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Mercedes-Benz shows off the first fully electric heavy urban transport truck
- mtgx 10y agoI hope that color is just a prank. It hurts my eyes just looking at it. Can car makers stop making "quirky" EV designs? Nobody is asking for them. > That’s in part due to its max range of 200 kilometres (about 124 miles). If that's NEDC, then it's more like 85 miles EPA.
- lorenzhs 10y agoThat pattern is typical of disguised prototypes, as it makes it a lot harder to make out details from photos.
- fear91 10y agoIt's actually done to make it harder to see anything: http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2012/04/spy-photo-camera-camo-explained-whats-with-the-swirlies.html http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2012/04/spy-photo-camera-... It makes it harder to see any details when the company wants to stay secretive about their new car.
- csours 10y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=dazzle+camouflage https://www.google.com/search?q=dazzle+camouflage I think it is kind of hilarious to try to camo a truck, like I can't quite tell what it is... is it a sports car? is it a SUV? The SUV wars are heating up! Also kinda funny that a truck would be differentiated based on sheet metal styling.
- niels_olson 10y agoIt's not for someone looking at it. It's for everyone whose eye you don't want to catch. And consider that Ford or Boeing could easily ask NRO to downlink images of opportunity whenever untasked Keyhole assets overfly known industrial sites. Timesharing isn't just for computers and condos.
- sveme 10y agoThat's a special coating they put on to keep people from being able to see the car's design before it's being officially presented. Plenty of test cars driving around on my city's streets with these coatings on.
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- javiramos 10y agoTrucks seem to be the perfect candidate for electric propulsion. The high torque of electric motors just make sense for urban acceleration/deceleration. As a pedestrian, one of the things I hate the most is the the dense, black smoke from heavy trucks.
- fear91 10y agoUnfortunately the range is becoming a problem on big electric trucks. The batteries cannot store as much energy per weight unit as the chemical fuel. This can be circumvented by using electric wiring overhead. Sweden is prototyping an electric highway for trucks. It'll make transport cheaper and less damaging to the environment.
- hx87 10y agoIt's less of a problem in dense urban areas, where distances are short and there are many opportunities for regenerative braking.
- bluedino 10y ago>> Unfortunately the range is becoming a problem on big electric trucks. Right, there's only a 126 mile maximum range on that truck. So you'd have to stop and get a new battery every 2 hours, minimum on the interstate.
- fu9ar 10y agoThe point of an urban transport truck is to transport goods within dense urban areas so that we don't have to suck down exhaust fumes all damn day. Your objection is absolutely irrelevant. You could have realized that by reading the entire title of the article!
- mikeash 10y agoAn "urban transport truck" would do poorly on the interstate? How unexpected!
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- minionslave 10y ago100 years from now, our cities will be much quieter.
- jdimov9 10y agoCan't wait!
- artursapek 10y agoI hope it doesn't take that long.
- agentgt 10y agoI think this could be a big deal depending on future politics. I would not be surprised if Manhattan in 10 years or so only allows etrucks over the bridge (with certain exemptions of course). If that happens there could be some interesting but boring (oxymoron intended) business opportunities like transfer stations at the borders of urban areas (switch engines). This could also dramatically improve the safety of trucks as there are still an enormous amount of trucks that are not automatic and do not have antilock breaks (or whatever the analogous tech is these days). By mandating electric engines the safety improvements could be had at the same time. I like the name: eTruck.
- vermontdevil 10y agoIf the mayor of NYC has his way, that could happen. But unfortunately Albany (the capital of NY) will override it. See the attempts by NYC to set up congestion pricing but Albany won't allow it happen.[1] Personally I think other cities will start this first such as London, LA, Paris, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing_in_New_York...
