Slashdot Mirror
First Mass-Produced Electric Truck Unveiled (nhk.or.jp)
AmiMoJo shares a report from NHK WORLD: Japan's Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus has unveiled what it says is the world's first mass-produced electric truck, as automakers around the world go all out to develop cars that run on battery power. The vehicle can carry about 3 tons of cargo and travel about 100 kilometers on a single charge. The truck, unveiled on Thursday, will be used by Japan's largest convenience store chain, Seven-Eleven. Seven-Eleven President Kazuki Furuya says some people complain about the noise delivery vehicles make, and says he is very impressed at how quiet the electric truck is.
It's too quiet. How can pedestrians keep being absorbed in their smartphones if you can't hear traffic anymore over the music you're playing on your headphones?
When I clicked the link, all I got was a page that made it clear that it was a Javascript site, not a HTML site.
Here are three links which are higher quality than the garbage you linked to this story: one two three. Is this site news for nerds, or dick-jerking for people who don't care if the web goes to shit? Clearly, the latter.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe the first electric truck of this century, but hardly the first.
at least here in Europe, there are mass produced Solaris Urbino electric busses.
Electric trucks were in common use from about 1900 till about 1970:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbilt_Electric_Trucks
There have been electric delivery trucks for decades.
These are definitely exciting times to be living in. Traditionally diesel trucks were horrific for the environment, the addition of DEF was an overall improvement but is realistically a band aid over a hemorrhaging wound when it comes to emissions.
I used to be a truck driver, however have now switched to coding. Seeing my old profession finally grow up and get their collective stuff together is fantastic.
I recall heavy hauling steel being most challenging because traditional diesel engines do not really posses enough horse power. If you drive through Toronto there are areas along the highway which have large chasm hills and valleys where a dip can extend across 3 or so km, while driving a truck with a heavy load you must attempt to pick up a large speed going downhill in order to make it up the hill on the other side. One of the many benefits of electrics is their horse power, an electric vehicle has the raw horsepower to allow taking a hill with a heavy load without needing to dangerously attempt to pick up speed (which given traffic conditions may not be possible leaving you to limp nearing the top of a hill slowing all traffic around you down).
The silence can also be a boon to drivers. The inside of a cab not properly insulated can be unbearably noisy especially after hours and hours of listening to it. I attempted to get a pair of sony noise-cancelling headphones to deal with the problem but they turned out to just be a sham which would work for a few minutes, and mysteriously scream loud electric noises into my ears painfully at random intervals. Having a truly silent engine would allow for significant improvements on focusing during driving and control of the vehicle.
The lack of diesel fume inhalation during re-fuel would also be quite pleasant. I had heard tales of gas huffers whose brains were destroyed beyond normal function within weeks of their addiction, I would think of this often while I myself was breathing in thick plumes of fume while filling up my truck which took a fair bit of time given the size of the tanks.
I can only hope that the industry is bit by the excitement of all electric vehicles have to offer and fall over themselves to begin switching. If for nothing else at least they could save a ton of money on maintenance given that electric engines with such a reduction in moving parts and liquids last much longer than their complex chemical counterparts.
Viva la revolución, and keep on truckin :)
Wow, it will go 62 miles on a charge and take a couple of hours to charge (presumably).
Yea, this is a game changer... Now you will need to keep all delivery routes under 60 miles, limit them to 2 per 8 hour day per truck, you will need to plan for extended recharging times when you are done (or simply buy multiple trucks for each driver) AND you will need to install and power a fleet of fast chargers at each loading dock you use. This is going to cost a lot of profit...
I could be wrong but I just don't see this working out all that well over fossil fueled options for cost efficiency. Of course there is the value of the PR campaign "Look we are GREEN!" to consider, but I don't think stockholders will be happy.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation is owned by Daimler. So it's German AND Japanese.
Also, these very same trucks were presented in US as well, about a month ago.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
from a couple of years ago..
'UPS Deploys 18 New Zero Emission Electric Trucks In Texas '
https://pressroom.ups.com/pres...
