Heavy Duty Trucking, May 2018

HDT MAY 2018 28 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM How fuel efficient is that electric truck Jack Roberts Senior Editor jroberts@ truckinginfo com No standard means of demonstrating the efficiency of electric vehicles has taken root in trucking yet But the EPAs MPGe rating gives fleet managers a useful means of comparing new vehicles with conventional ones Jack has become known for his reporting on advanced technology such as intelligent drivetrains advanced driver assist systems autonomous vehicle technology truck platooning and alternative fuels He can reached at jroberts@ truckinginfo com or 310 533 2521 ts a little strange this waiting pattern were in lots of news about new electric vehicles coming down the line but few to put our hands on drive and evaluate Yet in the next 12 to 24 months all electric trucks and vans will enter serial production and start showing up in larger numbers in North American fleets Drivers technicians and maintenance managers will begin the process of figuring out how to make these vehicles productive and profitable in real world delivery and hauling applications A big part of that equation will be figuring out how economical electric trucks and vans actually are compared to the conventionally powered vehicles in the fleet And that can be problematic if you have an entire century of figuring nothing but miles per gallon performance as your baseline Electric vehicles of course do not burn fuel Without a gallon of fuel to burn an mpg calculation is useless And although they do use electricity off the main power grid with an electric meter spinning away like crazy its tough to isolate a tally of daily charges for a single vehicle and separate that amount of voltage from power being used to keep the lights on and the building cool The most common measurement heard these days is vehicle range This makes a lot of sense Thats an apples to apples real world comparison that helps fleet managers make basic decisions on how to deploy these new assets But even that calculation falls short if you want to compare the economic impact of say a gasoline powered delivery van with an all electric one To help out on this front the U S Environmental Protection Agency put together an all new calculation exclusively for electric vehicles to help fleet professionals and consumers get a better understanding of how electric vehicles perform compared to diesel or gasoline powered units The measurement is called MPGe which stands for miles per gallon electric and was developed with input from focus groups and industry experts as a way of keeping electric vehicle performance ratings simple With that concept in mind an MPGe figure represents the number of miles a vehicle can travel using a quantity of fuel actually electricity with the same energy content as one gallon of gasoline which mathematically works out to one gallon of gasoline equaling 337 kilowatt hours of battery power In practice this means that fleets can find the MPGe rating for a particular van or truck by calculating the number of miles a vehicle can go using the same energy content as a gallon of gas So if you have an electric vehicle that uses 29 kilowatts of electricity to travel 100 miles for example that vehicle would get a rating of 115 MPGe This means in laymans terms that particular vehicle is as efficient as a 115 mpg truck or van would be were it possible to build a vehicle that efficient with an internal combustion engine This measurement system is not without its own variables of course Factors such as electricity rates and gasoline and diesel prices mean that an MPGe rating in say Mississippi could vary greatly from one calculated in California There are other means of figuring electric vehicle performance such as watt hours per mile or kilowatt hours per 100 miles It remains to be seen which measurement will eventually emerge as the industry standard But if nothing else the MPGe rating serves as an excellent way to demonstrate just how energy efficient this new generation of electric trucks and vans are and the potential positive impact they could have on fleet operations and bottom lines in the very near future FUTURE FLEET I The EPAs MPGe rating is designed to help compare electric vehicle performance with gasoline and diesel powered units PHOTO MERCEDES BENZ