In reply to GameboyRMH:
My line of thought is the long distance trucks starting first, as a way to start establishing the infrastructure and testing newer tech. They're also currently some of the higher polluting vehicles(I think) so it would make sense if we're using the environmental impact as a reason to get rid of ICE to cut out the largest users first.
With the semi and trailer, there's a lot of room for surface solar power collection, bigger stronger brakes for regenerative braking, physical capacity for batteries, some sort of aerodynamic wind power generators maybe?
They seem to be a better test bed to me because most things start out big and shrink as they evolve, computers especially so.
I understand completely the line of thought starting smaller and getting bigger, but I think instead of everyone having their personal electric way to work, we'll be seeing more bigger better public transportation and possibly green cities that don't allow vehicles of any sort. Just transportation hubs on the outskirts, and footpaths throughout. With the population influx cities are seeing now as rural areas dry up and die off, it just won't be feasible for everyone to have cars in 30-50-100 years.
Of course that still assumes electricity would be the dominant fuel after oil. With advances in other areas, we could see some strange fuels come about. Saltwater, for example, or maybe a new way of condensing and storing hydrogen comes out of nowhere.
As late as 1990 for the base Corolla, and base Tercel
According to Rock Auto Yugo went Fuel Injection in 1990.
Am I too late? Isuzu P'up.
It looks like the 1990 base model Prelude had carbs... Yes, plural.
Prelude carbs
According to Rock Auto, the Justy had a carb in 1992, switching to Fuel Injection in 1993.
Carb rebuilt kit for 1992 Subaru Justy:
Link to carb rebuild kit
RevRico wrote:
In reply to GameboyRMH:
My line of thought is the long distance trucks starting first, as a way to start establishing the infrastructure and testing newer tech. They're also currently some of the higher polluting vehicles(I think) so it would make sense if we're using the environmental impact as a reason to get rid of ICE to cut out the largest users first
Long haul trucks are a very long way from going fully electric. The infrastructure isn't there. The cost is too high. The range is vastly inferior to ICEs. The most I mportant thing in trucking is the bottom line cost. A primary factor in that calculation is freight efficiency, or how far can you move X lbs of freight with Y $. You achieve the most efficiency by increasing fuel economy, While simultaneously hauling lots of weight. Weighing a truck down with the amount of batteries it would take to move 80,000lbs over 500 miles per day drastically reduces the amount of freight you can haul which hurts the already thin margin most trucking companies deal with.
That being said, trucks and vehicles that have shorter local routes or that make lots of stops will be the first adopters of hybrid and fully electric power trains. Many city buses and port/dock trucks are already running series hybrid setups where a natural gas engine charges the batteries that power the vehicle. It's much more fuel efficient in stop/go driving, and has a similar impact environmentally to a fully electric vehicle that gets its juice from a coal powered plant (i.e. Much less than a diesel only truck).
JG Pasterjak wrote:
Side pondering: Assuming we're asking this question 25-30 years after the date in question, at what point in the future will we ask "What was the last car sold in the US with a strictly internal-combustion engine?"
No rumblings that I've heard in official sectors in the US, but other places have already suggested it. Such as Germany hoping to be ICE free by 2030, France hoping to do the same by 2040.
Since the US tends to be less progressive than European locales, and our vast size makes it likely that the US wouldn't adopt similar measures until much later, I'm guessing 15-20 years after that. So, 2050-2060 for the adoption of the rule, plus your 30 year time frame probably means it will be our grandkids or even great-grandkids asking that question, and not us. I can see densely populated cities in the US doing away with ICEs much sooner though.
I was thinking Yugo which sold a few cars in 1993 
1990 seems to be the cutoff date for most manufacturers. Even Hyundai went to EFI in 1990
STM317 wrote:
Long haul trucks are a very long way from going fully electric. The infrastructure isn't there. The cost is too high. The range is vastly inferior to ICEs. The most I mportant thing in trucking is the bottom line cost. A primary factor in that calculation is freight efficiency, or how far can you move X lbs of freight with Y $. You achieve the most efficiency by increasing fuel economy, While simultaneously hauling lots of weight. Weighing a truck down with the amount of batteries it would take to move 80,000lbs over 500 miles per day drastically reduces the amount of freight you can haul which hurts the already thin margin most trucking companies deal with.
actually, I see long haul being one of the first. While batteries will take up a lot of space and weight, they are already looking into trucking as being "driverless" so an electric truck will be able to chug along 24/7, stop for recharging, or even change out cabs without effecting the miles driven a day as the computers will be able to ignore the DOT mandated rest periods that human driver's have to use.
