One of the biggest surprises of my recent trip to France was that truck culture isn’t nearly as huge of a thing out there as it is in America. Sure, people own trucks, but they’re often rigs just barely bigger than a Japanese Kei truck. Maybe you’ll see a Ford Ranger, but that’s about it.
I wonder how a European visiting America for the first time feels when they see our wide roads crawling with Ford F-150s, Ram 1500s, Chevy Silverado 1500s, and their even bigger counterparts. Truck advertising sometimes gets as bombastic as America’s trucks are, but I think Sid Bridge has conjured up the most American truck commercial you’ve ever heard of, from the Morning Dump:
The orchestra quietly comes in, intensity low, as the camera begins to pan across a Ram truck, starting from the front quarter. The music builds as it slowly moves down the side of the Cummins-powered, crew cab, long bed behemoth, endlessly panning as the voiceover cuts on:
“The new Ram is long. A lot of things in your life are long. Like the loan term on your old Ram. The loan term on your new Ram. Your student loan. Your dick. Your new Ram truck. Your brother’s prison term. Your ex’s nose. (quick cutaway) This potato chip I found in the bag that somehow remained intact even though it’s long (cuts back to the Ram, still panning) Your mother-in-law’s lifespan. Your wife’s to-do list she compiled for you. Your list of friends who want you to help them move because you have a truck. Teddy Long. A long-neck ice cold beer – you know, that thing that never let you down. The Ram Truck. Holy shit this thing is long. Buy one.”
Camera reaches the rear bumper, music fades.
I have this Ram commercial stuck in my head, so you will too!
Rad Barchetta adds to it:
Please tell me there’s a “We Brake For Nobody” sticker on that bumper.
Manwich Sandwich also needs a mention here:
“Why Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Customers Are Double-Screwed Right Now”
I believe in the porn world, that’s known as ‘DP’
But wait until Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge/Ram customers get Triple-Screwed… that’s known as an ‘Air Tight’…
“ “To maintain the successful course, a strictly technology-agnostic path within the policy framework is essential.””
Blah blah blah… just another legacy auto exec wanted to dial back emissions mandates in a roundabout way.
The truth is, the policy framework IS technology-agnostic. It’s just that BEVs are the best solution compared to everything else. Anyone with a basic understanding of efficiency and the laws of thermodynamics would understand why BEVs are where it’s at.
Sadly it seems a lot of legacy automotive execs seem to lack this basic understanding of science.
Or even if they do understand, they’ll develop a convenient form of Amnesia so they can justify spending less on new tech investment that the shift to BEVs requires.
“Please try to come up for a slogan or marketing plan to sell any current Stellantis product.”
I’ll do more than that… I’ll give you a whole commercial:
Fuck you, old Chrysler customers!
If you’re dumb enough to keep buying our shit, you’re a big enough schmuck to come to your local Stellantis dealer!!!
Bad deals! Sky-high MSRPs!!! Cars that break down! Thieves!
If you think you’re going to find a bargain at Stellantis, you can kiss our ass!
It’s our belief that you’re such a stupid motherfucker, you’ll fall for this bullshit—GUARANTEED!!!
If you find a better deal, shove it up your ugly ass! You heard us right! SHOVE IT UP YOUR UGLY ASS!!!
Bring your trade! Bring your title! Bring your wife! We’ll fuck her! That’s right!
WE’LL FUCK YOUR WIFE!!!
Because as Stellantis customer, you’re fucked six ways from Sunday!
Take a hike to your local Stellantis dealer – Home of Challenge Pissing!
That’s right! CHALLENGE PISSING!
How does it work? If you can piss six feet in the air straight up and not get wet, you get no down payment!
Don’t wait! Don’t delay! Don’t fuck with us, or we’ll rip your nuts off!
Only at Stellantis, the only car maker that tells you to fuck off!
Hurry up, asshole! This event ends the minute after you write us a cheque, and it better not bounce or you’re a dead motherfucker!
