

Ken@Japan

Niether are what I would call a true hybrid drives. The props are turned solely by electric motors that get power from diesel or gas turbine generators. If they stored excess power for use in leiu of or in combination with the diesel/turbine, even if just for short bursts, then I would call it a series hybrid. As described, they are just diesel-electric drives, similar to the way locomotives have worked for decades.

Long Beach Port Tariff
The trick there, nitram, is that the stuff coming into Long Beach isn't destined for Long Beach; it's destined for everything all over the West Coast and inland... and even the East Coast. Priuses destined for Boston probably come in at that port. I don't know if you've ever driven Long Beach, but it's truly amazing how large that port is... it's astounding. The port area alone is probably geographically larger than all of Boston.

So the point is if everything came in through Mexico instead, most of it would never see Long Beach - that would be a needless detour. Which is no solution to pollution - one of the most common setbacks for any environmental legislation is its regional limitations. For example, microprocessors are generally manufactured in Asia and Europe, then shipped here - partly because they pollute so much. Some call it "exporting our polluting industries." Maybe. I don't think that's entirely fair though - it's up to those countries to step it up as well, so that polluting industries pay a tariff anywhere they go, and have a large economic incentive to eliminate the polluting parts of their process and products.

Of course the worst part of this bill, I'd say, is a ship pulling in with 1 shipping crate produces the same pollution but pays the smallest tariff. I don't know how realistic that likelihood is, but it's a clear sign that the plan needs work. And, a ship that pollutes half another but carries the same number of crates pays the same tariff. A ship that burns all its diesel at sea to charge the batteries then runs on battery alone for the final 200 miles coming into port to avoid polluting into the Los Angeles valley also pays the same tariff. That last one would be ideal to encourage.

The one thing that makes this bill make sense to me is the critical issue of Long Beach especially. It's very obvious that the smog problem is concentrated around that massive, massive port. People say "It's all the cars exhaling into that valley" - but the San Fernando Valley, where I live, has a lot of cars just the same and no smog. Why? Because we've got a mountain range between us and Long Beach. So perhaps those tariffs will drive a lot of ships to any place where the fumes don't settle into a valley - Oregon perhaps.

Diesel-Electric Cruiseships - Disjoint Hybrids
Pretty interesting Ken. It's funny that something like a cruise ship - which for the most part travels at one steady rate, rather than varying its speed wildly like a car - would find it more effective to derive 0 power from the diesel engine and everything from the electric. I suppose that in both cases the diesel acts as a power-dense battery allowing all of the non-engine electrical systems to run anyway - but to not use them at all for propulsion is surprising. Wikipedia spends a moment justifying it as easier to maintain, and providing more immediacy of power in any direction. Technically speaking, those ships are more ready to move to an all-electric system than any car; once Tesla's done with their sportscar, perhaps they should get in touch with Royal Caribbean.

However, I wonder what freight ships use - if they've found the same cost efficiencies or if they run straight off of diesel. In any case, all of these ships are spewing a lot of pollutants out the stacks whenever they're moving - and maybe even when they're just sitting with the lights on.

I made that "disjoint hybrids" term up, but I think it's fitting for what they do - they're less hybrids and more electric-only machines that happen to get their electricity from polluting diesel engines.

Prius 2006, bought September 14:

Here is an interesting press release Soopah....

http://www.portoflosangeles.org/Pres...er_Project.pdf

It is along the lines of what I said in a very early post in this thread - the main polluters may not be the ships. Don't get me wrong, ships spew smoke and pollute but I'd love to see the numbers comparing the pollution from the ships to the pollution from the hostlers and all the diesel locomotives in that facility.

I'd also be curious as to what the ships do when they get in port. Do they keep the boilers going once they are pierside or do they plug into shore power and go "cold-iron"? My ship almost never shut down the boilers completely unless we were scheduled to be in port for a while - takes too long to get them up and running again.

Of course a ship going on shore power requires electricity generated somewhere....someone else's valley I guess. It ain't easy to solve this one. Hard to believe that with all the logistics that goes into importing products from China and other east Asia countries that it can be sold so cheaply at Wally's. And what is the total cost?

Just a comment about where Toyota hybrids destined from the East Coast come into the US: The Port of New Jersey or a port in Florida.

Very interesting thread. I think it would be great if big trucks had a hybrid option. I am sure that would contribute to improved air quality in all of our major urban areas.