Is this the future for Class A's?

Chainwright wrote:

John & Angela wrote:

DrewE wrote:
I haven't seen any hard figures on the Tesla truck in terms of battery capacity and the like, but based on some quite rough back-of-the-envelope sorts of computations I think they would need somewhere in the vicinity of 1000 kWh for a 500 mile range in a semi truck (assuming normal highway speeds). Recharging 80% of that (800 kWh) in 40 minutes means that quick charger is supplying about 1.2 megawatts. Even doing it overnight is 100 kW, or about ten 50A RV sockets running at maximum continuous load put together.

(The basis for my estimate was a brake specific fuel consumption of a typical diesel semi truck engine of about 0.3 pounds per horsepower-hour and a typical gas mileage of 7 mpg and a bunch of conversion factors. As this is a very rough estimate, I may be way off, even assuming I did the math more or less properly.)

Widespread usage of electric RVs will require significant upgrades to the electrical infrastructure of campgrounds.

I don't know how much the campgrounds will have to be updated. Maybe a single megacharger in the high end camp grounds. But the RV portion will use the same amount of power as they do now. Most will want to recharge at a Megacharger. We rarely charge our EV toad in a campground. Once in a while a slow overnight trickle charge at 12 amps 120 but when you are talking about 300 to 400 KWH of battery unless you are there for a few days it wouldn't be worth it. Even a 50 amp site will only allow a charge rate of 10 KWH so like a day and a half to charge. I can see special areas with updated infrastructure being designated for this kind of thing. But commercial truck stops will get into the game as well. I think you
will see it overseas before you will here. Modern transportation is not a strong point of North America. A fast train here goes like 90 MPH. In europe 300 to 350 KMH is normal.

JMHO

Also, who's to say the various CG's can't work out a deal with Tesla and acquire Commercial Mega chargers made for CG's, I mean if I was Elon the Business man I wouldn't shy away from that. Eventually, given the market, someone may bring out a Universal Megacharger that can service multiple brands.

Certainly anything is possible. But just to let you know where it currently stands with Tesla and there supercharger network that is now quite extensive. These are by the way max 125 KWh per hour DC fast chargers used for all Tesla cars. So a 300 KWh used in let’s say a smaller motorhome would be about 4 hours to charge (there is some tapering). This network is already in wide usage around the world. But in order for a car to charge on this network it must handshake with the charger. Right now only Tesla’s can do this. Tesla has invited all manufacturers to use the supercharger network but only if the cost share the installation. No other vehicle manufacturer has stepped up to the plate yet. Nissan is putting in a lot of Chademo sites but they are slower than the Tesla sites. I guess my point is, unless the Motorhome integrator uses a Tesla chassis they won’t be able to access either the superchargers or mega chargers. Things can change a lot in the next few years. Sooner or later another car manufacturer will team up with Tesla on this but with the exception of Nissan most want to drag out the movement to EV’s as much as possible. One of the big reasons many choose Tesla is because of the access to the supercharger network. For those of us who don’t travel a lot of long distance trips it doesn’t matter but when we retire that will change and it will be a big influence on what car we choose next. We will have to see how good the public/prívate system is by then. probably four years away.