Cummins may be best-known for producing brawny diesel engines for commercial trucks and light-duty pickups, but it's leaping into the world of EVs with both feet. On Tuesday, the Columbus, Indiana-based company revealed an Urban Hauler Tractor concept that's pure electric. In doing so, Cummins may have stolen a little thunder from Tesla — the Silicon Valley automaker has plans to reveal an electric semi truck of its own in September.
Designed as a Class 7 semi, the 18,000-pound big rig known as AEOS is designed to move freight locally, over short hauls. It can carry some 44,000 pounds of payload, and its 140-kWh battery pack only takes an hour to charge at a 140-kWh charging station. The fully operational prototype is only tipped to have 100 miles of range, however, so AEOS is definitely a city-oriented cargo solution. (By contrast, reports have Tesla's yet-to-be-revealed rival as producing 200-300 miles of range). Cummins says that by 2020, improvements in battery tech are "expected to reduce" the charge time to 20 minutes.
Being engine experts as opposed to whole vehicle developers, Cummins has wisely tapped the auto industry engineering and development gurus at Roush Industries to help develop the truck, which helps explain how production is planned for as early as 2019. Cummins does not plan to assemble the trucks, but instead views itself as a supplier of the battery and driveline system.
A new electric powertrain is key, but it can't do it all on its own — the AEON ekes out as much range as it can through low-rolling resistance tires and regenerative braking. The company also notes that roof-mounted solar panels could cut consumption even further, and the concept features cameras instead of side mirrors to help reduce aerodynamic drag. (The latter still isn't legal under US law for passenger cars or trucks).
Interestingly, when it hits the market in a couple of years, Cummins says it plans to offer an extended-range model that leverages one of the company's diesel engines like a generator to charge the battery pack, not unlike a Chevrolet Volt. That solution will stretch range to 300 miles between plugs and still cut emissions versus diesel-hybrid trucks by around 50 percent.
Tesla may be the highest-profile company looking to break into EVs designed for commercial hauling, but it's far from the only one. Cummins is a company that has been around for nearly 100 years, and this reveal telegraphs the company's intention to wade into battle with a new generation of transportation startups like Nikola Motor Company and electric-bus company Proterra for the future of freight.
aplund on August 30th, 2017 at 07:23 UTC »
Why are energy and power units just so hard?
TheStumpyOne on August 30th, 2017 at 07:01 UTC »
I drive a governed truck. My truck can't go faster than 62 miles an hour unless I'm on a hill. I drive between 500 and 610 miles in a day so the range that they're talking about with these electric trucks will make sense for local delivery companies that have shorter than a 200 mile range but a lot of those trucks are already using cleaner natural gas instead of diesel.
Reddit downvotes Me to Hell everytime I say this but it's going to be a long long time before we have over the road self-driving or electric trucks. There are too many problems still to be solved and there are tons of factors that I don't know as a truck driver how they're going to solve.
My truck is a 2017 model with all of the fancy gadgets that keep the truck safe. The adaptive cruise control sensors ice up in the winter and no longer function. Heated sensors may solve this but the first time one goes out you're going to have a truck that doesn't know how to control its speed.
The best way to integrate self-driving trucks would be to have their own lane on most highways. But at that point it almost makes sense to just run trains.
Another issue that we will see become prevalent is that these trucks will have safety features that prevent them from crashing but those safety features can also be used to stop an unmanned truck and encourage cargo theft. Many people don't realize that a truck drivers job is not just to drive. We have to ensure that a load is not going to be stolen or in my case perish on the truck because the refrigerator stopped working on my trailer. Companies offer bonuses to drivers who can work on their own trucks and minimize downtime.
Failures on self-driving trucks could mean larger delays for simple fixes while it could also mean fewer crashes, the problem with the data sets that are currently out there regarding accidents caused by human error is that they are skewed to favor not paying out insurance. If a driver has an accident due to some reason that's not his own, there are so many regulations in place that someone can look at something he did three miles back and say that could have prevented the crash when in reality it was an environmental factor or a problem unrelated to the truck or driver that caused the incident. This happens a lot in the trucking industry whenever a truck has an accident the first thing that happens is it gets pinned on the driver and you have to prove yourself innocent.
I don't think with our current infrastructure that implementing self-driving trucks will cut down on accidents dramatically. There will be a drop from getting dumb drivers off the road but I think there will also be a rise from other motorists not knowing what these trucks are capable of and the self-driving truck not being completely able to react to situations that drivers are put in every day.
I know that self-driving trucks will happen one day but I just don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Every time there's an advancement made in the trucking industry Reddit goes ape shit nuts about getting truck drivers off the road. Disrespect for the service we provide aside, I don't think that redditors really realize how much of their daily lives would be impacted by trucks not making their deliveries on time.
I would urge all of you that read this to stop and consider what trucks do for you. The next time you're driving try to pay attention to all road signs not just the ones that pertain to your car and see just what truck drivers have to deal with when it comes to Lane restrictions, Bridge weight requirements, Bridge height requirements and other factors that we deal with on a daily basis that you may not even be cognizant of.
I understand most people's frustrations with trucks. We are big, we're slow we get in the way and we cause people short-term delays sometimes. I've had people call in to my safety department on me because they have PTSD from trucks and they felt like I was too close to their car when they tried to pass me. I understand that you only see this as a problem that you want to see solved but instead of downvoting us and just railing against everything we have to say listen to what our experience is telling you. Not all truck drivers are as dumb as we are portrayed.
fauxgnaws on August 30th, 2017 at 02:26 UTC »
You might say, why are they going to put one of their crappy 5 mpg semi- engines in it? Because they're not crappy, they're 43% thermal efficiency with new ones up to 50% efficiency.
This is why battery or even hybrid trucks have not already taken over, because they won't offer that much in efficiency to make up for the extra cost. We'll likely see more hybrids though for regenerative braking and so the new engines can run at optimal speed, but battery-only will only be for countries that are green-crazy.