- sandstrom 10y agoStockholm has congestion pricing since since 2007. Prices are between $0 and $5 depending on the time and day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing#Stockholm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing#Stockholm
- vermontdevil 10y agoSorry I meant in terms of requiring only eTrucks in business districts of major cities, not congestion pricing. Just saying that NYC tried to have congestion pricing only to be overruled. And I'm sure they'll aim for eTrucks only requirement but will be overruled by Albany because that's what Albany does. And that other cities (Stockholm I'm sure) will be at the forefront of the new eTruck revolution as soon as it's commercially viable.
- castratikron 10y agoThis is where it'd make sense for the battery to be removable. A truck company could keep a bunch of charged batteries at their warehouse and swap batteries out every time a truck comes back for a new delivery.
- giarc 10y agoIf manufacturers were smart, they would make them easily moveable by forklift.
- patrickk 10y agoBattery powered forklifts swapping batteries on trucks. It's a nice image of the future. Perhaps there's even infrastructure commonalities to reduce costs.
- pc86 10y agoI think it's much more likely that a) it's not that easy; and/or b) the economic incentive just isn't there rather than people whose livelihood depends on it not being smart enough to figure out that forklifts exist.
- HCIdivision17 10y agoWhen I worked in plants, I remember gangs of battery charging stations that had a crane to swap batteries out on the forklifts. I can't imagine distribution centers not installing something like that for these trucks (eventually). Even if swapping isn't a feature in all electric trucks to start, there's almost certainly going to be some sort of conversion kit to make it possible in the future.
- jessriedel 10y agoWhy does this make particularly more sense for trucks than cars? Just because trucks don't need to have a down time for sleeping like a car with a single owner does?
- chiph 10y ago
- pjc50 10y agoNice step. As they say, there's a couple of big advantages to electric for trucks: low noise and emissions are advantages for everyone around them, and the high torque of electric motors at low speed is convenient for the driver.
- ourmandave 10y agoDaimler says in a press release that it anticipates prices for its batteries to have dropped by a factor of 2.5 between 1997 and 2025, while battery performance will have increased in the same proportion. Why are they "anticipating" a price drop starting in 1997?
- rhino369 10y agoThey are anticipating a price drop from 1997 to 2025. Some of the price drop has already occurred, but from now til 2025 is an estimation.
- netcan 10y agoThe "externality" most discussed is generally carbon emissions, for obvious reasons. It used to be particulates, for local health reasons. Noise rarely gets a mention. But, if someone from an all electric future was dropped off in 2016 i think they'd really notice noise above everything else. Traffic noise in cities is a massive "silent" irritant. Even outside of cities, it's amazing how far you need to be from a road to hear unadulterated wilderness. Off-road, dirt bikes, quads, water craft and such can really impact enjoyment of outdoor recreational places. I don't think the psychological impacts of this are fully understood, but it is understood that they aren't trivial. The whole world will get so much more peaceful with combustion engines out of the picture. Air travel is the one area where reducing noise would carry an obvious economic benefit to airlines. Unfortunately it's the one of hardest ones to solve.
- vinw 10y agoMost road noise is from the tyres though, modern IC engines are pretty quiet.
- mgr86 10y agoAs an aside I'd love a small to mid size electric pick up. I don't do much driving and we share a volt at home. But a lot of things I don't want to put into a car with a hatchback. Mulch, compost, gas cans, leaky bags of ice melt, plants from a nursery, etc.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoIs $crossover + weathertech is not an acceptable solution for your problem?
- csours 10y agoMost crossovers can't handle a sheet of plywood and 10 foot 2x4s
- csours 10y agoDISCLAIMER - I work for GM, any opinions are my own. Agreed, it's great that companies have electric and hybrid cars, but I want to see BEV/hybrid sports cars (besides the $150k BMW i8) and BEV/hybrid trucks. GM is sponsoring the EcoCar 3 [1] competition, which uses a Camaro for the base vehicle - a hybrid Camaro, with real performance and efficiency, would be the best of both worlds. GM previously produced 300V hybrid trucks[2], but apparently they didn't sell very well. 1. http://ecocar3.org/ http://ecocar3.org/ 2. http://www.gmfleet.com/chevrolet/silverado-1500-hybrid-truck.html http://www.gmfleet.com/chevrolet/silverado-1500-hybrid-truck... http://www.edmunds.com/cadillac/escalade-hybrid/ http://www.edmunds.com/cadillac/escalade-hybrid/
- douche 10y agoGiven that most of the truckers I know are trading in their newer, more heavily computerized trucks for their old models that were simpler and more mechanical (in a staggering number of cases, for the exact machines that they traded up from), I'm not sure how this is going to go.
