Navistar Delivers eStar All-Electric Trucks to PG&E
23 June 2010
Navistar, Inc. delivered some of its first eStar purpose-built all-electric trucks (earlier post) to Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) in Sacramento, California.
Navistar also announced its first eStar dealer for the California market—Riverview International Trucks, Inc., of West Sacramento. With the eStar truck making its debut in Sacramento today, Navistar is fully capable to support its customers through select dealers networked in its initial launch regions.
Full production of the eStar began in May at the company’s Wakarusa, Ind., facility. Navistar’s initial customer—FedEx—has four of the trucks in use in the Los Angeles area. Navistar plans to deliver 400 units to additional customers by the end of 2010.
With a range of 100 miles per charge, the eStar is suited for many urban applications. When it returns to its home base at the end of the day, customers can plug it in for a full recharge within approximately six to eight hours.
If you are just reading meters fine, but you could have networked smart meters and let the computer to all the work.
Posted by: SJC | 23 June 2010 at 11:29 AM
Trucks have plenty of space place for a small genset to extend range and avoid running out of electrons in downtown traffic.
Posted by: HarveyD | 23 June 2010 at 01:06 PM
Thank you HarveyD for saying the obvious first.
Few people realise how fast a single horsepower or kilowatt will move a small or a large vehicle. Engine generators similar to the ones built into Honda inverter generators can be quite small and lightweight for their horsepower as can older smaller versions of the OPOC engine. The efficiency of such units is of little concern because the overall efficiency is high and their use is seldom.
Large long range batteries are too expensive if their range is not used frequently.
It could probably be shown that a set of high energy OPTIMA lead batteries used along side a set of Lithium high power batteries would give the least expensive energy storage right now including replacing the Lead batteries more frequently. Some lead batteries can be kept at high performance by special pulse charging.
Lead batteries used in UPS systems can be brought back to life after total failures by sulphation with such charging and new ones can be kept active for longer periods of time by such charging. The CSIRO lead battery supercapacitor combination is very interesting as is the EFFPOWER bipolar lead battery.
ZEBRA batteries have been used in such vehicles for many years and are not far from becomming much cheaper with large numbers being built by GE. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 23 June 2010 at 01:53 PM
Chaps,
The eStar (Modec) van is designed for local deliveries. In the UK it is used by the Tesco supermarket chain for home deliveries an if the battery gets low then it is swapped out from underneath the vehicle. I think it takes about 15 minutes. It seems pretty 'fit for purpose' without a range extender genset.
Posted by: Thomas Lankester | 24 June 2010 at 12:20 AM