Daimler, the world’s biggest truck-maker best known in the U.S. for its Freightliner brand, unveiled two new battery-powered models as it looks to protect its market dominance. One, an all-electric Class 8 big rig called the Freightliner eCascadia, will compete directly with Tesla’s semi-truck, the Semi.
The non-profit North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) is all about pushing environmentally beneficial, cost-effective efficiencies in the trucking industry, which they back up with deep research and real-world data. After studying the developing battery electric (BE) truck market, they came up with a balanced list that gave plenty of ammunition for both sides of the big rig EV discussion.
Industry giant Volvo Group announced this week that it will sell electric trucks in North America; but it’s not saying when electric Volvo Trucks will appear.
We’re not saying we have reached a tipping point in a shift to heavy-duty EVs, but the movement reached a high water mark at the 2017 ACT Expo.
The Top 10 2016 high-mpg cars and trucks is an eclectic mix of six hybrids, two diesels, one plug-in hybrid and one pure electric model.
These are the 10 or more cars and trucks I’m looking forward to spending some time with in 2014. I hope they all make, but I probably should also have saved a spot or two on the list for some surprises. In 2013 we had a few of those and I’m expecting more in 2014.
At utility giant PG&E, 190 electric trucks are now used to keep things running. If a neighborhood has a power outage, a troubled truck rolls in. A technician is lifted high in the air to look at a transformer on a pole. Auxiliaries can be run for hours including test equipment into a communications. These plug-in trucks can be used twice as many hours per day as diesel trucks with legal noise restrictions. By switching from diesel to electric, PG&E pays for the electric trucks in 2.5 years according to Dave Meisel, Director Transportation for Services for PG&E.
Delivery trucks are increasingly hybrids that sip diesel and gasoline instead of gulping. Thousands of trucks are now all-electric. 4.5 million vehicles in the U.S. are short-haul delivery vehicles. Although it would be impractical to get a big long-haul truck across the nation on electricity, it can be practical to charge 100 short-haul delivery trucks at the warehouse where they load.
Look for Major MPG Gains in Ford F150 and Toyota Tacoma Trucks; Toyota Highlander and Ford Escape SUVs. Ford and Toyota– the world’s two leading manufacturers of hybrid vehicles –announced they will equally collaborate on the development of an advanced new hybrid system for light truck and SUVs. Ford and Toyota have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the product development collaboration. Toyota has sold over 3 million hybrids, leading with the Prius, to achieve significant hybrid market share leadership. Ford has taken hybrid market share from Honda with the Ford Fusion Hybrid and achieved impressive SUV mileage with the Ford Escape Hybrid. The new powerful and fuel-efficient trucks and SUVs from this partnership will almost certainly use lithium batteries.
By Tom Bartley. The Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) EXPO, May 4-6, 2011, at the Long Beach Convention Center had 42 on display and 25 ride-n-drive … Read more