Go to hell!!!
Stellantis! The worlds exclusive home of the worst deals and the meanest sons-of-bitches!!!
GUARANTEED!!!!
Have a great evening, everyone!
You know the kind of laughter you get that you CAN’T STOP, and it HURTS when you get done? This article did it for me.
I mean, the Ferd Fteenthousand commercial was *right there*…
Sorry, but it’s wild to me that the lack of truck culture in France was a surprise.
This is the correct take here.
COTD…
Yup. From all the movies about France I’ve seen(which is not very many) everyone drives 2cv’s and Renault 4’s. I’d be more shocked at even seeing a pickup truck. I remember watching top gear, the episode where they burn down the camper, and my mind being blow when I saw a dodge ram 1500 in England. How does that even fit on their country roads?
Mercedes’s recent experiences flying first class and hanging out in Yurp have been so delightful to read. It was so much newness all at once!
The truth is, the policy framework IS technology-agnostic. It’s just that BEVs are the best solution compared to everything else. Anyone with a basic understanding of efficiency and the laws of thermodynamics would understand why BEVs are where it’s at.
Well, I have several degrees in engineering and have taken a lot of thermodynamics, and do vehicle design professionally, and disagree with this statement. BEVs are good for certain use cases, but terrible for others. They really lose out badly with scale: as mass and speed increase BEV system efficiency decreases at an exponential rate, energy density is a harsh mistress.
So I guess a basic understanding tells you BEVs = da bestest! A more complex understanding is BEVs = good for some applications, terrible for others.
Out of curiosity and from an efficiency perspective, which specific applications are BEVs terrible for from your point of view?
In broad generalities: BEVs succeed when the impact of the batteries low energy density on the overall system efficiency can be minimized, and when vehicle speeds can be kept in a consistent narrow range to allow the most efficient use of electric motors. So relatively low speeds, and relatively light weights. Urban transportation is probably the best use case for BEVs- cars, small trucks, busses, scooters, ebikes, stuff in that vein are great to slap batteries on. Once you get heavier and faster, the need to expend energy just to carry your energy storage really piles on into a negative feedback loop. The math is currently iffy for say, long-haul semi trucks despite the Tesla Truck, and whatever the fuck Nikola was doing. Once you get much heavier than that, like freight trains or container ships the mass fraction of energy storage gets unacceptably high- you have to haul more battery than payload. Aerospace vehicles are the extreme example, because their energy use scales with mass as the doubling of a square, so while you can make a battery powered drone or small two-seater plane with acceptable range, a BEV airliner is a non-starter, eg something A320 or 737 size and speed would have like a theoretical max cruising range of maybe 100 miles with the very best batteries we can make in a lab. Once you factor in the necessary safety factors and regulatory requirements, you end up with a plane that can maybe take off, climb to 10000 feet, and then would be required by law to declare an emergency and turn around and land.
The trade-space for BEVs is: very efficient thermodynamics on direct energy usage, but terrible energy density. So the more battery you have to haul around (which takes energy), the worse BEVs get, because so much of your energy is just going into moving around the battery instead of the payload.
This is why the GM Hummer and Silverado EVs are engineering monstrosities that shouldn’t exist: when you have to make a 3000 lb battery pack for your 9000 lb vehicle, you are just pointlessly increasing the entropy of the universe.
You speak with wisdom. Electric golf carts are awesome. 18 wheelers not so much, despite the Musketeers plaintive cries to the contrary.
“ The math is currently iffy for say, long-haul semi trucks despite the Tesla Truck, and whatever the fuck Nikola was doing. “
I’d say the math for electric Semis is “getting there”. In the long run, the math is there even for long-haul semi trucks provided the commercial truck charging network is built out. And it’s not just Tesla that is building electric Semis these days.
