Tag: commercial vehicles

Electric Commercial Vehicles, a ten year update – Part 3

islandboy 306 Comments

A Guest Post by Islandboy

Over ten years ago on April 9, 2009 the original article “Electric Commercial Vehicles” was posted at The Oil Drum web site. In Part 1 of this ten year update we reviewed the progress or lack thereof, of all the projects mentioned in the 2009 article, concluding that while some had failed, there are some that have survived and are still supplying solutions today. In Part 2 we examined the policies being implemented in China to accelerate the development of an EV manufacturing sector. We also looked at some projects that have come about since the 2009 article, with the aim of the transitioning of commercial vehicles to options that reduce or eliminate the direct dependence on Fossil Fuels.

In this post, we will look at some solutions that were overlooked in the 2009 article but, have been in use for decades, in some cases, primarily the case of trolleybuses and trams or streetcars as they are known in North America, over a hundred years. It should also be noted that all underground rail systems are electric, as are all high speed rail networks and many light rail and commuter rail networks but, these articles will be restricted to road going commercial vehicles as electrified rail has been addressed extensively by Alan S. Drake who went by the screen name AlanfromBigEasy at theoildrum.com

Trams/Streetcars

Passenger Trams

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Photo Daniel Silva [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seville_Metro_Train.JPG)

Trams or as they are known in North America, streetcars predated the widespread use of internal combustion engines when they were introduced in the first half of the 19th century. Early tram systems used horses to pull the rail cars and later some used steam engines but, by the end of the 19th century electric trams, supplied with power from overhead lines had become the most common form of tram system and were being introduced all over the world. A small number of systems used other sources, including the cable cars of San Francisco, which were pulled by a cable running in the street under the carriages. Read More

Electric Commercial Vehicles, a ten year update – Part 2

islandboy 193 Comments

A Guest Post by Islandboy

Over ten years ago on April 9, 2009 the original article “Electric Commercial Vehicles” was posted at The Oil Drum web site. In Part 1 of this ten year update we reviewed the progress or lack thereof, of all the projects mentioned in the 2009 article, concluding that while some had failed, there are some that have survived and are still supplying solutions today.

In this post, we will look at some projects that have come about since the 2009 article with the aim of the transitioning of commercial vehicles to options that reduce or eliminate the direct dependence on Fossil Fuels. Vehicles that were only available as demonstration units or that were undergoing trials up to the time of this post will not be covered in this post. All of the vehicles covered in this post are available for purchase or lease as far as I am aware. First we will look at the country that is driving high volume commercial EV deployments and the means being used to achieve this.

Electric Vehicle Policies in China

Thomas L. Friedman wrote an article for the New York Times dated Sept. 25, 2010:

Their Moon Shot and Ours

The end of his first paragraph reads:

“Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities. In essence, China Inc. just named its dream team of 16-state-owned enterprises to move China off oil and into the next industrial growth engine: electric cars.”

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Electric Commercial Vehicles, a ten year update – Part 1

islandboy 232 Comments

A Guest Post by Islandboy

Just over ten years ago on April 9, 2009 the original article “Electric Commercial Vehicles” was posted at The Oil Drum web site. The article was prompted by an exchange in the discussions following a “Drumbeat” post about nine months earlier in which I had rattled off a series of links to articles from the web site autobloggreen.com that were specifically about electric or hybrid commercial vehicles of one kind or another. I should note that autobloggreen.com is the one of the first places I saw the term “Peak Oil” and when I saw the term more than once I decided to do look it up, which eventually led me to theoildrum.com. As they say, the rest is history.

In this post, I have looked back at what has happened to the companies and products featured in that article and will elaborate on what I found. I will attempt to discuss as many of the companies and products mention in the article as possible. If you visit the original 2009 article, all the pictures are now missing since links to external images were used rather than images hosted at theoildrum.com. I am somewhat surprised that I was able to find many of the pictures that I used in the 2009 article and will be using them in this article as much as possible. The first picture below was the lead picture for the 2009 article.

Battery Electric Vehicles

Battery Electric Vehicles are a class of electrified vehicles that use only electric motors for motive power and rely on batteries for the electricity to power their motors. BEVs carry no fuels on board except in the case of those which may use fuels for heating but, there are no internal combustion engines of any kind built into the vehicle.

Balqon

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This truck was part of a Zero Emissions Technologies project at the Port of Los Angeles and involved the use of several of these trucks in and around the port. The original prototype used lead acid batteries but, in 2010 a lithium ion powered version was introduced. The most recent news on this company I have seen was from about five and a half years ago and was not good: Read More