Electric trucks

[dan_b]

I found this very interesting - a ride around Oslo on a delivery round in an electric truck. Driven by a Glaswegian!

[Mart]

Also, yesterday Fully Charged ran an article on the purpose built BEV delivery truck - Volta Zero

[dan_b]

Yeah saw that one too - but what interested me about the Bjorn video was that these trucks are out there making deliveries now - that whole DB Schenker depot is EV only. That Volta Truck does look very clever and in particular I like the safety first concept of the cab design - but as with a lot of EV start-ups, will it actually survive to make it to market in 18 months time?

[Oliver90owner]

At 8 tonnes payload, it needs a tail lift option. That lass should not be expected to hump 8 tonnes of carrots around! Obviously OK for depots/supermarkets with proper loading/unloading facilities.

[dan_b]

I imagine it will have one in production - this appears to be a promotional prototype as much as anything.

The electric truck in the Bjorn Nyland video I shared has a tail lift. One interesting point they made was that as an eletcric truck, they don't need to leave the diesel engine running to provide hydraulic power to the lift gate when loading/unloading - so the delivery is much quieter.

[Mart]

I forget which Bjorn Nyland vid it was I was watching about a year ago, but whilst charging the BEV he was testing, he showed two (or perhaps three) BEV tipper trucks at the charging station getting some electrons. You know the type that collect and deliver earth, ballast, tarmac etc etc.. typically four axle rigids.

[Stan]

Was it this one Mart?

[Mart]

Cheers Stan, that looks like it, but I'd swear there was more than one truck, and part of a longer vid ...... but I might just be going mad!

There certainly seem to be quite a lot of BEV 'test' trucks built as conversions of existing models, and Volvo is a front runner, I think. I hope the results are promising, and lead the way to purpose built BEV trucks.

It's a silly ambition I have, but one day I really want to see a BEV tractor unit pulling a petrol/diesel tanker trailer. Talk about irony overload!

[dan_b]

He did another video

[Stinsy]

That is pretty cool. I wonder how much payload is lost due to the weight of the battery? I wonder how good the range is when fully loaded going uphill? Great that they're able to find a charger that offers both high speed and the trucks fit, it also looks as if the trucks didn't have to detour to find the chargers (was right next to the main road).

I've been looking at fast charger availability on routes I do regularly in anticipation of my 125kW-capable iD4. It seems that there are 24-30p/kWh fast chargers available but most are limited to 50-60kW, I'm hoping the availability of chargers that genuinely deliver 100kW+ at reasonable price improves over the next year or two.