Natural gas and electric trucks in 2014-2015?

negative bad idea I'm a student at a tractor trailer school but im also a mechanic electric engines r garbage they may be good in a small car but if you put it in a truck it would piss the truck driver off it would have real slow acceleration plus making an electric engine that can fit under the hood and produce enough torque with out burning itself out to me seems slim to none and i feel like natural gas is more of a hazard see diesel can only catch fire if it is sprayed into a thin mist and natural gas like propane and butanes are extremely flammable so one spark and ur crisp like toast b4 u know it

 

not to mention after the goverment figures out how tax it its going to be the same price as diesel not trying to be political but diesel is the cheapest and most effieciant fuel to run think about diesel already has its infrastructure in place oil is plentiful here in the states (polictial and tree huggers are the only reason why we dont drill it to its full potential)

 

Freightliner has been experimenting with electric and hybrid trucks for a while. I see it as more of a local market, if at all. There is no infrastructure in place to refuel natural gas and no charging stations for electric. In order to change over diesel trucks to natural gas, they would need to be retrofitted. I think we are far from having a viable alternative to diesel. We could go back to burning gas in trucks. That would be much easier to find the fueling stations.

 

Lots of truck stops in the Oklahoma and Texas areas are already making NG places to fuel. NG trucks are already being marketed and tested. I see refers going NG, because of the lack of high combustion and engine demand of big trucks as practical. One of the famous Hunt billionares are already trying to get into this market and making it a reality for us all.

 

Natural gas is for tree hugging bisexuals

 

Natural Gas is the future for a lot of people wanting to make money off selling the retro fitting kits and having the ability to install and maintain the new technology. Its the future, so I guess there are going to be lots of new bisexual millionares in the future. At least you and I, being straight will still be poor.

 

When I was wrenching for swift, we had two natural gas trucks that swift was testing out. They were a huge mistake. Neither truck went more than 12000 miles at a time without a major breakdown that required a wrecker and tons of shop time. I can't remember exactly how much fuel they held but they only had a 300 mile range.
Cummins was able to do some work on them but for any major breakdowns they would fly a tech in from Denver to work on them. Granted this was a prototype motor but still... They still have to come a long way, not to mention building the infrastructure to handle the fuel supply and maintenance issues with them.
There will probably be more of them used in local trucks here in a few years but for OTR I don't think it's ever going to become mainstream.

 

Connecticut has several CNG fueling stations. There is a company in Bridgeport, CT that runs KW T-800 tractors (about 15 of them) on CNG to haul trash. and AT&T is running a fleet of service vans.

Regarding electric engines not having the torque to power a tractor, I was always under the impression that electric motors could provide bigtime torque. In the 90's the Army was looking at a diesel-electric Humvee. Under electric only, it had a pretty impressive 0-60 mph, but it had limited range. And of course electric motors powered all the Navy's submarine's until USS Nautilus.

 

I have seen a couple of day cabs running around Twin cities area with the cng tanks. I can't remember the company though.