The benefits of TransPower’s “ElecTruck™” heavy-duty EV drive system have been validated by testing of a Class 8 on road truck and a Class 8 off-road yard tractor using this system. The tests were performed in September 2014, utilizing a chassis dynamometer at UCR’s renowned College of Engineering – Center for Environmental Research & Technology (“CE-CERT”).
A Navistar International Pro-Star® Class 8 truck equipped with TransPower’s ElecTruck™ system “performed all tests with a high degree of reliability,” according to an April 2015 report just released by CE-CERT. Additional conclusions contained in this CE-CERT report include:
- The TransPower-powered truck “consumed only about half as much battery energy per mile” as the most recent competing electric truck tested by CE-CERT, which was evaluated in 2011.
- Accounting for the greenhouse gases (“GHG”) produced by power plants to generate the electricity used by the TransPower-powered truck, the vehicle “is expected to reduce GHG in typical drayage drive cycles by 67-68%.” This represents a net reduction of more than a ton of GHG for every 1,000 miles the truck is driven, as compared with an equivalent diesel truck.
CE-CERT testing of a Kalmar Ottawa yard tractor powered by the ElecTruck™ system produced similar results. The TransPower electric tractor produced about three times the emissions reductions of a comparable hybrid-electric tractor tested a few years earlier. Tests of both TransPower vehicles were performed at equivalent total vehicle weights of up to 72,000 pounds, confirming the high performance of the ElecTruck™ system.
The TransPower vehicles also demonstrated favorable economics. CE-CERT tests indicated that:
- TransPower’s on-road truck has an equivalent energy cost of 23 cents per mile, as compared with $1.49 per mile for a typical diesel truck – an 85% reduction.
- TransPower’s electric tractor has an energy cost of 31 cents per mile, compared with $1.12 per mile for an equivalent diesel yard tractor and 99 cents per mile for the latest hybrid yard tractor tested by CE-CERT.
These results have been confirmed by real-world operations. Since being deployed at IKEA’s main California distribution center in September 2014, the TransPower electric yard tractor tested by CE-CERT has had an energy cost of 25 cents/mile when using power supplied by the utility grid. However, as 90% of this tractor’s energy is produced by solar arrays installed at IKEA’s facility, the actual energy cost of operating this tractor has been less than 3 cents per mile. Please see charts below.
Source: UC Riverside/CE-CERT dynamometer lab.
