In response to some of my recent posts on self-driving and electric vehicles, several readers asked if the electric grid could handle the increase. Other readers flat out stated the electric capacity was insufficient.

What’s the real story?

An electrical engineer in the utility industry emailed his thoughts in a pair of emails yesterday.

Mish,

I agree with you 100% about autonomous trucking. The driver plus insurance represent 39% of the cost per mile of operating a truck, according to the ATRI.

Something you might consider is that autonomous trucking will make electric trucks inevitable. It is easy to build a 200-mile range electric truck today. There are a few on the market. Driving this across the country makes no sense if you’re paying a driver to sit around for 1.5 hours every 200 miles (based on a 400kWh battery and a 350kW charger). Once autonomous trucks work, only electric makes sense. The value of fuel savings is much more than the lost productivity from frequent stops.

Electric trucks require 2kWh/mi to operate and will have dramatically lower repair and maintenance costs. ATRI says a diesel truck’s fuel plus R&M is 58.3c/mi plus 15.8c/mi. At the national average 10c/kWh and 90% lower R&M costs, the electric truck fuel plus R&M will be 70% cheaper.

If you are concerned about battery life replacement costs, Tesla has already demonstrated that properly operating a battery can dramatically reduce degradation. They see about 5% of range loss per 100k miles of operation. Some of this is related to aging and some to use. Either way, oversizing the battery pack so it provides a reasonable range for its life is pretty economic.

With reasonable assumptions, autonomous driving will make freight 40% cheaper per mile. Autonomous electric will be 55% cheaper per mile compared to today.

I asked the responder what his background was, whether or not I could quote him, and whether or not he had any links or supporting evidence to back his claims.