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Following is a business method to get electric trucks and buses on the road. With a relatively small investment for the business, and extremely attractive for the clients (truck and bus fleet-running companies).

1. SUMMARY

Large bus and truck fleet companies spend a mint on gas. Once a small bus company with 14 buses moves to a low cost "kit" - that changes their combustion motor bus to an EV, the next will be a 500 truck fleet, and many will follow suit, EVEN THOUGH there is a missing infrastructure for battery exchange/charge stations and even though the current technology range is short, and new technologies may emerge.

The idea is simple:

1. An EV replacement kit with electric motors, control and monitoring is installed on the bus/truck REPLACING the current engine.

2. An on-board easily removable generator is installed on the bus/truck, so that truck/bus is not restricted to short distances.

3. Batteries for a relatively short range will be rented and not bought by the client from the battery company with a deal that we settle in advance.

4. ON THE FLY battery change (next HB idea) will be used to "refuel".

4. If savings in gas price are significant and will be returned within 3 years (which they will), all the truck companies will follow suit, even though frequent changes of batteries will be needed.

2. BACKGROUND

a. To this day EV (electric vehicles) have not caught on seriously,

b. There is no argument that the running costs of EV technology can be significantly lower: (1) Off peak charging, (2) better/cheaper power sources for electricity, including more efficient processing and bulk fuel deals. (3) Lower maintenance for simple electric components. (4) No idling. (5) Regenerative breaking.

And there are other benefits: (6) Less immediate air and noise pollution. (7) Better monitoring and control.

c. The problem is: The cost of running time = running distance, which comes from the expensive cost of low weight high energy batteries, and the rate and bulkiness of battery changing.

d. The truck and bus industry where many trucks do 1 km per Liter diesel and some do 3 km per Liter is THE TARGET for EV, where savings can be substantial. The more the truck/bus stops and starts, the higher the savings.

e. The best way to make money is to own the POWER not the device that runs it. But a "kit" supplier can also make some nice money off this. So

e1. Battery power ownership: The batteries can be constructed and coupled to the motors, so that they are remotely monitored and will not accept or give electricity if not charged by your power station. Thus you become the power supplier, and not the electric company. So you are paid for the miles they go, rather than the gasoline company.

e2. Kit maker: Of course you have to have a universal solution for trucks and cars. Use the [EV hub wheel and main motors] Halfidea
-- pashute, Jul 19 2011

EV with generator http://www.electric...able-generator.html
[pashute, Jul 19 2011]

psst - [spidermother]! Scalextrucks
another ore-truck energy saver [pertinax, Jul 21 2011]

//There is no argument that the running costs of EV technology can be significantly lower// I agree. With current technology, the running costs of electric vehicles are significantly higher than those of non-electric vehicles.

There's a good reason why large vehicles do not store motive energy in batteries - it's worse than useless to do so. Diesel-electric mining trucks would be an obvious candidate. Due to their large size, there would be good economies of scale, and they throw away huge amounts of perfectly good electrical energy when using the electric motor as a generator for braking. Why not install batteries and capture that wasted energy? Because the batteries would cost more than the value of the energy they hold over their lifespan. It's cheaper to throw away the energy and generate new energy from diesel when required.

By coincidence, a friend and I were talking about this yesterday. We thought that it might be good to do something immediately useful with that wasted electricity, such as electro-refine some copper each time the vehicle brakes - which would be especially synergistic in copper mining vehicles.
-- spidermother, Jul 20 2011


supercapacitors... those things weight alot, but so do the trucks... or have cranes lift the stuff up and return scag (scrag? scree?).
-- FlyingToaster, Jul 20 2011


This isn't totally unbakable; when I worked for the RR, we had a certain electric carrytable (picture a cross between a forklift and a small boom crane) that had three or four gears and enough mustard to pull three empty box cars (70,000#+). It was slow (7-8 mph, tops) and we had to charge it every night, the steering setup was bizarre, and the brakes sucked (usually we'd slow it down by throwing it into reverse), but it had torque out the wazoo. Most people don't equate EVs with high torque, but that thing (I think it was made by Yale, not sure) beat the hell out of a propane-powered forklift for dragging freight cars around the shop. Never seen another one like it.
-- Alterother, Jul 21 2011



random, halfbakery