As for what Nikola was/is doing… that company started out as a load of nonsense with a CEO who was/is a crook. But since he was given the boot, it looks like the remaining people there are trying to somehow salvage the company. But I don’t see it happening with the hydrogen thing they’re pushing.
“Once you get much heavier than that, like freight trains or container ships the mass fraction of energy storage gets unacceptably high”
And it’s not just mass. One of the benefits of BEVs is stuff like regenerative braking… which doesn’t apply to Aviation or Ships.
For Freight trains, the solution I’ve seen already implemented is the use of overhead wires and maybe have that combined with locomotives with some battery capacity so they can travel in between stretches of track that don’t have overhead wires or if there is a segment without power for one reason or another.
For large ships, I suspect the solution in the long run there will be diesel-electric combined with some way of harnessing wind power… whether through sails or wind turbines.
For airplanes, battery electric combined with solar integrated into the body and wings is something that already works for some limited applications like aircraft used for reconnaissance like this one being sold by Airbus:
https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/defence/uas/uas-solutions/zephyr
But for heavier aircraft, I don’t see jet engines going away any time soon. But I could see a hybrid setup where the jet engines are used for takeoff and once at altitude, electric motors take over for part of the flight. And those electric motors would be with lightweight lithium polymer batteries and solar cells integrated into the body.
Though I don’t see that happening soon. Maybe 10-30 years (depending on how fast battery and solar tech progresses), we might see something enter the testing stage.
In the long run, the math is there even for long-haul semi trucks provided the commercial truck charging network is built out. And it’s not just Tesla that is building electric Semis these days.
I think it will get there, but there is another race which is carbon neutral fuels (which end up being carbon-negative when they are used for manufacturing durable goods) using solar power and atmospheric carbon to create synthetic methane, kerosene, gasoline, etc. I am shocked with how fast some of those companies are scaling, and they could beat BEVs to the punch for trucking, especially since they’re starting to get big aerospace money. Either way would be a gain from the current hogs though, so I’m happy with the outcome whatever it will be.
For Freight trains, the solution I’ve seen already implemented is the use of overhead wires and maybe have that combined with locomotives with some battery capacity so they can travel in between stretches of track that don’t have overhead wires or if there is a segment without power for one reason or another.
Sure, tram systems absolutely work, but the infrastructure upgrades are non-trivial especially in North America where you have long stretches of track running through wilderness and maintenance is a hard problem. Track maintenance is already hard enough without overhead power, I would imagine overhead power lines would increase those costs by something like an order of magnitude.
For airplanes, battery electric combined with solar integrated into the body and wings is something that already works for some limited applications like aircraft used for reconnaissance like this one being sold by Airbus:
https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/defence/uas/uas-solutions/zephyr
But for heavier aircraft, I don’t see jet engines going away any time soon. But I could see a hybrid setup where the jet engines are used for takeoff and once at altitude, electric motors take over for part of the flight. And those electric motors would be with lightweight lithium polymer batteries and solar cells integrated into the body.
That’s the energy density / mass scaling problem I mentioned earlier. Small, lightweight drones that just have to loiter can be done from batteries and solar. But airliners are a different beast, by several orders of magnitude. There is no amount of solar you could stick on an airliner that could add meaningful power, because even at 100% efficiency the energy flux from sunlight just isn’t that high- your drag losses would be worse than your energy gains.
All of this is downstream of simple energy density- currently the very best batteries in a lab have 1/50th the energy density of jet fuel, and you can cut that number in half if you want things like safety and not burning to death the second a cell gets hot (Formula E batteries, for example, are 1% the energy density of Jet A). Since aircraft energy use vs mass goes as 2x^2, the net result is for the same speed output, you have to put in 20,000 times the amount of energy to haul around a battery in your airliner as you do jet fuel. I know of no battery technology that can come close to closing even a fraction of this gap, and certainly not any I would trust my life with- humanity is astonishingly good at converting hydrocarbons to usable energy in a very safe manner.
