Leccy trucks coming thick & fast

We have 2 electric units , just do local work , seen them a fair few times being towed back into the yard , no idea if they’ve run out of charge or broke down , they also seem to be on charge a awfull lot .
Must be a year I’d of thought since they arrived , I’d of thought if they were a success we’d be seeing more , but not upto now none .
There daf cf,s so maybe latest electric trucks would have more upto date tech / battery life .

1 Like

Blimey! Germany’s carbon pricing on the ETS2 from road transport & buildings raised €13billion from heating & transport fuels in 2024.
It doesn’t kick in until 2027.
" "In order to ensure compensation for private households even if CO2 prices continue to rise, we now need ‘Klimageld’ quickly” EBA President Dirk Messner said in [a statement announcing the results on Tuesday.
I hope UK households are going to get some kind of compensation like that. They reckon it will be capped at €45/tonne, Yeah right!

It’s already north of that figure. “Germany has imposed a carbon price on fuel wholesalers, gas suppliers and mineral oil companies. This year the price was raised to €55, up from €45 in 2024 and €30 in 2023. For 2026, the law allows a ‘price corridor’ between €55 and €65 per tonne.”
https://www.euractiv.com/section/eet/news/german-climate-boss-calls-for-citizen-relief-as-domestic-carbon-pricing-raises-e13-billion/

They’ve actually imposed the scam on consumers like freezing pensioners and other low income groups.Do you really think that wholesalers don’t just pass these costs on.If not they go broke.
Good luck with forcing the all electric wind driven utopia on those earning less than 30k let alone 20k pa at 30p per kWh and rising.

Trouble at t’ mill for Electric Trucker’s IVECO this week, It’s dead in the water & needed towing back to IVECO for hardware repairs.
He used a VOLVO FM electric truck to carry on, even though it’s charging speed & range weren’t as good as the IVECO.

I find it interesting how he goes about the length & breadth of Germany fitting in charging/driving hours/overnight stops. I doubt this would be feasible in the Uk at present.

1 Like

I’ve just had a miserable bus ride on TfLs finest EV bus route 65 from the garage that’s servicing my car.
No one with any sense wanted to use the seats because the big individual overhead air vents were blowing cold air great in the Summer but not so good on cold January day.So I for one left the upper deck to stand with others jostling for space in the low deck isle to escape the worst of the refrigeration directed at the seats.
On arrival at its termination at Kingston I spoke to the driver and his colleague about to take it over.
This is what they said.The enclosed cab heating is independent of the bus heating.The driver has no control over the temperature of the bus system only the cab.
So my immediate conclusion was that TfL is saving on recharging costs by freezing its passengers.Their reply was that heating makes no difference to battery drain and recharging costs.
They couldn’t make it up.
Obviously to young to understand let alone remember my comments about the very agreeable heating of the old Routemaster in cold 60’s and 70’s winters.
Also didn’t seem to want to answer the question where does an EV get its cabin heating from if not from the battery pack and the electric meter when recharging.

Amazon splashing out on a fleet of 150 electric trucks, 140 Mercedes e-Actros 600 trucks & Volvo FM zero emission trucks.

Article also says there also investing in high speed chargers at points thought the. Country probably at there depots.
Which is good but the likes of smaller companies who can’t invest millions we have to make do with with what we have.

1 Like

“about the very agreeable heating of the old Routemaster in cold 60’s and 70’s winters.”

Rose coloured spectales there I’m afraid, like so many myths about these buses.

The saloon heating system was one of the major failings of the RM. Apart fro anything else it relied solely on ram air exiting at the very front of both decks, at least the poor driver had a separate heater radiator with a fan to work the demister. The refurbishment program of the 1990s tried, and failed to make much difference in spite of a complete re design. All it really achieved was making the job of clearing air locks from the sytem a lot harder and more time consuming now that water had to circulate through both decks. Not that it had ever been easy to actually get the system full of water when the fill point is considerably lower than where the water has to reach. At least the Titan had the fill point underneath the upper deck back seat.

Fair enough cav but I’m going by distinct memory of the 281 and later 65 and Green Line RMC v the 65 RT and don’t remember anyone jostling for standing room on the lower deck to avoid the freezing cold air vents over the seats.
The Alexander Dennis diesel single deckers often aren’t much better and often more comfortable to stand than suffer the shocks of the non existent front suspension through the front half seats.


1950’s lorry heater. If you had a considerate and caring boss he bought you two from the Army and Navy Surplus Store.

1 Like

It’s a Claude Greengrass coat! :rofl:

1 Like

A uselesss bit of info…a lot of the cloth that the great coats were made from was produced in my local area (Google ‘shoddy and mungo’ cloth.)

When I started as a young lad, a lot of the oldest drivers used to wear their old worn out best suits.

Then later on blue cotton overall suits, short jacket and trousers were worn by majority of drivers, you hardly see that these days…or is it just me not paying attention.

Then later on a lot of firms adapted the Stobart style collar and tie b/s…which soon died a death.

Seems to be mostly polo shirts in summer,.and sweatshirts for winter.

Anyhow to get back on thread, I keep hearing on radio people telling me how cheap to run these things are compared to proper vehicles.
The naivety of these people eh? :roll_eyes: .
Do they really think that will be allowed to continue once we are all forced kicking and screaming into buying one? :joy:

Not even enough cash saved to buy a decent fire extinguisher I would reckon.:joy:

if your bored and can be bothered look at the price of these things and then look at the price 2 years later… you can buy a hell of a lot of fuel for that;)

for example 44,990 brand new model three tesla basic model
https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/model3/design#payment

2023 tesla model 3 22,475

a loss of 22,515 at todays prices thats aprox 3,734 gallons of petrol

Yeah.
I never buy new cars, no desire to.
I’ve lost a lot of interest in cars lately.
In fact both my (boring :grin:) Ford diesels are now over 10 years old, and both running like a dream, (meticulously serviced and maintained by my lad who is a Ford technician.)

So when they tax and artificially price proper cars to the hilt to make them totally economically unviable…(as they sure as hell will) , I will be buying somebody else’s out of date, old design cast off.
Triffic.:roll_eyes:

Let the fleet buyers take the hit, It’s the best time ever to buy a three-year-old off lease BEV, if you’re in the market for one.

I bought an RAF great coat from the army navy stores in Bolton in the mid 60s, weighed a ton when it was raining.

1 Like

The Netherlands are already rolling out a programme to ‘Transition petrol stations’ for the ramp up in electric vehicless from 2025-2030.

When are they going to pull their finger out here for electric truck charging stations, especially ones where you don’t have to drop the trailer to juice up?

"The municipal council of Utrecht recently approved the ‘Transition Petrol Stations’ programme, which aims to prepare the filling stations for the electric car ramp-up between 2025 and 2030. The city further specifies that should this venture not prove sufficient, new locations for a further 20 to 30 fast charging stations are to be developed along the ring road.

Electric truck charging stations are also included in the programme: According to the programme, more charging facilities for trucks and ‘clean energy hubs’ where renewable fuels can be sold are to be created in commercial areas. In urban areas, the number of petrol stations offering fossil fuels is to be reduced in parallel, ‘creating space for other functions such as housing construction or more green spaces’, according to the programme."

The Doonal’ has just announced in his acceptance mumble that America has to ‘drill baby drill’ the oil and gas out of the ground start manufacturing oil cars and trucks again!

Speak of the devil. New fuel stations to cater for electric and hydrogen vans and trucks