Trucker perfectly dismantles electric vehicle narrative in 2 minutes: 'You would need to pack 50,000 pounds of batteries!'

A truck driver in a viral video explained that poor infrastructure and inefficient, heavy electric batteries make it nearly impossible to switch semi-trucks and other large vehicles to fully electric.

Chace Barber, trucker and founder of Edison Motors, appeared in a widely circulated video during an event showcasing his company's hybrid truck model.

Barber has advocated for a push toward hybrid semi-trucks, as opposed to fully electric, which he said are a bad idea, the Independent Journal Review reported.

"Do you ever see yourself going 100% EV?" an interviewer asked.

"No," Barber replied.

“I mean, maybe, if battery technology gets better, grid infrastructure gets better,” he continued.

"This truck," Barber said. "A logging truck uses about two and a half megawatts of power per day. With extra capacity in the battery means you need a three-megawatt battery pack. The biggest one is like a Tesla semi, which is like a one-megawatt. So you need three megawatts to run an electric truck,” he went on.

“That would mean you would need to pack 50,000 pounds — 40,000, 50,000 pounds of batteries just to do a full day,” he said.

Not only would the weight of such batteries reportedly cause many issues, but the braking system would need to be immediately and drastically improved in order to increase the stopping power.

Barber then described how electrical infrastructure has not been updated in North America in some time and revealed that the grid is nowhere near the level that would be required to power all the essential vehicles.

"Let’s say we can even get those batteries down to the same weight where it’s reasonable, the grid infrastructure — we haven’t invested in our electrical grid since the 1950s, 1960s, '70s, like you can give me an example, the logging truck in B.C. [British Columbia], that’s a niche industry. there’s 5,000 logging trucks that haul logs,” he explained.

“At two and a half megawatts of consumption per day, that’s twelve and a half gigawatts of power,” he said. “Site C dam has been under construction for the last, oh, I don’t know, 15 years at a cost of $20 billion, and that has a 1.1 gigawatt. So a $20 billion dam that takes 15 years to build has a 1.1 gigawatt capacity, and logging trucks — just logging trucks alone — are using 12 and a half gigawatts. You would have to flood an area of land the size of Wales to produce that hydropower.”

Barber then argued for a hybrid diesel-electric model like the type his company has developed. Edison Motors completed its second round of funding in September 2023 and stated that funding is being put toward a "more powerful production prototype with upgraded tri-axle drivetrain & custom cab."

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