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Bahahaahhaa!
It's true that Aussie widths are less than some other countries.
But AFAICT these proposed rules are not limited to electric trucks. And don't think just semis. SUVs, pickups.
Get used to seeing diesel monster trucks rolling coal, and other emotional support vehicles become a lot more common.
RIP cyclists and small children
How about any SUV with huge towing mirrors permanently fitted and extended to their max?
Seeing as how the majority of truck drivers here in Australia are complete aggro cunts, this should be marvellous as they’ll be able to destroy even more innocent drivers.
If I had to work on the road full time, I'm sure my patience would also be limited. We're talking about an increase of 5cm to the width of the trucks. Nobody is going to notice.
I don't know about that. When I used to ride a bike to work near a busy truck route, I felt like the truck drivers were the most courteous and conscious of keeping a safe distance. Normal car drivers were a mixed bag: usually not a problem, but not reliable enough to trust. But bus drivers... it felt like bus drivers were actively pissed off by the existence of cyclists.
Ah yes, the electrification of trucks. Where 1/3 of the cargo your hauling is your own batteries. Efficiency at its finest.
The thing is, electric motors are so efficient that even hauling the mass of the batteries they are still more efficient than old fashioned internal combustion engines.
Nah. Diesel engine's efficiency is ~40%, Electric Motor's ~75%. Since you're hauling batteries, you haul less cargo, which means you need more trucks, more trips, more drivers, more charging time, etc.
Truck drivers in Australia are banned from driving more than 5.5 hours at a time. There are already dedicated places to stop and park a large truck every 5 hours or so on every single highway.
A truck that can drive five hours on a charge doesn't need that big of a battery. Tesla's semi goes much much further than that on a charge and it would, as you point out, be more efficient if it had a smaller/lighter battery.
I expect where we'll end up is drivers will, when they stop for their mandatory rest, disconnect the trailer, hook the truck up to charging infrastructure, then connect the trailer to a fresh truck with a fully charged battery.
The charging infrastructure would likely be optimised for price, not speed. For example only charge the truck during the day when the grid is running on solar power.
Diesel trucks are not cheap by the way - maintenance plus the cost of the diesel works out to something like a hundred thousand dollars per year assuming you drive the truck all year.
There are too many questions to be answered to calculate how much money you'd save, since electric trucks don't exist at all yet, but my city has started deploying electric busses and they work out to a savings of a quarter million dollars per bus (over the life of the bus). Obviously with savings like that, they are going to stop buying diesel busses entirely as soon as they possibly can. It will be the same for trucks.
Well, you're listing all these things that will happen in the future, seemingly disregarding any other potential advancements in alternative fuels.
Infrastructure, dead batteries, overhauled shipping processes... It's a lot of change (read: money) for a rather small improvement.
So far, it seems that trucks and batteries simply do not mix. What will happen 'next year TM', we'll see. Right now I am skeptical.
Shouldn't be a problem most places, though some roads and docks already feel tight enough at 2.5m.
An extra 5cm inside would be nice though - even that extra little bit of room would often make it easier to get a pair of pallets in.