EV never has to be recharged… Because it recharges on the way downhill.
“World’s largest EV never has to be plugged in” is sufficiently click-baity without being so dumbly self contradicting
More like “never has to stop working to charge”. It is novel that its charging mechanism operates as a function of doing its primary job.
Not novel. I think there was a train somewhere in Africa, that transported some ore from mountain to port. On the way down with ore it charged and uphill it used charge.
That’s genius. Who cares if thermodynamics wins, it weighs less on the way up so works out just fine.
Just like the example in TFA.
Yeah I was gonna say I’m pretty sure this isn’t a single use, disposable vehicle
Reminds me of some guy with a OneWheel that was saying he’d never charged his board in like a thousand miles as his daily commuter.
He lives near the top of a mountain lift, so he takes it home and just runs on pure regen lol.
So he’s just breaking? What a silly thing to claim. I bet he’s not even regening a lot. When i ride up a mountain until my battery is down to 40% or so and ride down i regenerate around 1% or something. It might even be in the 0.6% or something
I think it’s still pretty cool. Turning potential energy to kenetic
“World’s largest EV”
Blatantly untrue. Larger EVs have been in use for more than a century at this point in the form of EMU trains.
The emus have trains now?!
Take that Australia!
Yeah we’re proper fucked tbh
It was part of the treaty. That and the Great Dingo Barrier.
We truly are lost…
I’ll pick up the pedantic torch. Trains are made of train cars, I’d argue each one is a separate car or vehicle even though they’re strapped together.
I feel like The ISS ticks a lot of the boxes for a vehicle though, how big is that?
Sure, but quite often in EMUs the cars come in sets that can’t operate disconnected from each other, so I’d argue that they still comprise a single vehicle.
I’d argue that the ISS, due to lacking means of propulsion (unless you count explosive decompression) is not a vehicle.The ISS has two different propulsion systems and has used them to avoid debris. I don’t think that it has enough power to leave orbit and reach greater altitude.
In that case yeah, I guess it is a vehicle.
This will conversation evolve into two things: are hotdogs and tacos sammiches, and we becoming crabs.
POPTARTS are Calzones. Calzones are Pizzas. Pizzas are Open-Face Sandwiches!
Aka toast
Bagger 288 is also electrically driven. Even if it is connected by cable to a nearby powerplant.
You just toss it when the battery dies and get a new one.
Just like a vape stick.
Well yes but it does also recharge itself by going downhill while loaded and storing power from regenerative brakes. Then it drops the load and has enough charge to drive back up. The power is coming from it being loaded at the top.
I know how it works. I was making a joke by applying the concept of disposable e-waste junk to a massive dump truck.
Yes but your comment was in every way indistinguishable from a comment by an idiot who had no idea how it worked, didn’t read the article, and commented an incorrect explanation anyways.
You truly believe someone thought that you would just throw away an entire dump truck when the battery died?
Depends on how easy it is to remove the battery and how many replacement batteries are on the market.
Also a bit of a ship of theseus issue where if the truck gets refurbished by the company then is it the same truck?
These things are very large and very few in number. I know nothing about the company behind its production.
So it is possible.
Perfection is the enemy of the good; climate change is even worse.
Till elon finds out that if he manages to cover the sun, he can charge us on sunscription
Pretty sure its also not solar. The machine gets loaded with weight at the top of the hill, its regenerative brakes store power on the way down, it drops the load off, and the lightened machine stored enough charge to drive back up.
Don’t give hime ideas…
yes it does. just going by the numbers posted operating in the space it does results in a net loss of12% battery each trip.
I read the story.
I saw the comments on the story
I laughed at the pedantic slapfights happening in the comments.
I came here to comment on the neat story and poke fun at the silliness, to find the same pedantic slapfights here.
Sigh.
No one commenting on the fact that the first paragraph says it doesn’t even CONSUME energy???
Technically it would be impossible to consume energy unless converting it into mass (or time I guess but thats purely theoretical)
I think it’s clear they are sensationalizing it due to the unique nature of the energy used, which is external potential energy that needed to get down the hill whether it’s a gas or electric truck.
Cool EV bruh, but can the horn make a fart noise?
Very interesting use case but kind of dependant on this very specific setup? I feel like an even more efficient and low maintenance method would be like… a ramp.
Well sure but if you just dump ore onto a ramp/chute then you’re constained to high angles and material so it can’t also double as a drivable road.
Marl is an earthy material rich in carbonate minerals, clays, and silt. When hardened into rock, this becomes marlstone. It is formed in marine or freshwater environments, often through the activities of algae.
It’s slightly less impressive when you realise they could have built a massive slide instead and got mostly the same result.
Guess it’s better than a massive diesel truck though.
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A 600 kwh battery pack so… Rocks can roll down hill? Galaxy brain moment.
Probably a lot less safe (and harder to aim) if you don’t use the truck. Also unlikely they get all the way down unless you mine it in wheel shapes (increasing labor and also, luckily, danger).
Genuinely, I cannot tell what your point is. In some alternate universe, are we just rolling the rocks downhill? Don’t you think we’d already be doing that? This seems like a great use case to replace diesel trucks with ones that recharge themselves using potential energy from ore. This absolutely is a galaxy brain moment, in that it’s a very smart idea.