In Amsterdam (Netherlands) they have been using electric trucks for at least 5 years.
Seems pretty useful for getting stuff around town. I'm not sure how far they come from, but the trucks pulling up to the supermarket across the street where I used to live seemed to be coming pretty much constantly. They wouldn't stop for 2 hours, I'll grant you (probably less than an hour), but they'd still get some charge in that time. Stopping even 50% of those trucks spewing out diesel fumes would probably make a noticeable difference to air quality in the area.
Sure, the ones that do 200 miles to get where they're going aren't going to be replaced by this. They also need to be replaced by this sort of thing much less than the short-haul, inner-city traffic. So yeah, this won't replace every truck on the planet, but it doesn't need to.
The first electric truck, and they didn't call it the "Electruck"?
The truck is not for cross-country deliveries, but for city deliveries, where the distances are short and the need to reduce pollution is the greatest. It's a perfect fit. And if it wasn't for the fact it was designed and built by dirty foreigners and that they literally BEAT YOU TO IT, you'd be singing praises I think.
this is what the world needs to take after - replacing all short distance city traffic with electric vehicles to reduce pollution where it's needed the most. An example to learn from.
This isn't a long haul point to point transportation truck though. It's for multidrop warehouse to shop use. Trucks like that, especially in dense population areas spend more time stationary being loaded and unloaded than they do on the road. If you fast charge to full at the warehouse, and trickle charge while unloading that should more than cover the daily delivery round.
From TFS... "Japan's largest convenience store chain, Seven-Eleven"
And there's so much wrong with just those few words.
Than you haven't checked in a long time. 7-Eleven is the world's largest retail operation and I had to look up UPS
"Um, I'll get right on that as soon as the truck is finished recharging."
From the OP: "The vehicle can carry about 3 tons of cargo..." ... 9,380-pound payload capacity."
Nope: "The Class 4 truck has a
" and travel about 100 kilometers on a single charge. "
Nope. ""The Class 4 truck has a 100-mile range..."
Importantly:
"The batteries can be quick-charged within an hour at a DC charging station or over the course of eight hours using a 230-volt outlet. The vehicle will also have flexible battery options to allow customers that need less range than 100 miles to opt for fewer batteries and increase payload capacity."
Still, 100 miles (I'd be curious to see how that degrades with the stop-start driving of a city delivery truck - I truly don't know how/if that impairs an electric?) but having to recharge for AN HOUR is brutal, when most business load/unload windows are 8 hours...you'd basically have to run 2x the trucks as half would be charging at any time.
What I don't understand is why electrics aren't looking at quick-change battery banks - it seems a lot more usable that you buy a truck like this with a couple of extra battery chassis, and then when you're low, bop back to the terminal, drop the empty batteries, reconnect the waiting fully-charged pack, and roll. That could be 10 mins or less.
-Styopa
Seems pretty useful for getting stuff around town. I'm not sure how far they come from, but the trucks pulling up to the supermarket across the street ...
You realize that those trucks are probably long-haul OTR, not local traffic, right? So they need be able to travel hundreds of miles and refuel quickly.
Hell, an average route for FedEx is 160mi/day. In town. I just don't see how a lorry that can go less than half that distance before shutting down for the workday is in any way feasible.
Full disclosure, I am an American who lives in the Midwest, which is a different environment than Japan. You could fit the whole island chain in Missouri with plenty of room left over, so obviously there's a scale issue.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Actually it's not that bad for a delivery route. I drove one Christmas for UPS a couple years ago and my route (which was one of the furthest from the hub) put about 70 miles a day on the package car delivering about 700 items a day. 60 wouldn't be enough and I'd want more of a buffer, but that 60 range would handle the full delivery schedule for many of the routes that didn't have to drive 15 miles each way to get to and from the route. As the trucks in the article are all part of a system put charge wireless points at each store and you could extend the range at least a little.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I think this might be a good fit for a company like 7-11. Each store is getting fairly small deliveries, that all likely come from a central distribution point near/in the city. The cost to install a quick charger isn't that much for a business, I think around $1000. If at each stop, the truck is plugged in for the 15-20 minutes it takes to unload, it should make it through the day.