(As an aside, this leads to some interesting implications- one of my favorite questions to ask people who ask me why we don’t have electric airliners is: how comfortable are you with a nuclear-bomb scale battery? Because that’s what an airliner is- a fully fueled 747-8 carries 425,000 lbs of Jet A which with some unit conversion results in the figure of 8.3 trillion joules of chemical energy, which if you were to disperse and mix stoichiometrically with air such as in a fuel-air bomb gives you pretty much bang-on two kilotons explosive yield. Alternatively, you can get the same thing with a tenth of a gram of U235, which is a nice illustration of the orders of magnitude of energy density between chemicals and nuclear).
“I know of no battery technology that can come close to closing even a fraction of this gap”
I do!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jRoeTzvuI14
Seriously though as you say this is about what you’d need.
“And it’s not just mass. One of the benefits of BEVs is stuff like regenerative braking… which doesn’t apply to Aviation or Ships”
It kinda does in aviation in that you do get the energy needed to raise the potential energy of the aircraft from ground level to cruising altitude back when you decend.
Yes and no. Yes in theory, going back down to ground level shouldn’t take any energy. But as I understand it, as a plane lands, the challenge is keeping the speed DOWN so that the plane isn’t going too fast when it touches the ground.
While the plane is in the air, they keep the speed down through creating drag from the landing gear, opening flaps/spoilers that cause additional drag and the use of reverse thrusters that direct a portion of the engine’s thrust to slowing the plane.
And none of those things can be used for regen. And if they use reverse thrusters to slow the plane, they are burning fuel to help slow the plane. So it’s not a ‘regen’ situation at all. It’s actually the complete opposite.
Fair points. In an ideal world (or a dire emergency) the aircraft could simply shut off their engines is at the right point and glide the rest of the way to touchdown but real world conditions don’t usually allow for that.
“In an ideal world (or a dire emergency) the aircraft could simply shut off their engines is at the right point and glide the rest of the way to touchdown”
Actually I’ve seen videos of pilots of smaller aircraft doing exactly that to save fuel.
But I personally don’t know all the circumstances when that can and cannot be done.
I imagine weather, distance, wind direction, payload and pilot skill all play a role.
The nice thing about trains though is you can power them externally and carry just enough battery (or liquid fuel) to cover the gaps. You can also transfer energy from a train defending a grade to one climbing or to a counterweight to store that energy for later.
I agree on shipping. I ran the numbers a few years ago and concluded the batteries needed to power a Panamax sized ship would weigh more than enough to sink that ship. As such a non starter not even counting the time to charge those batteries or the incredible load on the power grid to charge a port full of such ships. Fortunately nuclear propulsion exists and works fine for ships. China is already working on such ships.
Aircraft also agree. IMO both batteries and hydrogen are a fool’s errand with NG the best non jet fuel option but that would severely limit aviation as we know it so that’s a non starter as well. So is nuclear propulsion. As such aviation, especially military aviation will suck up any and all synthetic renewable liquid fuels for a long, long time.
Long distance trucking IMO is best served with NG. That fuel is cheap AF, is readily available in both FF and renewable form, allows fill times comparable to diesel, and AFAIK can be run in older existing diesel engines in pilot ignition configuration yielding similar power to diesel but burning MUCH cleaner, potentially giving those engines a new lease on life in a world of tightening emissions. Bloom energy and perhaps others have NG fuel cells that might be adopted to power trucks (and other heavy vehicles) with greater thermal efficiency than ICE.
The fact that despite these relatively low barriers to adoption, much lower fuel prices and much lower emissions the trucking industry hasn’t converted decades ago does not I think bode well. If the trucking industry is reluctant to adopt NG there’s no way they will do so for batteries or hydrogen until every drop of dino diesel is gone or denied by law. Thanks to the aforementioned needs of aviation there won’t be any synthetic fuel for them either. The best non NG option I can think of is overhead electric lines in urban centers, saving the precious diesel (or alcohols) for non covered areas.
