EV pioneer switches on to trucks
Ex-pat Kiwi engineer Ian Wright – founder of Wrightspeed and co-founder of Tesla – thinks much of the EV push is misdirrected.
He believes that when the automotive world looked to develop electric vehicle solutions to save fossil fuels, the manufacturers asked the wrong question.
They didn’t ask, how can we save the most fuel per vehicle per year? he says.
Wright, however, saw an opportunity to create his start-up company to build such a solution, as it literally and quite noisily drove past him one day.
He started building an electric drive system for delivery trucks, and then someone approached him with an even bigger challenge: refuse trucks.
Wright says electric trucks make more sense than the electrification of passenger vehicles, and he says a battery EV with a range extender provides a shorter and quicker return on the initial investment than a pure plug-in EV.
More than 110,000 Class 8 garbage trucks noisily clank around the city and suburban streets of the USA, each consuming diesel at the rate of 108L/100km.
This is about twice as much per kilometre as an equivalent long-haul truck with the same engine, and annual consumption can be up to 153,000 litres.
These vehicles have a hard life, stopping and starting a few metres at a time in between pick ups, so much so that many chew through a set of brake pads in as little as three months.
Making the trash trucks quieter, much nicer to drive, more environmentally friendly, and saving wear and tear on the tyres and brake pads is all part of the electrification process.
Owners can change the power train from a heavy duty diesel engine to a range-extended electric motor operation using a turbine engine that can run on diesel, or natural gas, or even methane recovered from a landfill.
According to Wright, electrification for urban-based trucks in multiple stop/start use makes perfect sense. But he says the system can’t help long-haul operators.
Applications include refuse, delivery, and specialist duty trucks, and this includes market segments such as construction and road contracting, laundry supply, beverage delivery, perishable food delivery, and waste oil collection.
The Wrightspeed system puts a small but highly efficient electric motor at each drive wheel, adds a four-speed reduction gearbox, a regenerative brake system, and a turbine range extender to further the vehicle’s operating area when it runs out of stored electricity from the grid.
Wright says that even though Californian trucks are subject to stringent diesel emission regulations, making them some of the cleanest around, drivers of trucks that have been converted to electric operation by Wrightspeed often comment that they don’t miss the smell of diesel fumes.
The drivers tell us that they like the performance of the electric trucks because of the instant response and the torque curve of the power delivery, they like the regenerative brake system, and the lack of noise and smell, and they often comment on how nice the trucks are to drive, says Wright.
Moving large vehicles with electric motors is not a new concept, diesel-electric engines have driven the wheels on railway locomotives for decades, and four enormous 25,000hp electric motors drive Cunard’s Queen Mary II cruise liner.
The New Zealand market for electric rubbish trucks and delivery trucks is certainly on Wright’s radar, but he is not able to confirm when this will happen, but says it will be soon.
He says there’s an appetite from Government for electrification of the fleet and a lot of interest from fleet owners and operators because of the high costs of fuel and maintenance on fossil fuel vehicles.
Unlike the rest of the world where coal-fired electricity generation is growing particularly in developing countries such as China and India, New Zealand has astonishingly clean power sourced from renewables according to Wright.
Some New Zealand companies have approached us, and we are looking into refuse trucks, buses and construction and maintenance truck applications, says Wright.
Once people living and working in urban areas discover that refuse and delivery trucks can be made to run more quietly, they will demand it, he says.
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