Trucks that can be fuelled with electricity or hydrogen
Electric trucks / Hydrogen trucks
Trucks can run on diesel, benzine, methane, ethanol and other combustibles - why not simply rename the most-use game resource "diesel" into generic term "fuel", just to simplify and generalize things? Otherwise it will be a mess with different vehicles requiring different fuel stations which must be supplied independently.
I think only electric vehicles worth the implementation time for that feature. So basically the e-truck must visit the charging station and spend some time there to charge up; during the charging time the station "runs" consuming electricity (few MW I assume). Sounds not too hard to implement. Considering that the electricity "distributed wirelessly" in CoI, I have no doubt players will love spamming charging stations around the island in most convenient places for the trucks. :)
Electric trucks may be implemented in way of replacing charged bateries.
Hydrogen are easy ones.
Both of them will need circuit boards to construct.
This is already suggested elsewhere and they would still require "fuel" to make the power. And electric vehicles are actually less efficient than gas/standard fuel-based vehicles (up to a certain size). So it doesn't make sense early, but probably for late game.
This would be a great way to use up suffer in the form of acid for batteries.
Most large scale excsvators are more like hydraulic pumps more than massive engines and transmissions. Seriously they use hydraulics to turn tires and stuff
Trucks could contribute to pollution in the early game driving the need for the switch to battery power mid to late game
"Otherwise it will be a mess with different vehicles requiring different fuel stations which must be supplied independently." Why? Normally fuel stations provide all kinds of fuels. Also biodiesel is IRL a completely different fuel from diesel.
This could definitely be thunk and re-thunk.
If I had to imagine how to deploy EV's and their charging, I'd come up with EV charging stations to replace the current fossil fuel stations.
Instead of then having tanks and tanks and tanks of *fuel*, I'd have substations with big batteries to save up, so my electrical grid wouldn't have to take a hit when the vehicles need charging (imagine having a 5MW power grid, 80-100 vehicles, and them all drawing a combined 2MW because they'd need to charge, as opposed to a 5MW grid with a 2.5-3MW battery reserve for EV charging).
This could be worked around/with in so many ways; ev vehicles last longer (or shorter) than regular ones between re-fueling. Maybe the charging station replaces the entire vehicle's battery, or maybe it's the kind where the depleted battery is replaced with a fully charged one, etc etc.
Closed as ✅ Done