Quote:
Originally Posted by yossarian
A quick run down, its 18 ft, 5.7 L V-8 engine. 14,000 lbs all aluminum workhorse chassis. My goal, however ambitious, is to get around 40-50 mpg. Ill try about anything to do this.
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With the 5.7L? Not so sure about that. Put a Warp 13" motor on the (manual) transmission, pile about 4,000 pounds of batteries underneath the floor and supplement it with a small efficient diesel generator, and you might be able to squeeze 40MPGe out of it if you grid-charged the batteries at night.
Is this local delivery (lots of stop/start) or highway driven? If you do a lot of start/stop city driving, it might then be worth it to get an AC drivetrain with regen. (In fact, Metric Mind used to sell a dual-motor AC direct-drive complete rear axle for EV or hybrid buses and trucks. He may still be able to get those.) For highway driving, regen won't help, so go with the cheaper DC.