- _ph_ 10y agoIt is great to see that Mercedes is working at electrical trucks. Electrical cars are just the start, the real emission saving will be electrical trucks. Though one has to note that as stated in the article: 'a “conceivable” launch window of “the beginning of the next decade” for wide-scale production and real-world use.' So it is an early prototype - it will be interesting to see which timeline Tesla has for their offering.
- Havoc 10y agoTempted to say this is a market that will be heavily stacked in Merc's favour. Taking a gamble on a sports car is one thing, but if you're replacing your 100 Merc diesel trucks...what are you likely to go for?
- _ph_ 10y agoI would probably take the Mercedes, if they offer the same performance and features. But thats a big "if". Currently for example, Mercedes offers no car that can compete with a Tesla S/X. So with the electrical trucks, one needs to compare first their specs.
- codeulike 10y agoIts just a prototype. Production not for another bazillion years or so. Also the range is low as mtgx pointed out. > That’s in part due to its max range of 200 kilometres (about 124 miles). "If that's NEDC, then it's more like 85 miles EPA."
- mr337 10y agoThat is what I thought. Annoucing the new electric semi truck, but not plans to build it. That seems to be a pretty thing way to claim the first "electric semi truck".
- ilikeatari 10y agoIn the fleet space Smith Electric worked on this since 2005 and it seems like their trucks are in the perpetual prototype mode. The battery energy density vs cost still seem to be the major factor. Interestingly enough even regular gasoline engines are pretty reare and diesel dominates the field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Electric_Vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Electric_Vehicles
- nullcipher 10y agoFwiw, Daimler is an investor in Tesla
- greglindahl 10y agoYes, that's left over from an earlier alliance that appears to be pretty defunct. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#Daimler_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#Daimler_AG
- cptskippy 10y agoSomeone needs to write a program called "dedazzeler" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedazzler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedazzler) that can identify and remove the camouflage from vehicles that automakers so often like to use.
- niels_olson 10y agoConcrete camouflage paint for prototypes. Very savvy. I wonder if our heavy industry (GM, Ford, Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, etc) benefit from NRO intelligence of what's going on in European and Asian industrial sites.
- coredog64 10y agoThat swirly black and white pattern is fairly common for vehicle prototypes. It lets you drive around without the stupid "tent" on the vehicle while still making it difficult for people to turn spy photos into renderings of the final product.
- sverige 10y agoElectric trucks were common in cities a century ago. The truck museum at "The World's Largest Truck Stop" has a couple of well-preserved examples. https://iowa80truckstop.com/inews/iowa-80-trucking-museum-to-host-100th-birthday-party-for-1911-walker-electric-truck/ https://iowa80truckstop.com/inews/iowa-80-trucking-museum-to... http://earlyelectric.com/carcompanies.html http://earlyelectric.com/carcompanies.html
- ams6110 10y agoWonder what the typical daily mileage is on a local urban tractor/trailer? 120 miles doesn't seem to me like near enough. Maybe eventually charging stations will become commonplace at most freight terminals so trucks can charge as they are being unloaded (though the unload may only take a few minutes if it's just a pallet or two).
- kixpanganiban 10y agoOkay, but I need to ask the important question here: when is this coming out on Euro Truck Simulator?
- taco_emoji 10y ago> Anyone who’s ever been near a large truck...knows the absolute pain of hearing that huge chugging internal combustion engine wrestling with getting up to a pacing speed. IMHO the noise from semi trucks is nothing compared to cruiser-style motorcycles.