Are you surprised by the concept of potential energy?
The dump truck, at 45 tons, ascends the 13-percent grade and takes on 65 tons of ore. With more than double the weight going back down the hill, the beast’s regenerative braking system recaptures more than enough energy to refill the charge the eDumper used going up.
Reminds me of this ropeway thing that Tom Scott covered that doesn’t require power input either, for similar reasons:
Niche application but still cool.
ARGH Why did you have to remind me that Tom Scott is still missing from Youtube!
I guess it all depends on the physical layout but this seems like a very complicated way to get material downhill.
So the energy this truck uses is harnessed via mining and loading… Essentially this energy was stored in the ore via geological processes.
This truck uses continental drift as his fuel.
Or in physics terms, potential energy.
Since everything seems to be going downhill right now, how would I harness that power? You telling me the crystal peddling influencers were right all along? 🤣
I’ve heard of a diesel-electric logging truck that uses this concept as well. Use the batteries going up the mountain empty, charge them again going downhill loaded.
The truck has a penis?
In other words, OP’s mom.
Boom
I’ve seen a cable lift that worked basically like that. It transferred ore down the mountain, so heavy buckets going down lifted the empty buckets back up.
Didn’t Tom Scott make a video about this?
Statistically, yes.
Yep.
Kinda like the mine in the UK that use a cableway without a motor to bring ore down and empty buckets up
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Is that just a gravity battery that just so happens to be a dump truck as well?
So it was designed for this mine I guess?
I’m not sure there’s a lot of mine you’re going down filled up, the images I have in mind are quite the opposite, but that’s a really cool idea!
There actually is some design to stock energy this way, with weights you lift while having excess energy
Depends on the scale of “going down”. Many mines are in the mountains and the material has to be brought down to lower elevations. The mine entry may be lower than the nearest pass but still a lot higher than the destination of the ore.
Open pit is much more common for this type of equipment and it’s basically a reverse mountain. Still might be enough regenerative braking from just the weight of the truck though.
An open pit at an elevation of 1.5km still means the bottom of the pit could be 1km higher than the place the ore is processed at
Still might be enough regenerative braking from just the weight of the truck though.
In that case no, because it’d be bringing the weight of the truck and the ore with it.
If you’re thinking of that CGI crane lifting concrete blocks, it’s unfortunately a really bad idea.
Pumped hydro stores energy by lifting weight uphill, instead. Water is basically the cheapest thing you can get per tonne, and is easy to contain and move.
To store useful amounts of energy using gravity, you need pretty large elevation differences and millions of tonnes of mass to move.
I love that I knew this conversation was going to happen as soon as I read the article.
And, yes.
We achieved perpetuum mobile
Yes, but actually no.
Amateurs.
The 1963 Černý Důl – Kunčice nad Labem aerial ropeway is over 8 km (5 mi) long, over 30 m high in places and carries 135 tons of limestone every hour from a quarry to the nearest train station. Its 120kW 3-phase synchronous motor requires power for a few minutes at the start and end of each day when most of the 800kg-capacity trolleys are empty, and spends most of the shift generating mains electricity and acting as a speed governor. Unlike the EV, it is fully autonomous most of the way, only 5 people are required to operate it. (Loading, unloading and timed dispatching is automatic, arriving/leaving carts just need to be checked; a safety latch has to be manually dis/engaged on trolleys passing the check.) The quarry will continue operation as long as it pays off, then the ropeway will be scrapped (projected 2033). A dude illegally rode the way up on it somewhat recently. He could have fallen to his death if he pulled the latch.
There’s also one in the UK Tom Scott did a video on.
I know, this one is shorter and has mechanical brakes. Not as great but I imagine the Czech one, one of the largest in Europe, has very few English-language sources that could have pointed it out to him. I don’t know whether the Claughton one cannot be ridden or Tom is just squeamish about safety (see description) but the Černý Důl one definitely can, that’s how they do routine inspections.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are electrified railway lines doing the same. Regenerate large amounts of energy into the grid while descending loaded; consume a relatively small amount of energy to haul the empty train back uphill.
An early version of the Petřín ropeway in Prague used to contain tanks in both cars. The upper one would be filled with
sewagecollected rainwater from the city’s hilltop quarter and the energy of the descent was used to pull the other car up. Additionally, the way up cost twice as much so there was an incentive to ascend on foot, which was about as fast despite the incline.Neat.
Paywall article, but this already exists in Australia for pretty much the same use case: https://www.railtech.com/rolling-stock/2022/03/04/australian-mining-company-works-on-infinity-train-using-gravity-to-regenerating-batteries/?gdpr=deny
I don’t know about going downhill in general, but there are some that use regenerative braking (regular braking, on flat terrain) so maybe
Most mines are underground so for most this can’t work, but where it does they are sure to use it.
Regular trains don’t run underground. Lots of opencast mines exist .
Basically all mines have an above ground terminal where whatever you mined is unloaded from your underground trains, lifts, haul trucks or whatever else onto storage piles, then loaded onto the actual long distance trains.
If the mine entry is up a mountain, then the trip down from that point will be a net energy producer regardless of anything else.
Content aside, what a great video! It’s not that old of a video but it reminds me so much of early YouTube, just friends messing around and posting it with top tier song choice.
Damn, that shit is even hotter
