Commercial Trucks Can Save More Than 20x Fuel of 100 MPG Car

Why trucks, instead of hyper-efficient cars?

"For electric drive to make economic sense, you have to displace enough fuel to pay for the technology," Wright said. "That pretty much rules out passenger cars, because they don't burn enough fuel. Medium-duty trucks on commercial routes burn thousands of gallons of fuel annually."

Enter the Wrightspeed Route retrofit powertrain. By preserving existing truck chassis and bodies, Wrightspeed avoids the capital costs, time, and pitfalls of learning how to make trucks as cheaply and as well as the established vehicle manufacturers, according to the company..

Unlike a pure battery powertrain, the Wrightspeed Route does not restrict fleet operations with range limitations, because it has an onboard generator that charges the 40 mile battery in the field. Unlike in a conventional hybrid, the electric motors are always producing the variable torque necessary to turn the wheels. This frees the generator from having to perform over the entire speed-load map, and allows it to operate at its most efficient point to charge the small, high-power battery. Wrightspeed calls this system architecture a Range-extended Electric Vehicle (REV) powertrain.

"It's the best of both worlds," says Wrightspeed's marketing manager, Maya Giannini. "The Route™ combines the efficiency of an EV with the unlimited range of a mild parallel hybrid. And our generator fuel system can be fitted to run diesel, compressed natural gas, or landfill gases; so, the Route™ is really the best of all three worlds."

Wrightspeed has retrofitted an Isuzu NPR with its Route powertrain. The NPR holds 70 percent of the world's cab-forward box truck market. With its conventional diesel powertrain, the NPR averaged about 12 mpg in testing with a metro drive cycle. With the Route, under the same test conditions, Wrightspeed measured 44 mpg (on a cost equivalent basis), a more than 300-percent improvement.

"The measured miles per gallon will vary widely with drive cycle. We are modest in our calculations, because fleet operators are looking for a new technology they can trust to reduce their bottom line." says Giannini. "They carefully track their fuel usage, and inflated efficiency numbers do nothing to further their trust in the clean tech industry."

Wrightspeed's Route was demonstrated to the public for Ride & Drive testing at the 2012 Alternative Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo in Long Beach  on Wed., May 16.

So, how does Wrightspeed's Route save more fuel than a 100 mpg car? According to the company, urban cars average 12 miles per hour and drive an average of 12 hours per week. That's 7,500 miles per year. If that car got 100 mpg, it would burn 75 gallons annually. If that car were to replace a 40 mpg hybrid, which would burn, under the same conditions, 188 gallons, the fuel savings would be 113 gallons per year.

However, the Route can get trucks 44 mpg (cost equivalent) at an average of 30,000 miles per year at, that's 700 gallons. When the Route replaces an 8 mpg conventional powertrain that burns 3,750 gallons annually, the fuel savings is 3,050 gallons.

That's 27 times more fuel saved.

To learn more go to: www.wrightspeed.com