this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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You are going back to front. You assume that EV trucks would need to fit in the current infrastructure and the current market. But both need to change and there needs to be a regulatory framework that forces and incentivises this change. So with this logistics need to become more expensive at first, when the transformation needs to be financed. But they will become much more expensive otherwise, as trucks are very inefficent, in particular for labor. And we see less and less workers willing to to take the difficult work conditions for the relatively bad pay. In the UK alone after Brexit there is a driver shortage between 50k and 100k. In mainland Europe it is similiar and in the US it will soon look like this too, unless the US makes it much easier to migrate for work. But even then it is only temporary fixes to the underlying problem of an inefficent system.
In a new infrastructure, maximising the use of trains and rivers, combined with an end to absurd manifacturing supply lines, that only work because of the ruinous competition in logistics, we will have an environment where the last mile is really just a few miles.
I assume ceteris paribus because that is most likely in a democratic nation. Itβs unlikely that the U.S. public would agree to hike their taxes by 10% to pay for a radical national transport restructure. Change usually takes place gradually. Economical EV trucks, which are probably less than a decade away, will negate the need to impoverish the nation. They will plug neatly into the existing infrastructure.
Still, the U.S. really does need rail improvements. These can and should happen either way.
The US is impoverishing itself by continueing on the truck based logistics. They help ramp up cliamte change, which is already fucking over the south of the US but will continue to get much much much worse. The US will be a nation of impoverished people unless massive social, political and infrastructural change will happen.