Motiv Power Systems providing two battery-electric refuse trucks to LA
10 October 2017
Motiv Power Systems is deploying two battery-electric refuse trucks to the City of Los Angeles. As a continuation of a demonstration project funded by the California Energy Commission, these Class-8 ERVs use the Motiv All-Electric Powertrain to drive a Crane Carrier chassis, with an automated side-loader body built by Amrep, Inc.
The trucks will be built by Amrep, Inc. in Los Angeles and are projected to be delivered in the first quarter of 2018. The City of Los Angeles Sanitation plans to run the ERVs on residential and recycling routes and expects to save as much as 6,000 gallons of fuel per year. Upon delivery, the Los Angeles ERVs bring the all-electric refuse trucks powered by Motiv to a total of three in California and four within North America.
Rather than having customized vehicles provided by a variety of vendors, Motiv’s modular design allows the same All-Electric Powertrain to be used across the full range of a city’s work trucks, from Class 4 through Class 8. The use of a single electric powertrain system for all the city’s electric work trucks simplifies the maintenance and operation of a growing municipal electric vehicle fleet, reducing the cost of spare parts and training.
This enables cities such as Los Angeles to expand their carbon reduction efforts through electrification of work trucks, transit buses and other diesel vehicles without placing a heavy maintenance burden on their public works departments.
Similar to Motiv-powered electric refuse trucks on the road in Sacramento, the Los Angeles trucks will have a payload capacity of nine tons and 1,000 pounds per cubic yard of compaction. All Motiv ERVs are equipped with 10 battery packs, expandable to 12 packs if needed for future route expansion.
With up to 212 kWh of power, the Motiv powered ERVs supply enough electricity to efficiently move the truck and power the electric hydraulics throughout the day, supporting a range between 50-80 miles, depending upon the pack size. Using the Motiv universal high power charger (480V, 50 kW), the ERV batteries will easily reach full charge overnight.
Founded in 2009 and based in Foster City, CA., Motiv Power Systems designs and builds flexible and scalable All-Electric Powertrains for commercial medium and heavy-duty trucks and buses. Motiv Power Systems holds the distinction of being the only Ford eQVM-approved provider of all-electric powertrains for commercial trucks and buses.
Motiv partners with existing truck builders to manufacture electric versions of their traditional fossil-fueled vehicles on their current assembly lines. Common vehicle types from these builders include work, delivery and refuse trucks, as well as school and shuttle buses. The Motiv All-Electric Powertrain is installed at the time of vehicle manufacture, similar to a natural gas or propane upfit.
Motiv is doing good work, keep it up!
Posted by: SJC | 10 October 2017 at 07:56 AM
Electric vehicles 101.
Repeat after me.
"Rather than having customized vehicles provided by a variety of vendors, (*insert your name here*) modular design allows the same All-Electric Powertrain to be used across the full range of a city’s work trucks, from Class 4 through Class 8. The use of a single electric powertrain system for all the city’s electric work trucks simplifies the maintenance and operation of a growing municipal electric vehicle fleet, reducing the cost of spare parts and training."
This would be impossible with traditional I.C.E. vehicles
Posted by: Arnold | 10 October 2017 at 02:24 PM
We have seen recuperative hydraulic assist hybrids in the market place esp with refuse trucks leveraging industry standard hydraulic installations.
Designs for recuperating electric or e/hydraulic suspension (damping) movements have been described for heavy vehicles ranging from forklift to rail rolling stock for various end uses including accumulator charging, e-energy for small loads or possibly to power (and modulate) active suspension.
It should be possible to integrate hydraulic recovery to this electric system with minimal additional components and as with the hydraulic hybrid refuse trucks that reported high efficiency, any adaption that reduces battery loads should be an advantage.
Posted by: Arnold | 10 October 2017 at 03:01 PM
Arnold
The best way to remove battery loads is to replace as much of the hydraulic devices with electric motors as possible. Electric drives are much more efficient. Yes, you can build hydraulic hybrids but the problem is that the storage devices are very limited and mostly use the compression of a gas to store the recovered energy. Compressing the gas causes heat and unless the heat is retained, energy is lost. more energy is lost in controlling the hydraulic devices as the hydraulic fluid is throttled through a valve with an associated pressure drop and heat generation. With modern electronic motor drives, the control is accomplished with a rapid on-off or pulse width modulation (PWM) which is relatively efficient.
Posted by: sd | 11 October 2017 at 07:57 AM
sd,
I should clarify my hybrid reference as not referring to the drivetrain which is well served by high e-regen possibilities but rather for the ancillaries servo' control where ie industry use either pneumatic or hydraulic control valves and rams to give simple smooth variable torque that would seem to require less parts. One pump as opposed to the many application specific electric motors that would be required in this refuse example.
It may be that electric servo's are becoming more common as stand alone solutions but for plug and play I would have thought hydraulic will continue to offer simple and reliable industrial solutions for some time to come.
I was wondering if there might be unrealised possibilities to regenerate the accumulator in esp battery electric commercial vehicles.
Posted by: Arnold | 15 October 2017 at 04:00 PM