Another plus in their favour is the real-estate on the trailer roof for built in solar cells
Hmm. I had a 90 Crown Vic with a carbed 351.
mad_machine wrote:
1990 seems to be the cutoff date for most manufacturers. Even Hyundai went to EFI in 1990
Seems like that was mostly the cutoff. Jeep was an odd one in that they never built a fuel injected Grand Wagoneer. 91 was the last year and they had carbs right up to the end.
In reply to STM317:
As I said, far fetched idea, and I haven't actually looked at numbers.
But how big are the fuel tanks on a long haul truck? Why couldn't they just be replaced with Tesla style battery packs?
I'll grant that as fuel is used the vehicle gets lighter and more efficient while that wouldn't happen with batteries, but I don't think we'd be stuck with car battery sized cells and electric motors can put out a bunch of torque.
Like mad machine said, with it looking like an automated future for them, making them mostly self contained doesn't sound like to big of a step.
DrBoost wrote:
Am I too late? Isuzu P'up.
That was my recollection, too. I think 1992.
RealMiniParker wrote:
DrBoost wrote:
Am I too late? Isuzu P'up.
That was my recollection, too. I think 1992.
I think I learned that fro Click and Clack. Therefore, it can NOT be challenged!
JG Pasterjak wrote:
What was the last car sold in the US with a carburetor?
Notes:
1) Car, not truck.
2) Mass-produced, commonly available at a dealership. Not a custom job.
We think we've narrowed it down to a brand or two and an era, but we can't quite come up with a model.
I'd think it was a Honda, probably an '89 Accord.
The 1990 Daihatsu whatever doesn't count since truck.
mndsm
MegaDork
7/6/17 5:04 p.m.
Reminds me of the one I learned from top gear- the 2010 ls460? (Not sure what the ls designation was then) was the last passenger vehicle sold with a tape deck.
In reply to RevRico:
The average semi tractor has 200 gallons of fuel capacity and fully loaded at 80,000lbs gets 6-7mpg. So that's 1200-1400 miles of range between fill ups.
A driver can only drive for 10 hours at a time though, so realistic max is probably 600 miles per driver per day. Or 1200 miles for a tandem of drivers in the same truck.
A Tesla Model S weighs a bit over 4600lbs, including 1300lbs of battery. It has a max range of just over 300 miles. I have no idea if it's actually proportional, but I like easy math so I'll try and estimate how much battery it would take to get an 80,000lb truck to go 600 miles with Teslas current setup. 80000lbs / 4600lbs = 17.4 times the mass in a fully loaded semi vs a Model S. So 17.4 times the battery capacity would be needed for similar range. So that's 17.4 X 1300lbs = 22,608 lbs of battery needed just to go 300 miles. Double that for a full day's work gives us over 45,000 lbs of Tesla batteries to do 600 miles.l
That doesn't get into charging times for such a large setup, reduced range in cold climates, huge upfront cost, power loss running things like AC overnight, or the fact that a semi is a million times less aerodynamic than a Model S so the range is probably less for the same battery.
A diesel powered truck with a tandem driver team (or an autonomous diesel truck) driving almost around the clock could get far more freight across the country in far less time than a battery truck with current tech. Even if we assume equal times between the battery truck and a diesel powered rig with a single driver, you haul almost twice as much freight due to not having more than half of your weight in the vehicle itself. That means fewer total trips, less wear and tear on roads, etc.
Knurled wrote:
I'd think it was a Honda, probably an '89 Accord.
That was our guess, too. Or some Mitsubishi something or other.
STM317 wrote:
In reply to RevRico:
The average semi tractor has 200 gallons of fuel capacity and fully loaded at 80,000lbs gets 6-7mpg. So that's 1200-1400 miles of range between fill ups.
A driver can only drive for 10 hours at a time though, so realistic max is probably 600 miles per driver per day. Or 1200 miles for a tandem of drivers in the same truck.