Farm equipment? Ideally alcohols or biomethane.
“Long distance trucking IMO is best served with NG. That fuel is cheap AF,”
Until it isn’t like what happened in the 2000s.
Also at least in Ontario, in the 1990s and into the early 2000s, there was a big NG vehicle push. But due to the spike in NG prices in the mid-2000s, sales of new NG vehicles dried up and organizations like Toronto Transit Commission, which had a fleet of NG buses, converted them back to diesel.
And it wasn’t just the cost of fuel that was behind that decision.
Even with NG being ‘cheap’, the overall cost to operate the NG buses was higher on a per mile basis compared to conventional diesels:
https://stevemunro.ca/2007/02/27/a-parting-word-on-natural-gas/
And part of that was due to the cost of installing, operating and maintaining high-pressure NG fueling infrastructure.
Sidenote: Cost-per-mile is exactly why the Toronto Transit Commission is ordering a lot more battery-electric buses after their experience with their current 60 unit battery-electric test bus fleet. Cost-per-mile is also why they’re not ordering any hydrogen buses… which were, by far, the most expensive bus to operate… more expensive than a regular diesel when they tested some of them.
On top of that, the NG buses weren’t allowed to enter underground bus stations due to safety reasons as well as height reasons (the NG buses were taller due to the huge tanks on the roof)
Also I personally rode on the CNG buses. They were a bit quieter, has less off-the-line power but more higher RPM power. But unlike the diesel buses, they would stall from time to time. At least a couple of times while riding on one of them, I observed them stalling and watched the driver quickly throw it in to neutral and restart it.
So on the surface, NG vehicles look like a great option.
But in practice, they aren’t.
The best use-cases for NG are applications where you don’t need the NG to be compressed because compressing it raises costs, increases the explosion risk and thus, increases infrastructure costs..
So it’s great for low-pressure applications like furnaces, hot water heaters and dryers. And on a larger scale, it makes more sense to use NG for electricity generation
“Until it isn’t like what happened in the 2000s.”
As a resident in PG&E land I’m keenly aware of how energy prices can change that math. Out here you’re often better off with gasoline than electricity. That’s a utility greed issue though.
However thanks to fracking around 2009 NG got dirt cheap again and has been ever since (at least in the US), sometimes to the point drillers pay folks to take it off their hands.
https://fortune.com/2024/08/11/natural-gas-prices-negative-territory-waha-hub-west-texas-permian-shale-boom/?taid=66b9212e517f3c0001dce0f5
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/tumbling-us-natural-gas-prices-prove-unstoppable-hurting-producers-2024-02-21/
As this price chart shows its been cheap since tracking began:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2021.01.07/main1.svg
Your link mentions the high cost of compressors. High pressure storage is also needed. Those are also needed with hydrogen and thanks to the world wide subsidized hard on for hydrogen a fair amount of development has gone into 10k PSI compressors and storage tanks for vehicles. Granted neither are dirt cheap (yet) but they are quite a bit cheaper and more reliable than the 3k PSI compressors of the early 2000s. I think its reasonable to expect further improvements in the cost and reliability of those things if demand were to increase.
CNG also has an extensive delivery system within the US, including delivery to millions of homes and businesses. Only electricity enjoys a wider network. And NG wells exist in many remote places. Its my understanding refining NG is far easier than with oil so plumbing refilling stations in the middle of nowhere might even be easier than with electricity depending on local reserves.
I dunno, maybe I’m overly optimistic but given the aforementioned worldwide subsidized hard on for hydrogen despite the glaring shortcomings of that “fuel” I have a lot more faith that supporting tech will find a better use in natural gas.
“Also I personally rode on the CNG buses. They were a bit quieter, has less off-the-line power but more higher RPM power. But unlike the diesel buses, they would stall from time to time. At least a couple of times while riding on one of them, I observed them stalling and watched the driver quickly throw it in to neutral and restart it.”
