Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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commercial carrier journal | august 2017 23 JASON CANNON is Equipment Editor of Commercial Carrier Journal. E-mail jcannon@randallreilly.com or call (205) 248-1175. made pieces of it more viable. Morrison's six-passenger electrified wagon featured a top-speed of 14 mph. Tesla's Model S will hit 60 mph from a dead stop in 2.5 seconds. The kind of electric technology needed for a heavy-duty tractor is already here. What's not yet ready for prime time is the power supply – banks of payload-zapping batteries. Tesla's Model S weighs just south of 5,000 pounds. A conventional large Toyota Camry weighs in at about 1,500 pounds less.For a pas- senger car that weighs about as much as a King Cab F-150 pickup, a 30 percent uptick in curb weight is no big deal. For a combination unit that shouldn't weigh more than 80,000 pounds, it's fairly significant. If you wipe out 30 percent of your payload just to offset battery weight, that's disruptive in your ability to cover your payroll and pay your bills. Thanks to a lower center of gravity coming from the low-slung battery bank, a Tesla handles and corners better than probably any car you'll ever drive. But that's hardly important to drivers dragging a 53- foot trailer around the highway. The idea of an electric tractor always has been sold on the idea of cut- ting out fuel costs to deliver a faster payback, but leaving almost a third of your load on the dock isn't an efficient way to bank those bucks. And I'm willing to bet that all that added on-demand torque is going to stress a tire budget. Trucking has spent much of the last 10 years getting lighter, imple- menting everything from wide-base tires to aluminum wheels and re- placing 15-liter engines with 13- and even 11-liter versions. An electric truck, almost by its very nature, takes us in the opposite direction. The work being done in the electric truck space is important and al- most certainly will lead to advancements that can be used across a host of applications, even if you never drive an electric tractor. However, in the century-long fight for mobility as far as electric trucks are concerned, I think we're looking at an innovation such as the Motorola StarTAC – the world's first flip-style mobile phone – and not a major game-changing iPhone-like disruption. WANT MORE EQUIPMENT NEWS? Scan the barcode to sign up for the CCJ Equipment Weekly e-mail newsletter or go to www.goo.gl/Ph9JK. Mack teases new on-highway tractor M ack Trucks last month launched a campaign featuring sneak-peek photos and videos of a tractor the company is expected to debut in September. Visitors to Mack's dedicated website can sign up to receive notifications as new con- tent is posted, as well as to claim an invitation to watch the launch of the new product via a live video stream on Sept. 13. Two hashtags have been set to capture reactions from fans and customers. Social media posts with the hashtags #NewMack and #MackComfort will be collected and displayed on each landing page to highlight reactions to the new truck. – Jason Cannon Number of clean diesel trucks on the road reaches 30% T rucks equipped with clean diesel en- gines and advanced emissions control systems make up 30 percent of all trucks on the road, according to research by the Diesel Technology Forum. e national average – nearly 3 million trucks – is up from 25.7 percent last year. "Over a five-year period, the newest-gen- eration commercial vehicles have saved 4.2 billion gallons of diesel fuel and reduced 43 million tons of carbon dioxide, 21 million tons of nitrogen oxides and 1.2 million tons of particulate matter," said Allen Schaeffer, DTF executive director. A Class 8 tractor-trailer powered by the latest-generation clean diesel engine will save the owner 960 gallons of fuel each year rela- tive to the previous generation of technology, Schaeffer said. – Jason Cannon Technological advancements have made electric tractors more viable. Mack Trucks' campaign fea- tures sneak- peek photos and videos of a tractor the com- pany is expected to debut in September.