Wrightspeed, a Tesla-cofounder's spinoff company

[botsapper]

Wrightspeed CEO and Tesla-cofounder wants to retrofit medium and heavy-duty fossil-fueled trucks with efficient electric powertrains, making them cleaner, quieter, energy-efficient and easier to maintain.
There is a growing market to transform commercial fleet trucks into cleaner electric hybrid conversions. Trucking fleet owners are scrambling to meet California's new strict emissions standards but they do not want to replace their fleet vehicles. Wrightspeed are installing plug-in powertrains featuring an electric motor, battery system and an on-board generator that runs on diesel/natural gas to automatically charge the batteries. A Wrightspeed powertrain can run on batteries for about 30 miles before the generator kicks in and recharges the battery system. A typical retrofit costs 150-200K instead of new 500K commercial trucks.
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[Astro]

Or how about diesel motor generating power that goes via a controller to electric motors.
No batteries involved.
Heaps of torque.
Works for Diesel Locomotives.
All wheels could be driven wheels increasing traction.
No transmission required.
Diesel runs at most efficient/powerful RPM as required.
If electric axles became common enough it may be viable to fit them to the trailers to have some of the power delivered to the wheels with the weight on them.
When i have seen the "road trains" that travel the cross country routes in Australia i always thought why not power them like rail trains? Seemed crazy to have one prime mover at the front trying to get many trailers of dead weight rolling.
Use the prime mover to generate the electricity and distribute it to the wheels as required.
With multiple electric motors there is lots of redundancy. Handy when you are hundreds of miles from anywhere. And taking that further why one big diesel motor when two could provide the same power but with redundancy? And when cruising one may be all that is required.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Astro

Or how about diesel motor generating power that goes via a controller to electric motors.
No batteries involved.
Heaps of torque.
Works for Diesel Locomotives.

Locomotives don't have to go through stop-and-go traffic, as they run through a segregated path and usually have priority in crossings. Getting rid of accumulators on a road vehicle is not viable (even though batteries can eventually get replaced with capacitors in a foreseeable future).

[Fingie]

keeping a road train moving isn't so energy-intensive, also some energy is always lost in multiple electric motors anyway

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Fingie

also some energy is always lost in multiple electric motors anyway

Even though an engine operating a genset to power direct-drive electric motors may eventually still get a higher efficiency than a conventional mechanical transmission setup, it's indeed impossible to turn all the energy applied to such motors into actual motion. Drag and heat build-ups are unavoidable.

[freebeard]

Wrightspeed CEO and Tesla-cofounder wants to retrofit medium and heavy-duty fossil-fueled trucks with efficient electric powertrains, making them cleaner, quieter, energy-efficient and easier to maintain.

There exists a set called 'semi truck glider kits'.

https://www.fitzgeraldgliderkits.com...-a-glider-kit/

These are factory-warranted chassis ready to receive the drivetrain of choice. They can plug right in to an existing industry.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by freebeard

There exists a set called 'semi truck glider kits'.

These are factory-warranted chassis ready to receive the drivetrain of choice. They can plug right in to an existing industry.

That's a good point.

[freebeard]

I was bicycling around today and thinking about Astro's comment.

A trailer that could use any prime mover, and have a passive kinetic energy recovery system (KERS). Essentially a through-the-road hybrid, it would need sensors for the wheel speeds and the hitch angle. Sucking energy on deceleration and then dispensing it as needed to correct any drift angle.

In fact, you could have a powered suspension and accelerometers and turn the whole payload into a carver in corners and for crosswinds.

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_train

One change was the removal of the Cummins engines and their replacement with gas turbine engines of higher power and lower weight. Whereas the LCC-1 had a single 600-hp engine, the Overland Train had four 1,170-hp Solar 10MC engines, one in the "control car" and three others spread through the train. New power trailers could be added at any point along the train. To further reduce weight, most of the vehicle was built from welded aluminum.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I was bicycling around today and thinking about Astro's comment.

A trailer that could use any prime mover, and have a passive kinetic energy recovery system (KERS). Essentially a through-the-road hybrid, it would need sensors for the wheel speeds and the hitch angle. Sucking energy on deceleration and then dispensing it as needed to correct any drift angle.

In fact, you could have a powered suspension and accelerometers and turn the whole payload into a carver in corners and for crosswinds.

Relying on some "torque vectoring" setup similar to the one fitted to Arcimoto in order to emulate the effect of a differential?

[freebeard]

That for anti-jackknifing plus dynamic anti-roll to keep it 'upright'.