G'day all -
Well, it looks like the Americans may be taking timid steps to try and join the electric commercial vehicle market - but with what appears to be a great deal of reluctance.
The prototype/potential final offering, in the link below, is the Workhorse electric truck.
Because the Americans can never really get around the idea that a road vehicle has to have a petrol-powered IC engine - it's not really an electric truck, it's a hybrid, with a 3 cyl BMW petrol engine powering a generator, to recharge the battery.
The Workhorse Hybrid pickup
The Workhorse is AWD, not 4WD, because Workhorse have decided that a good potential market for this rig is the USPS - because the USPS has hundreds of thousands of mail and parcel delivery vehicles, all doing short-haul, stop/start work.
Any company manufacturing a vehicle that meets the USPS needs and who can score a substantial vehicle supply contract for the USPS, has it made.
From there, they can build on that base to meet the much larger and more picky, private vehicle market.
If you think the Workhorse pickup looks suspiciously like it uses quite a number of GM pickup parts and design, you'd be spot-on.
But, as with all American corporate shenanigans - mostly based on common company directors, and cosy corporate tie-ups, by way of Joint Ventures - the Workhorse company is a real mixed bag.
The Workhorse company is a Navistar spin-off that has been building specialty products such as motor homes and custom chassis' for low-volume, specialised orders.
But Workhorse has climbed into bed with GM and is talking about taking over a redundant GM factory in Ohio.
Naturally, Workhorse doesn't have enough money to both buy a big ex-GM factory, and spend tens (or hundreds) of millions on research, designing and building a whole new range of electric/hybrid vehicles.
So, it appears GM might be assisting Workhorse financially by either by buying a big chunk of Workhorse's shares, or indulging in a JV - to assist with GM getting rid of a big surplus asset and to "get a finger in the pie" of the electric/hybrid market.
Perhaps the thinking is, within GM, that if Workhorse goes broke trying to develop an electric pickup, it won't leave any smell of failure on GM, and GM just might pick up a heap of valuable intellectual property and research information on electric motive power.
A couple of the interesting sticking points are -
One - there is a real shortage of lithium batteries in the quantities needed for substantial volumes of electric/hybrid vehicle production.
Two - there's a big sticking point around Unions in the factory purchase deal. Corporate America hates Unions with a vengeance - but if you buy a vehicle manufacturing facility in the U.S., you have to negotiate with the UAW, as the UAW rules in many of the vehicle manufacturing plants, and you can't move forward without dealing with the aggressive UAW.
The Workhorse is an interesting concept, and does point to the near-future design of vehicles, before much more capable batteries are invented, so that 100% electric vehicles are totally viable, and can provide serious competition against a diesel-powered 4WD ute.
The Workhorse has good design thinking behind its parameters - a load capacity of 2200 lbs (1000kgs) and a towing capacity of 5000lbs (2268kgs) - and a satisfactory travel range.
The idea of recognising that you have a very powerful power source in the shape of the vehicles large battery, thereby providing electric power for
tools and camping, etc., is a winner.
The greatest problem with moving forward with hybrid/electric designs is trying to overcome the design resistance caused by many car manufacturers sharing common directors with oil companies.
In America, this is a problem that has plagued vehicle design for years - and it was only U.S. Govt intervention with fuel economy regulation, that brought us more economical engine designs.
If these oil company/vehicle manufacturer directors had their way, we'd still all be driving massive fuel-hogging V8's, and probably even V12's, and we'd still all be contributing on a monstrous scale to the American Oil Companies huge wealth, and Middle Eastern despots huge wealth.
I for one, look forward to the forthcoming era of cheaper transportation costs via electric power, and the final severing of total reliance on global Oil Companies and Middle Eastern oil
reserves.
Cheers, Ron.