Heavy Duty Electric Trucks are Coming...

adamis wrote:
My 2001 VW Jetta TDI Diesel gets about 45mpg on average. Furthest I ever drove was 800 miles on a single tank of fuel (~16 gallons). It has been modified with larger injectors, larger fuel pump, new cam, chipped it. It's a 5 speed and I had a super tall 5th gear added so I can cruise at 65mph around 1900 rpm. It won't take any mustangs on the streets but it is a sufficiently fast and fun car to drive. I've enjoyed it so much that after 330k miles and a blown head gasket coming over the Grapevine (I5 into Southern California) I paid to have it towed all the way from Southern California back to the Bay Area and my mechanic is rebuilding her. Hoping to get at least another 100k miles out of her before she gets garaged as a classic for being a car ahead of it's time in the fuel mileage debate.

All of that said... If I had an unlimited budget to start my own truck company, I would start with an electric platform similar to what we have been discussing but instead of a frunk, have a small Diesel engine for extending the range (or better yet, a fuel cell but that's impractical right now). You don't need 450hp and 950lb of torque to cruise down the highway so even if the small Diesel didn't generate enough power to replace what was being used by the electric motors, it would be enough to extend the range quite a bit.

What I described of course is what the Volt was, a series hybrid. As an engineer, it is surprising to me that the Prius being a parallel hybrid design (and seemingly much more complex) is what succeeded in the market place. I have a feeling that all of these electric truck companies have to be thinking about some sort of optional range extension capabilities. The space and weight capacity is already available. Seems like a simple solution for an obvious problem.

We just rented a diesel jetta last week. Spent two days driving all over southern greece...probably 5hr each day of driving...only used 1/2 a tank. It had the stop-start technology. I don't know how much fuel it saved but I really disliked the hesitation starting from a light as the engine had to start first. Eventually I learned to release the brake pedal just before I thought the light would turn green and this started the engine before I was ready to accelerate but still a bit clunky.

For smaller local delivery trucks battery EV is just about there. 100-150miles at modest speeds and then recharge overnight is doable now and with 5-6 days per week on the road, fuel savings can justify a pretty good up charge on the initial price. Assuming 10mpg currently, that's 10-15 gal per day offset...assuming $3/gal, that's around $7500-10000 per year in fuel savings. (unlike typical passenger cars that might burn 1-2gal per day on 10-20mile commute)

Range extending would only be useful for mid range but not too large of trucks. If you are doing 500mile days, the extender motor would have to be similar power to current diesel engines because eventually, the batteries would be dead and you only have the extender motor providing power. Also if you are doing fully loaded interstate semis, you need a lot of continuous HP