A Tesla Model S weighs a bit over 4600lbs, including 1300lbs of battery. It has a max range of just over 300 miles. I have no idea if it's actually proportional, but I like easy math so I'll try and estimate how much battery it would take to get an 80,000lb truck to go 600 miles with Teslas current setup. 80000lbs / 4600lbs = 17.4 times the mass in a fully loaded semi vs a Model S. So 17.4 times the battery capacity would be needed for similar range. So that's 17.4 X 1300lbs = 22,608 lbs of battery needed just to go 300 miles. Double that for a full day's work gives us over 45,000 lbs of Tesla batteries to do 600 miles.l
That doesn't get into charging times for such a large setup, reduced range in cold climates, huge upfront cost, power loss running things like AC overnight, or the fact that a semi is a million times less aerodynamic than a Model S so the range is probably less for the same battery.
A diesel powered truck with a tandem driver team (or an autonomous diesel truck) driving almost around the clock could get far more freight across the country in far less time than a battery truck with current tech. Even if we assume equal times between the battery truck and a diesel powered rig with a single driver, you haul almost twice as much freight due to not having more than half of your weight in the vehicle itself. That means fewer total trips, less wear and tear on roads, etc.
yes, but you assume that trucks will not change their looks as driverless vehicles. I imagine they will become a LOT more aerodynamic in both the cab (no longer a need to hold a human upright behind the wheel or let him mover about the cab in some comfort). combine that with some active aero that closes up a lot of the gaps between the cab and trailer, plus underneath it when running mostly straight on the highway, and the lack of a need to cool a large engine, and I am pretty sure that the large trucks can and will get more aerodynamic.
As I stated above, combine that with a 53 foot trailer with a roof that is 8 feet (or more) wide, and you have a LOT of real estate for solar cells that can extend the range of a truck quite a distance. And again, a large company can stage cabs at charging "stops" where when a rig rolls in, it disconnects, drives over to a charging station and shuts down to recharge while a fully charged cab takes over to the next stop.
mndsm wrote:
Reminds me of the one I learned from top gear- the 2010 ls460? (Not sure what the ls designation was then) was the last passenger vehicle sold with a tape deck.
I think you're thinking SC430.
In reply to mad_machine:
I don't doubt that autonomous trucks be more aerodynamic than current trucks. That doesn't really have any bearing on what's powering the truck.
The federally funded SuperTruck program is the cutting edge of current diesel semi tech with lots of aero work (including active aero, lighter materials etc) and they average 10-12 mpg in ideal conditions on flat terrain. It's still a far cry from the CoD of a passenger car. An 80,000lb box can only be so aerodynamic.
Another huge hurdle is cost. The average semi tractor these days costs about $120k. Adding active aero adds cost. Adding solar panels adds cost. (An aside, but in most applications in many parts of the country, solar panels never pay themselves off before they need to be replaced. Is it likely that they'd pay for themselves in fuel savings on a semi, because if not they won't sell. I can't imagine they'd handle the NVH of cross country hauls very well either.) Having multiple tractors sitting idle across the country waiting for their transfer doubles your cost.
Nikola Trucks is currently taking deposits for their turbine powered, or hydrogen fuel cell powered truck (it's changed a couple of times, and seems about as likely to make it to production as Elio). They're twice as expensive as a diesel truck at $300k each. If we guess that a plug in style battery powered truck is somewhat less expensive at $250k, what would it take to pay for itself, especially if you have to have a ton of extra 250k trucks sitting around unused while they wait for their transfer?
If every truck stop has electric charging infrastructure, you better believe the truckers will be expected to pay for the charge. There is no free fuel at that point whether it's electric or diesel, hydrogen, etc the truck stop is going to get paid for their fuel so it still boils down to how light/compact the power plant can be, and ICEs, especially diesel or nat gas engines, are really hard to beat in that regard, and will continue to be for another decade or two. Most big rigs have 11-15L engines that weight 1200-1500lbs, plus 700lb transmissions, and the 2000lbs of fuel/tanks. That's under 5000lbs to move the truck vs 30000+ with batteries and big electric motors. That doesn't change if its setup for a human driver or not. We won't see fully electric long haul trucks until batteries get WAY lighter and more power dense at the same time.
Fully electric local delivery trucks, buses and vocational trucks are likely to come much sooner. Like in the next 5 years. Because their duty cycle is much more inline with what electric is good at. Lots of stop/go, within a short distance of a home base where it can spend off hours charging.
I only ever saw one, but there was a government spec Caprice with an Olds 307 and Q-jet came through the shop well after I was sure they were gone. 92 or 93, I think. Accords could be had with carb until 91 or 92 in Canada, and the Preludes had those twin carb setups into the 90's too.
