All charged up
Jul 1, 2008 12:00 PM
Smith Electric Vehicles announced it will open facilities in North America beginning this year.
The price for gasoline was $8 per gallon in the United Kingdom when the Commercial Vehicle Show was held April 15-17 in Birmingham, England. The price is almost $9 per gallon now. Not surprisingly, among the biggest attractions at the show were trucks that require no petrol.
Electrically powered trucks were particularly prominent, including one company that is planning to market in the United States later this year. Smith Electric Vehicles will be offering vehicles such as the Smith Faraday II, shown in the photo to the right. The company is billing the vehicle as one being “built in the USA for the USA.” The company has a 70,000-sq-ft facility in Fresno, California. An East Coast plant is scheduled to follow.
Initially Smith will convert Ford F Series (450, 550, and 650) trucks to electric power. While not hybrids, small diesel engines could be placed onboard to power ancillary equipment.
The 2008 CV Show was the largest ever held in the UK and attracted an audience of 28,415 business visitors, an increase of more than 1,000 when compared with the 2007 show.
The next Commercial Vehicle Show will be held April 28-30, 2009 at the National Exhibit Centre in Birmingham.
Here are highlights from this year's event:
Zeroed. That is what happens to the emissions coming from the truck — and to the road tax and congestion charge that the owner of the truck has to pay — when the chassis is powered by electricity instead of an internal combustion engine. Emissions and taxes go to zero.
Electric power begins to make sense in an environment like London where the incentive to switch from gasoline or diesel goes beyond the price of gasoline — which has gone beyond $8 per gallon. Truck operators also pay a weekly emissions tax — the dirtier the engine, the greater the tax. They also pay a congestion tax, a levy that can be waived for electric vehicles.
Zeroed Ltd, Kingston upon Hull, used the Commercial Vehicle Show to display its zero-emission vehicles — the results of a collaborative effort between multiple companies to produce totally electric medium-duty delivery trucks.
This Isuzu chassis is an example of that effort. Zeroed provided the electric motor, Munitram the batteries, and Paneltex the van body and upfit.
The Isuzu chassis was delivered without engine or transmission. Instead, the truck is equipped with electric motor and lithium ion phosphate batteries.
From the perspective of the body installer — and the customer — the conversion does not interfere with mounting the van body. All components are either inside the engine compartment or below the frame rails.
Electric bus was another vehicle on display at the Zeroed exhibit. Equipped with 800 kilos of batteries, the bus can travel approximately 120 miles between charges. The batteries can be recharged in about an hour. This bus has been in operation for five years.
Electric refrigerated trucks are an option at Solomon Commercials Ltd in Haslingden, Rossendale, Lancashire. The truck shown here, however, is conventionally powered. Mounted on a Mercedes cutaway, it is equipped for home delivery with a GAH refrigeration unit. Dry goods are transported in the front compartments, while refrigerated (37° F) and frozen foods are carried in the rear compartments.
Doors are built into the body only on the curbside. A rod is used for retrieving bins that are otherwise out of the driver's reach. Each bin is barcoded at the warehouse, and the truck is loaded to coordinate with the route.
The body is sandwich construction — a polyurethane foam core with fiberglass sheets forming the inside and outside surfaces.
They are all plastic. A trio of companies combined to promote the use of polyethylene for truck body and truck accessory production. John Dennis Coachworks, Strongs Plastic Products, and PolyBilt Europe teamed up to show the versatility of polyethylene as a building material. Strongs Plastic Products works in conjunction with John Dennis Coachworks to produce the bodies. In the foreground of this photo are two slip-in bodies built for light-duty Ford trucks.
Another application is this polyethylene delivery van (sans roll-up doors) mounted on a Ford Transit cutaway chassis. The sheets that the companies use to produce the bodies range from 3 mm to 50 mm thick (1/8"-2"). They are 100% recyclable, an advantage over some types of fiberglass.
Polyethylene service body is made of sheet material that has been cut to size. The panels are not fastened with adhesive. Instead, individual pieces are welded together using the same technology that PolyBilt, based in Orlando, Florida, employs here in the United States to build water tanks that are installed in fire apparatus.
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