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A Garbage Truck That Would Make Elon Musk Proud

Posted by Soulskill on from the does-it-have-rockets? dept.

curtwoodward writes: Ian Wright knows how to build high-performance electric cars: he was a co-founder at Tesla Motors and built the X1, a street-legal all-electric car that can go from zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds. But he only cares about trucks now — in fact, boring old garbage trucks and delivery trucks are his favorite. Why? To disrupt the auto industry with electrification, EV makers should target the biggest gas (and diesel) guzzlers. His new powertrain is very high tech, combining advanced electric motors with an onboard turbine that acts as a generator when batteries run low.

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. General Moters by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There where plenty of electric vehicles prior to General Moters buying all the street-car companies and replacing the cars with diesel buses.

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  2. Some of this is happening at PACCAR by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They make trucks, they're near Seattle, and there are some UW engineering projects in doing stuff like that there.

    They already have a number of hybrid trucks, and I know that fuel cell powerplants scale well in truck form.

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  3. Wondering why it took so long... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The diesel-electric locomotive took over from the steam locomotives at incredible rate of adoption. Many steam locomotives pf Baldwin Loco Works, Philadelphia, made just one run from assembly line to scrap yard. It was that fast, technology changed before the order pipeline was flushed. In just 10 years, between 1950 and 1960. But even very large earth movers, even those that needed lots of electric power on board, stubbornly stayed with diesel instead of diesel-electric.

    This conversion of diesel trucks to diesel-electric or gas-turbine-electric trucks is long over due. In the case of steam locomotives, the efficiency went from 6% for steam to 15% diesel-electric. But coal was much cheaper than diesel. Here the efficiency boost is probably from 20% to 30%. Going from expensive fuel to slightly cheaper fuel. It might not beat the speed at which steam was made obsolete. But it could come close.

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  4. 1950.s Milk Floats in the UK by nukenerd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The UK at one time (certainly around the 1950s-60s) had the world's highest number of electric vehicles on the road - tens of thousands of them I believe.

    They were milk delivery trucks (called "Milk Floats") which typically delivered milk around town in glass bottles to people's doorsteps at around 5-6 am every day. That was before most people had fridges but wanted fresh milk every morning. They ran on batteries and had a top speed of about 8mph.

    It was ideal, like it would also be ideal for rubbish (US garbage) collection. Electric drives are good for the constant start-stop driving with long-ish pauses in between. Also the early morning milk floats did not wake people up as a IC-engined truck would have done.

    Fridges and car ownership brought an end to most doorstep milk deliveries, but there are still some around.