An all electric plug-in truck from Smith Electric Vehicles. (Gregory M. Lamb)
Wanted: a Prius for the delivery industry
At ‘AltWheels’ expo, inventors bring the hybrid mind-set to gas-guzzling shipping trucks.
By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ October 8, 2008 edition
Reporter Greg Lamb discusses the inspiration for the AltWheels conference.
Reporter Greg Lamb
A Staples delivery van. A utility company bucket truck. An electrically assisted cargo tricycle. These aren’t the kinds of vehicles that leap to mind when we hear the phrase “hybrid vehicle.”
But that’s changing. A huge chunk of greenhouse-gas and other harmful emissions spew out of the tailpipes of commercial vehicles. And with fuel costs rising, interest in ways to cut or eliminate the use of petroleum fuels is at an all-time high.
“What’s been happening in passenger vehicles is now coming to [commercial fleet operators], the guys who most need this because the biggest gas users are the biggest vehicles,” says Alison Sander, founder of AltWheels Fleet Day, the largest gathering of alternative-power commercial vehicles on the East Coast.
The autumn event in Framingham, Mass., showed off 45 alternative-powered vehicles to hundreds of corporate fleet managers and government officials from 28 states. The vehicles, which range in size from an electric scooter to a large Class 6 (25,000 lb. gross weight) truck, used a variety of alternative-power schemes, including hybrid electric, plug-in all-electric, hydrogen fuel cells, compressed natural gas, biodiesel, and 85 percent ethanol.
Attendance at the event tripled this year to 300 people. In the event’s first year, 89 percent of fleet managers said they were “skeptical” about the use of alternative-power systems. This year, more than 60 percent of fleet managers were at least experimenting with alternative fuels, Ms. Sander says.
Staples, the office supply giant, is testing two hybrid delivery trucks built by Isuzu and souped up with electric motors from Enova Systems.
Smith Electric Vehicles, based in Britain, showed off a large all-electric plug-in delivery truck that recharges in 4-1/2 to 6 hours. Designed for urban streets, it has a range of 130 to 150 miles per charge and a top speed of 50 m.p.h. Smith plans to begin selling the battery-powered vehicles in the United States beginning next year.
Sander conceived of the AltWheels event after visiting a rain forest in Ecuador several years ago. The tribal chief told her he had dreamed that his rain forest, and all rain forests, would disappear unless something changed. “You need to go back to your native place” and figure out how to change that vision, he told her.
By bringing innovative companies together with fleet managers, Sander expects many ways will emerge to cut petroleum use.
( More stories )
Comments
2. dairmuid | 10.09.08
What about class 8 trucks? Those are the kind that you see on the highways, the long haul trucks. They are usually driven by owner-operators who can’t afford anything but nasty, polluting trucks that are 20 years old or more! When is the industry going to get a class 8 hybrid going??
3. Carl | 10.09.08
dairmuid, I think class 8 can’t be far behind. Remember, the largest trucks in the world are series hybrid electrics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terex_Titan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebherr_T_282B
This is great! I’ve been saying for years that the world needs big trucks that get 20mpg far more than it needs little cars that get 60.
Trucks outnumber cars globally, they consume far more fuel per mile, and are typically driven far more miles annually. Plus, they usually have little or no emissions controls.
4. Shawn | 10.10.08
Dairmuid,
Long-haul trucks can’t take advantage of the parallel hybrid’s penchant for stop-and-go use, but they could use the same kind of hybrid that diesel-electric locomotives have used for decades: Serial hybrid. The advantage would be a higher range of torque, excellent for heavy loads and big hills. Also, it would keep those brakes cooler going down mountains, to have a regen system.
Delivery trucks are perhaps the ideal platform for heavy electric hybrids, since they usually only go less than 100 miles a day, but are still running all day, mostly in urban traffic. For always-short range, like food deliveries and some trades-people, these all-electrics are the way to go.
Shout out to Alison and the Altwheels crew, with whom I’ve worked before. I didn’t attend this year, but I know that many fleet managers will be happy with newly robust electric technology, because alternative fuels were sometimes difficult to purchase.
5. James | 10.29.08
I think the reasons for using a diesel-electric ‘hybrid’ were not solely for fuel economy. The mechanical difficulties of stringing multiple drive axles together through some sort of transmission, lengths of the drive shafts, unreliability of gasoline engines (as contrasted with diesel), etc were the primary reasons for using diesel/electric combos in locomotives. The same concerns apply to the large earth moving machinery mentioned in an earlier post.
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1. Cecilia | 10.09.08
ROCK ON! This is what we should be investing our hard won Tax monies on!