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.
Is novel for a dump truck to use this. Of course it’s not a completely new concept entirely.
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 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.
yes it does. just going by the numbers posted operating in the space it does results in a net loss of12% battery each trip.
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.
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.
In other words, OP’s mom.
Boom
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 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.
The truck has a penis?
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.
Kinda like the mine in the UK that use a cableway without a motor to bring ore down and empty buckets up
I saw that Tom Scott episode too. I’ll miss him.
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Is that just a gravity battery that just so happens to be a dump truck as well?
I guess it all depends on the physical layout but this seems like a very complicated way to get material downhill.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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
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)
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…
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.
Click bait that actually makes me glad I clicked???
Wow what a great use case.
Reminds of this bucket-line system
Not very smart that they waste all that energy in mechanical brakes. See my comment (the one with the picture) for a way bigger and electricity-generating ropeway, including a video of a guy less squeamish than Tom Scott riding most of the 45-minute way up.
WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS TOM SCOTT SLANDER
He literally has
Filmed safely: https://www.tomscott.com/safe/
in the description. Meanwhile, that fat dude from Vrchlabí jumped into a moving bucket of one that is faster, 2.5x longer, at deadly height, and his only plan of getting down safely was a mattress. He acknowledged how illegal and dangerous it is and yet publishes the video with his full name.
Just accept it, Tom Scott was being way more cautious.
firstly I was joking
secondly, cautious ≠ squeamish. we shouldn’t be setting masculinity as an example
I’m pretty sure they’ve been doing this for years in South America already.
I cannot avoid to be pedantic on this, it is recharged during half the trip… it just does not require plug-like recharging
Yeah another clickbait headline. It’s getting recharged all the time, it’s just very lucky to be in a use case where it goes down hills with large loads all the time
well that was unexpected
I’m curious if the desgin team knew about it in advance
Are you asking if Swiss guys knew about mountains? )
hahaha guess it boils down to that 😂
but I was specifically wondering if they built the vehicle with a charger and ended up never using it, to their own surprise. or if they knew they’d (almost) never have to charge it
Must have a cable somewhere as a backup otherwise you’d need a full battery replacement should it ever be discharged.
Gonna go ahead and guess that when designing a 110 ton mega dump truck things are probably pretty front loaded on the planning side of things.
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.