Not a typo. Early 1900s.
https://history.gmheritagecenter.com/wiki/index.php/GMC_Electrics:_The_Early_Years
From the link:
Electric powered cars and trucks are nothing new. GMC produced a complete line of electric trucks from 1912-1917. There were nine standard models ranging from 1,000 lb. to 12,000 lb. capacity. Some sources claim these trucks were also produced under the Rapid name in 1912. General Motors Truck Company was formed in 1911 to handle the sale of Rapid and Reliance Trucks. By 1913, all GM trucks produced were badged as "GMC" Trucks.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes, that's the problem with living in a backward country that doesn't even have a functional railway network.
The convenience stores stock up late at night and make a lot of noise unloading and loading. Electric does not help with banging truck doors and pallets around. Donâ(TM)t recall being bothered by the motor sound.
Internal Chinese market also has electric trucks, and they're way more mass produced. They're just not for export.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It is mass-produced in Germany since two months already. They are not the first.
I am curious: do you have to pay anything to ride them?
...Subsidizing public transportation a bit more and dropping the boarding cost would make it even more convenient (for wealthy people) and beneficial (for poor people) and buses locally have a magnetic card reader anyway, to read weekly and monthly bus passes that the agency itself sells. To manage bus routes effectively, the governing agency would need a way to track actual ridership--but many people just pay cash. Issuing IDs and tracking the IDs would be even more accurate than charging cash would. And they run the buses anyway, even when nobody is riding them... That means that the agencies MUST have already budgeted at least part of the riding fares into the normal subsidies.
(In the US) one aspect of public transportation that has always mystified me is, why don't they let you ride it for free?
The two major justifications for public transportation is usually something like the following:
1) it will reduce traffic congestion from private cars, and-
2) it will benefit low-income people.
By my thinking it fails on both counts.
1) public municipal bus systems are already subsidized, as it's basically necessary. They lose so much money that no private company will undertake such an effort, as they do with taxi cabs. (*Uber doesn't count IMO)
....
So then,,, they question here is not "how much would they lose if they stopped charging boarding fees", but "how much are the empty seats costing compared to what they're collecting in fees?".
From casual observation, most of the buses and light trains I see are typically at 25% capacity or less, most of the time other than rush hours. And the buses and trains run every 30 minutes from 5 AM until 2 AM.
That would have to mean that roughly 75% of the riding fares are already included in bus subsidies anyway.
2) where I live (central US, St Louis area) a monthly bus pass with no discounts for blind or elderly people costs $120. Yet there are plenty of used car lots with cars for sale for payments of around $200. Even allowing another $100 a month for insurance and fuel, you see that owning a car only costs a bit more than twice what a bus pass costs. And a car is drastically faster, over most any distance: it's one-half the time over just a couple miles, and can easily be less than one-third the time for a 15-20+ mile ride.
I have held quite a rather negative opinion of most forms of public transit for a long time, just due to the fundamental problem of balancing accessibility with travel time (speed).
But if I was put in charge of improving it, the one thing I would do is stop charging boarding fees.
Doing so defeats the very purposes of what public transportation was claiming to achieve.
They've got a flat surface on top that will hold about 30m^2 solar panel, and they spend a large amount of their time parked for loading/unloading. I wouldn't consider it for charging, but would work as a "range extender".
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Don't you mean "She". Equal Opportunity for All!
In a small Japanese prefecture, sure.
I just doubt that it would necessarily scale effectively in a nation that takes up a much larger geographic footprint than Japan. As I pointed out, the average daily drive for a single FedEx driver is around 160 miles per diem (and can go from empty to full in minutes); this electric box truck maxes out at around 60 miles before needing to park for 8 hours.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
> Every physical object produced has a mass, doesn't it?
Therefore protestantism should be illegal and adherents shall convert to either catholicism or orthodox christianity and attend the Holy Mass on Sundays. It would be so fitting to end the lutheran-calvinist heresy now, exactly 500 years after it reared its ugly head.