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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

I agree trucks like that are useful (and appear to be coming to market now~ish from other brands) but I think Tesla should stick to battery only.

There's enough short haul routes through stop-go traffic in pollution hotspots to keep Tesla busy for a while, and as they gain experience and reduce prices the range can expand.

The best thing about Tesla is that they're starting with battery only vehicles and throwing intelligence towards solving within that constraint.

Slow moving convoys of autonomous trucks that travel by night is one interesting possibility I'd like to see them explore.

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Battery packs could be swapped out and charged out of the vehicle. This would make a lot of sense.

It would make a lot of sense, but Tesla already floated the idea and decided not to pursue it [0]. That seems like a lot of work just to make a bad technology 'good enough'. Swapping bad batteries for more charged bad batteries doesn't change the fact that batteries are a bad technology.

[0]: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-prog...

Personally, I would put most of the batteries on the flatbed. Have beds at either end that are charging while they are loaded/unloaded, and one truck autonomously juggling a 3rd bed between both locations.

You're right that nearly anything could improve upon the status quo, but batteries are frankly a crappy technology and this seems to use batteries intensively for not a lot of benefit.

If you can make your peace with short range, why not use a hydrogen fuel cell? Sure, hydrogen often comes from natural gas but electricity often comes from coal/natural gas (in the U.S) and it seems like they make better catalysts for cracking hydrogen from water all the time - increased hydrogen gas demand could motivate people to commercialize the technology.

Hydrogen doesn't have an appreciably higher energy density but it's much less cobalt intensive.

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