All the busses where I live were switched to CNG hybrid long ago and they’re fine. Much cleaner than diesel busses too.
Agree on the long distance trucking- NG is good. Methane would also work well, as would kerosense. I do think that aerospace synthetic fuels development will drive enough spare capacity for trucking to use the same fuel sources, the aero fuels market is very cyclical, and since you do not have the geopolitical restrictions on production it would probably be more profitable for a fuel company to overproduce at a constant rate and sell to alternate markets (ie trucking) than underproduce, alienate customers, and risk being undercut by new entrants.
There some really cool work being done with using solar to power modular chemical reactors that just run the Haber process and it’s derivatives using atmospheric carbon and water as inputs to make methane, propane or whatever hydrocarbon you want. This avoids a lot of the grid infrastructure issues with solar, and is very literally just making money out of thin air
Is there any advantage to kerosene over diesel?
I do think that aerospace synthetic fuels development will drive enough spare capacity for trucking to use the same fuel sources, the aero fuels market is very cyclical, and since you do not have the geopolitical restrictions on production it would probably be more profitable for a fuel company to overproduce at a constant rate and sell to alternate markets (ie trucking) than underproduce, alienate customers, and risk being undercut by new entrants.
As I said I’m pretty sure the US military, as the world’s largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons and with an essentially unlimited budget will be happy to vacuum up whatever they can get. After that its the rest of the world’s militarys along with commercial aviation (who I think we agree have no realistic alternative) and only after those customers are satiated will there be anything left for trucking. I’m not confident that will happen in my lifetime.
There some really cool work being done with using solar to power modular chemical reactors that just run the Haber process and it’s derivatives using atmospheric carbon and water as inputs to make methane, propane or whatever hydrocarbon you want. This avoids a lot of the grid infrastructure issues with solar, and is very literally just making money out of thin air
Sure you can do that but its a LOT easier (and far less energy intensive) to simply make methane out of digesting biomass. In fact you’re doing it right now!
Besides despite the grid issues it’s a LOT more efficient to use that renewable electricity as electricity. We have a long way to go to satisfying the demand for electricity with renewables. Surplus energy can be efficiency stored gravimetrically in pumped hydro, ARES, gravity towers etc or if it’s a chronic surplus new power lines built to carry the power where its needed or to storage with greater capacity.
The caveat being remote locations where solar or wind is plentiful but electrical demand is far away (e.g. Patagonia, Iceland, etc), however in such locations carbon capture could be a competing demand.
When my foreign-born wife’s sister and her husband visited us in the U.S. (the year before the great plague®️) I rented the biggest black Escalade Hertz had and we drove across Route 66 to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. I also taught them how to drink shots of Tequila properly. Damn’d if they didn’t like them, too!
AMERICA HELL YEAH!
I visited France back in high school, and nearly wept tears of joy when I landed back in the US, and saw a fleet of dodge ram pickups drive up to service the plane. Beautiful.
I will always love the Big Bill Hell commercial. It’s so good, so of a time yet timeless.
On that commercial, one detail missed is that the voiceover has to be a baritone from Texas.
I’m a little worried about Manwich Sandwich now.
Why?
There’s an undercurrent if anger in your ad script. Just below the overcurrent.
That anger is not coming from me though. I just took the original angry Big Bill Hell’s script and updated it to fit Stellantis.
This is the original script:
https://genius.com/Advertising-association-of-baltimore-big-bill-hells-cars-commercial-annotated
And I thought of doing that because of Carlos Tavares blaming everyone else for Stellantis’ problems… not to mention his recent ‘retirement’ news.
So it seems to me that there must be a good amount of anger going around at the top of Stellantis these days.
It’s even better when read like Lewis Black.
That was the most annoying cotd I have read yet
Agreed. But sometimes the truth hurts.
Yah, way more pissy than pithy.
I wonder what Big Bill Hell would say to that… LOL
It was also excellent.