It was only a matter of time before I would catch a brand new BEV truck at a show or event. Last month, this 16-tons electric Renault demo truck was sitting silently -well of course- among its old and new, diesel powered family members at the 2022 edition of the Renaultoloog Festival.
A 4×2 box truck with a day cab and a cantilever liftgate, that’s the classic set-up of a delivery truck alright, commonplace all over the globe. The steel tilt cab of the Renault Trucks D may look familiar, as it’s also used by DAF, Volvo, Kenworth and Peterbilt.
In the not-so-distant future, many city-municipalities will only allow/tolerate zero emmision commercial vehicles for delivering goods and other jobs, no doubt about that. Internal combustion engines will simply be verboten there.
The truck’s specifications, this shouldn’t be too hard to decipher. Renault states a payload capacity up to 11 tons (24,350 lbs) on their website, depending on the vehicle’s configuration and the applicable legislation.
When the E-Tech D is a bit too much of a truck, the lighter Renault Master (full-size van or chassis-cab) is also offered as a BEV, 3.1/3.5 tons GVWR.
Currently, the E-Tech D-Wide completes Renault’s BEV trucking line, GVWR from 19 up to 27 metric tons (41,888 to 59,525 lbs).
At the end of next year, heavier electric construction and long-distance (as in big cab-top model) vehicles will also roll off Renault’s production line; the E-Tech C and E-Tech T, respectively. Since the Renaultoloog Festival takes place every two years, I aspect to meet those electrifying mastodons in the metal at the 2024 edition.
When our current very noisy diesel garbage trucks are replaced by electric ones, I will rejoice!
Municipal service trucks are the most logical and cost-effective application, along with school buses and city buses, due to their limited range requirements. But longer haul trucks are coming too: Tesla has announced that their long-delayed semi is now going into production, and will have a 500+ mile range. They said it couldn’t be done…
The new federal IRA act offers incentives of up to $40k for electric trucks (depending on size); that’s undoubtedly why Tesla has decided to start building the semi even though they are still struggling with battery supplies. These incentives make the economics of electric trucks extremely attractive, although they already were before them, due to the high price of fuel.
I look forward to visiting European cities and not smelling (or hearing) diesel deliver/municipal trucks. I won’t have to wait long, so it seems.
Things are also going fast in earthmoving and road construction, especially for jobs in cities and city centers (logically). An example is the Volvo FE Electric 6×2 dump truck with a crane as pictured below, working in and around Amsterdam since May 2021. The Volvo FE has the cab of the Renault D-Wide, the article’s garbage truck.
Theres a Etruck distributor located across the street from our container operations yard though no stock is on display, I do see them around town occasionally though Ive been doing city oil deliveries to food processors last week and something silent blew the doors of the UD I was driving yesterday at a green light, not difficult 51 tonnes of tanker combination fully laden with only 470hp isnt fast even with 18 gears in the mix but the EV box truck just shot away from me, even the small hybrid trucks from Hino Toyota get along OK and I was told by the owner of some rentals are very durable and reliable.
Its only a matter of time before these Renaults surface on our market too if they arent here already Ill keep an eye out for them.
The owner of the mob I work for has a new Audi EV car but theres no sign of any EV replacements in our truck fleet nothing yet is capable of doing the linehaul tanker work.
Don’t count on seeing the current heavy Renaults in NZ, Bryce:
https://transporttalk.co.nz/news/renault-trucks-zealand
Great! I’m with Paul, the sooner the filthy diesel trucks (garbage, delivery, school buses, UPS trucks etc) are replaced with quiet, efficient, and clean products, the better. And even better that perhaps it’ll be the local stuff first with longer range stuff to come as the local stuff is far more “in my face”. Fleet operators are nothing if not about efficiency, if they find that it’s cheaper to run and maintain, they’ll do it. It’ll start as a trickle then turn into a flood.
What’s been interesting to watch as well, is the (WARNING: SEMI-POLITICAL CONTENT AHEAD) geopolitical machinations as of late that if anything are just going to drive adoption of EV tech even faster. Russia seems to want to cut its nose off to spite its face, by reducing/sabotaging output to Europe even more than demand is destroyed by Europe being repelled due to its actions in Ukraine prices are rising fast for fossil fuels, there’ll be some serious pain and problems for the short term, but it’ll drive the resolve to be done with reliance on that part of the world for good. And SaudiArabia/OPEC with last week’s decision to reduce their output as well along with US producers clearly unwilling to produce more due to shareholders demanding better returns from high prices, well, around here regular gasoline is in the $3.50-3.75 per gallon range but diesel is now well over $5 with an effective premium approaching 50 percent relative to gasoline which makes even a TDI or similar an unattractive choice relative to gasoline IC or especially hybrid or full EV. Maybe now people will wake up and realize that sleeping with (or more accurately being raped by) the Saudi Arabian devil that doesn’t share any realistic First World 21st (or 20th or perhaps even 19th) century values is not worthwhile.
While the prices I quoted above are still FAR cheaper than many places in the US and especially outside of the US, consumers are likely thinking about alternatives – even if one is one of those that travels thousands of miles every other week and wedded to gasoline, likely there are multiple cars in the fleet – I totally understand “enjoying” the sight, sound, and perhaps even smell of fossil fuel powered vehicles, but the reality is that there is a LOT of purely local driving drudgery that goes on in everyone’s life, I see more people considering something for the daily slog that doesn’t cost $3.50-$7 per gallon depending on location to fuel up as that is the driving that provides zero enjoyment, so the perfect gateway opportunity to try the tech that they are resistant to for usually invalid reasons and realizing that even at worst it’s no worse than the status quo. Every current EV on the market has more than enough range for 99% or more of the population’s “chore” driving. Some people are still outside the parameters for easy at home charging and some will choose products that for whatever reason want to rely on poorly thought out public infrastructure for that (makes no sense to do both, if you can’t charge at home you’d better be sure there is ubiquity elsewhere, but overall the oil producers are only shooting themselves in both feet – that’s my opinion anyway. Add a recession and high gas prices are an even worse look for the oil industry. Towing seems to be the one place where EV so far is not looking good (shocker! but when not towing EV trucks seem to work fine), so oh well, buy or keep a diesel truck for the time being and it’ll just cost even more to enjoy the boating or travel trailer “hobby”, not like those pursuits with all the accoutrements were cheap to begin with as opposed to slinging a canoe atop an Impreza with a roof rack or backpacking with a tent (or sleeping in an xB or Wrangler!). Much of the rest of the world seems to somehow tow travel trailers with Kia hatchbacks and boats can perhaps stay closer to the marina and be transferred to the water via a third party business which might be cheaper anyway overall, who knows what the future will bring.
I know a guy who has a truck fleet. He’s really impressed with the Volvo VNR e truck.
Volvo Trucks fully owns Renault Trucks. I haven’t checked, but I assume that heavy BEV Volvos (both the Euro-cabovers and the US-conventionals) and BEV Renaults have a lot in common, technology-wise. The same applies to BEV Macks, now and in the future.
Yet Renault offers the widest range of electric commercial vehicles,
given the fact that light commercial vehicles are also available under the same brand name: compact, midsize and full-size vans (Kangoo, Trafic and Master, respectively).
BEV’s trucks that make frequent stops like garbage trucks, buses and the like are the “killer app” in my opinion. With regenerative braking able to recoup an estimated 40-70% energy it would seem to be a no brainer. If only it was that simple but as we know it never is. BEV’s will need some hefty subsidies initially to get them into government and commercial fleets. I’m confident they will prove themselves far more efficient and require little if any powertrain maintenance.