Skip to main content

BMW readies 40-ton all-electric truck for deployment on city roads


With its all-electric i3 urban car hitting the road in 2013, BMW is now going bigger – much bigger. The Bavarian automotive giant has just announced that as part of a one-year pilot project, a 40-ton (36-tonne) all-electric drive truck will begin making deliveries on public roads in Munich from mid-year.
In an odd way, trucking companies and truck manufacturers are at the leading edge of environmental technology. Sure, you think of them as the big, slow-moving things holding up traffic, or the conveyance by which your Amazon purchase ends up at your door, but the people that build trucks and the people who use trucks are seemingly just as concerned about fuel efficiency and lowering pollution as your average granola-munching environmental activist.
A person doesn't have to think too long or hard to realize that fuel costs are going to be both a big concern for trucking companies, and also one of the areas where improved efficiency will reap great benefits. This is not a new notion. Navistar rolled out a hybrid drive truck back in 2008, and Fuso has been running a heavy-duty hybrid since 2011, while Coca-Cola has been using 120 Eaton diesel-electric hybrid trucks since 2008. Even Volvo is in on the act, with a diesel-electric hybrid truck that it claims is the world's fastest.
Enter BMW. Although primarily known as a maker of high-performance motorcycles and sedans, BMW is no stranger to the world of environmentally-sensitive hybrid-powered vehicles, having already released its i8 and recently displaying its upcoming X5 xDrive40e hybrid SUV. But what BMW just announced is worlds removed from its normal offerings.
BMW is partnering with a German logistics company, the SCHERM Group, to set up and use a 40-ton all-electric truck this summer, making BMW the first automobile manufacturer in Germany to use an electric semi-truck to transport goods on public roads.
The truck is based on the Terberg Type YT202-EV 4x2, which BMW has licensed for road use so it can be used for just-in-time material transport covering a distance of almost 2 km (approximately 1.2 miles) one-way between SCHERM Group facilities and the BMW Plant in Munich – a trip it is expected to make eight times a day. Sure, that's only 16 clicks a day, but you've got to start somewhere, and this is serious lifting we're talking about, not light package runs.
Thanks to the all-electric drivetrain, the BMW truck is quiet, CO2-free and produces effectively no particle pollution. If you compare that to a normal diesel truck, it's almost laughably good. The new electric truck will generate 11.8 tons (10.7 tonnes) less CO2 per year. That's the amount of CO2 put out by a BMW 320d diesel sedan after three around-the-world trips.
Both BMW and SCHERM are investing a six-figure amount in this one-year pilot project. If the big truck proves itself in everyday driving circumstances, both partners seek to expand the project.
Source: BMW

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

10 URLs to Find Out What Google Knows About You

Google is much more than just a search giant. It is also home to many of your favorite products: Gmail, YouTube, and Chrome, just to name a few. Apart from that, it also offers many products to help you  keep track of your data . Most of these are  hidden deep  inside the My Account dashboard, which many users don’t really know of. These hidden tools  may reveal interesting details  about your usage of Google’s many services. We’ve compiled a list of important Google URLs of some  hidden tools  that carry information of what you did with Google, mostly from the searches that you have made on their many products, the voice searches and typed out Google searches that you have made. Are you ready to  find out what how Google knows about you ? 1.  Google Dashboard Google Dashboard offers  transparency and control over the personal data stored with your Google Account. You can  view  and  manage the data gener...

Edible water balloons that could get rid of the need for plastic bottles

In case you didn’t know, bottled water is destroying the planet. We know that we need to be drinking plenty of water. It’s important. But the plastic bottles they’re sold in are terrible for the environment. One solution is using reusable bottles that you can fill from any nearby taps instead of buying a new bottle each time. Another solution is much more exciting. A group of engineers from Skipping Rocks Lab have developed a wonderful thing called The Ooho!. It’s a globe filled water that you can pop in your mouth whole. The outer shell is made of algae, so it’s edible and biodegradable. Meaning there’s no need for packaging or plastic – the globes of water are self-contained and ready to consume. Exciting, right? Plus they’re wobbly and they look cool, which is always a bonus. The team have now created a crowdfunding page to make their creation available to the public, with goals of selling The Ooho! at festival and marathons within the next 12 m...

New "Super-Earth" discovered only 22 light years away

An international team of scientists led by Professors Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the U.S. has discovered a potentially habitable Super-Earth that's "just" 22 light years away. The new Super-Earth has a mass that is 4.5 times larger than that of our planet and it revolves around its parent star in 28 days - a star that is significantly smaller than ours. This remarkable new discovery suggests that habitable planets could exist in a wider variety of environments than previously believed. Of the 750-odd  exoplanets  (extrasolar planets) discovered so far only very few can be considered " Super-Earths ." This newly discovered example called GJ667Cc is rocky like Earth and is rich in heavy chemical elements such as iron, carbon and silicon. Positioned at a distance from Earth of 22 light years, corresponding to a bit over 129 trillion miles (209 trillion km), the planet can be considered to be on Earth...