1. it makes changing a tire more complicated, and time is money, the longer it takes to change a blown tire the higher the penalties
2. when a semi tire goes, it goes hard, as GP noted with this arrangement the cowling will probably shatter, requiring a replacement (not just a replacement tire) and the pieces taking out other tire. If the cowling does not break, it will funnel bits of tire straight into the next tires, blowing all of them.
If a truck tire blows, it sometimes hits nearby cars and causes accidents, or just hits a motorcycle driver, cyclist or pedestrian and causes an instant death.
These covers could be useful, if they were made for containment. Requires something like kevlar that can stretch and absorb the impact.
From what I've seen tires don't really blow as in pieces everywhere but tear then slap around, retreads when they blow tend to remove all the tread which is why you see half a tread on the side of the road sometimes. Containment isn't really too much of an issue IMO. Even thick (3/8) aluminum fenders get destroyed.
When a rear tire blew on my campervan, in addition to having to replace the tire, the blowout caused many thousands of Euros worth of damage to the bodywork.
I would think mechanics are going to become fewer and fewer as less mechanical bits exist on the electric vehicles. Tires, alignment, electrical. Those will be you're bread+butter services.
This dismissive attitude of a domain expert's opinion while taking Musk's/Tesla's word on revolutionary claims that they don't even have a working prototype of yet is a perfect example of why the court of public opinion is slowly starting to turn on Silicon Valley
The "domain expert" is doubting that Tesla consulted with any domain experts, after Tesla showed domain experts and waved at a bunch of launch customers sitting in the audience at the event. No one's looking insightful at the moment.
They do have a working prototype; it's in the video.
Also, your comment is ironically pretty dismissive.
As an expert, do you think that the sporadic time/money cost of changing a tire could offset a significant reduction in fuel cost or trip time? How expensive would a tire change have to be to outweigh, say, a (conservative) 30% reduction in fuel cost?
Why do you say it is a fraction of the cost to operate? Because the advert says so? I'll wait for concerns like the parent's to be weighed in before reaching any conclusion.
He's a software developer which makes his opinion on any topic worth a lot more than regular people, for example mechanics who fix trucks for a living. Is this your first day on HN?
Combustion engines need lots and lots and lots of little extra bits to hit the (still very bad) efficiency numbers they have. Every extra moving part is another thing you're paying the mechanic to check, repair or replace. Good for the mechanic, bad for your trucking operation.
Electric motors are brutally simple. So first that means they break down less often, second it means they're less complicated for the mechanic to figure out what the problem is.
And that's before the straight to technical advantages. Take braking. In a normal truck you turn speed into heat by rubbing brake pads. This gradually destroys the pads, so they're a consumable. But an electric truck turns much of the speed back into electricity instead. The pads get much less wear, you replace them less often.
Unless the conversion from speed to electricity is more efficient than to heat, shouldn't the degradation rate be the same? Or is the heat causing most of the degrading?
Braking force in EV is from magnetic fields in the engine pushing electricity back into the battery. Magnets and copper wires do not degrade when used.
Pad brakes in EVs are only used when braking HARD, as in emergency stop. They degrade less because they are not used much.
And the 99.9% of time when the truck is running with all tires intact, that fiddly piece of plastic gives, say, extra 5% of fuel efficiency. Even if it requires a complete replacement every time a tire blows, it may be worth having.
