Electric truck - tow vehicle of future ?

[Lessmore]

Interesting article about an electric Class 7 truck .

Begs the question, are electric powered heavy duty pickups...ready for HD towing service... far behind ?

Range right now is somewhat limited, but where will it be in 5, 10, 15 years ?


Maybe the future is closer than we think.


Electric heavy duty truck (Class 7)

[Bedlam]

How about a 9000 lb battery pack?

https://www.geek.com/tech/worlds-biggest-ev-can-haul-65-tons-1716072/

[valhalla360]

wilber1 wrote:
According to the Federal Highways Administration the average diesel transit bus gets 3 MPG. Unless they are running on routes with a high load factor, they have quite a large emissions footprint per passenger carried. Add to that, all the other maintenance and fluid/filter disposal issues you have with ICE's. Trying to electrify public transit as much as possible makes a lot of sense.

You can find numbers all over the place. Lots of variables. Numbers I've seen used by transit agencies is typically 6-8mpg. With a moderate 10 passenger average, that's 60-80 passenger miles per gallon.

Considering your average commuter car has 1.1 passengers on average and around 30mpg. The equivalent is 33 passenger miles per gallon. Even most high MPG cars will struggle to beat the bus.

Of course, bus size should be matched to load factors. If you rarely get more than 20 passengers, you can always drop down to a smaller bus that will get better MPG.

Usually the assumption is a hybrid city bus will get 30-50% better MPG but again, it depends a lot on route and driving style. Ironically, the worst routes get the biggest improvements. Big improvements in emissions are to be had. No clouds of black smoke when they accelerate away from a stop.

Pure electric fits with the link in the other post. A few specialty uses but no large scale implementation.

[wilber1]

According to the Federal Highways Administration the average diesel transit bus gets 3 MPG. Unless they are running on routes with a high load factor, they have quite a large emissions footprint per passenger carried. Add to that, all the other maintenance and fluid/filter disposal issues you have with ICE's. Trying to electrify public transit as much as possible makes a lot of sense.

[Bedlam]

If you take the driver pay and benefits out the cost of operating a bus, it costs about $1-1.50 per mile when fuel, maintenance and insurance are factored in. I don't have a breakdown of these costs, but there will still be insurance and some maintenance and electric costs operating a BEV (battery powered plugin) over a typical HEV (diesel hybrid). To reach cost parity (if incentives were not present), I'm figuring 1M+ miles to break even?

https://www.thoughtco.com/bus-cost-to-purchase-and-operate-2798845

[Turtle_n_Peeps]

LOL, I can buy over 300,000.00 gallons of diesel fuel for that kind of money! :E

[valhalla360]

time2roll wrote:
Yes initial cost is higher. Fuel and maintenance on the electric is much lower.

$850k lower?

[time2roll]

Yes initial cost is higher. Fuel and maintenance on the electric is much lower.

[valhalla360]

Quote: China had 170,000 of the 173,000 e-buses

So that implies the rest of the world has 3,000 e-buses as of 2016.

Also as noted, $1.5m for an articulating bus is a pretty steep price. Articulating buses tend to run major routes with higher speeds. Assuming an 8hr shift averaging a little over 30mph, you will coast back into the depot on fumes and unless it includes physically changeable battery packs, that bus is out of commission until the next day. By comparison a standard diesel articulating bus is about $650k.

Keep in mind, there are federal programs that cover a large part of the cost of new "low emission" buses (doesn't only apply to pure EV). I know the ones in Europe are almost exclusively driven by keeping emissions out of dense historic areas (and I agree in those special situations, it can make a lot of sense to keep diesel soot off historic buildings).

[Bedlam]

According to the provided links, $750K gets you a 40' BEV bus with a 25 mile range and $1.5M gets you a 275 mile 60' articulating BEV bus.

[Lessmore]

time2roll wrote:
China produces over 100,000 electric buses in 2016

Quite right and I believe the electric bus order in Edmonton that Poster John & Angela mentioned previously, is with a Chinese country.

[time2roll]

China produces over 100,000 electric buses in 2016

[valhalla360]

Bedlam wrote:
When you read about these electrics, I wonder how many are tied to the grid verses being battery or fuel cell powered. Even our bus trolleys have battery packs to allow the driver to move it back under the lines if he has go around an obstruction and loses connection with the lines.

Yeah, pure electric on cantenary systems are easy to do.

Worked on a light rail project recently and there were a couple of overpasses,they had to get under, so the specs were adjusted so there was enough battery power to go about 1/4 mile. The cantenary lines ended a little ways before the bridge and picked up shortly after. The pickup automatically lowered as they approached the bridge and went up once clear.

Almost a pure electric-hybrid.

Actually, cantenary lines for buses with the option for trucks to share could be a good implementation approach. Getting a pure electric delivery truck with sufficient range is tough but you can justify running the cantenary for bus system as the routes tend to be fixed. Once built letting delivery trucks use the lines would be fairly simple and would allow for significant range extension as I'm sure a lot of the truck routes will parallel bus routes. Unlike with charging stations, the truck keeps doing it's job while charging and while I don't know the specs, I'm sure they put out some pretty good power, so probably can charge while running the truck.

[John___Angela]

Bedlam wrote:
When you read about these electrics, I wonder how many are tied to the grid verses being battery or fuel cell powered. Even our bus trolleys have battery packs to allow the driver to move it back under the lines if he has go around an obstruction and loses connection with the lines.

Most of the units I have read about or watched videos on are are stand alone. Anywhere from 125 to 300 KWh. Kinda cool.

[Bedlam]

When you read about these electrics, I wonder how many are tied to the grid verses being battery or fuel cell powered. Even our bus trolleys have battery packs to allow the driver to move it back under the lines if he has go around an obstruction and loses connection with the lines.