Natural gas and electric trucks in 2014-2015?

To me, it makes more sense to work it into refer's first, its more practical it seems. Refer's are low power engines, they can be fueled reasonably with perhaps even local propane type trucks in yards.

I agree natural gas usage in OTR trucks yet seems unrealistic.

Yes I was aware Swift had a least one trial truck on NG, I didn't know they invested even more into this tech.

Here's a funny thought! Putting solar panels on the tops of trl's to charge batteries to run trucks on electricity. Humm???? Might just try that one myself, what do ya think?

 

Yes and fuel use to be cheaper too you could get fuel over a dollar cheaper than gas but trucks need it so prices go up and so will natural gas far as battery operated remote control truck plan on sitting at a recharge station a loooooooooooog time and it will cost like hello too

 

Electric engines in navy ships are huge and really exspensive my uncles been a submarine radio operator for most of the 22 years he has been in and they only really used when they are under water to make oxygen and such but nucular engines are pretty much making the electric engines as back up ones bc nucular powered engines as far as ik are extremely quiet plus with the electric engine they have to resurface for it to charge up

 

Solar pannels= useless unless you have alot of sun light 24/7= never! Plus u do realise that without ur diesel engine having the turbo in it u would top out at like 30mph what do u think would happen if u put just an electric one it haha

 

Would it be possible to do the same setup as trains use? Big diesel motor, all it does is turn alternator (s?) and all the wheels have electric motors on them.

Ideas?

 

Problems with LNG

No Jake Break
Not reliable (YET, may fix)
No fuel infrastructure set up yet. DEF took long enough...LNG would take forever to get set up
LNG is less mpg thus you need bigger tanks
LNG explodes in accidents (big problem, you can drop a match in a full tank of diesel and the match will go out. Diesel is much safer)
LNG trucks are heavier, thus you cant haul as much
The process to get clean LNG is horrible for the environment and certainly offsets the clean burning fuel from an environmental standpoint

As for electric

They do make powerfull motors that could crank out 500hp with 3 times the torque of a diesel that are the size of a small dog. The problem is powering it. The power needed would require a bank of batteries as heavy and as large as the load. 500 hp is a lot of power. Going diesel electric would be awesome, and would probaly only requier 2 or 3 gears do to the added rpm and and torque. Electric engines have high torque at almost 0 rpms all the way through max rpm. Powering with a diesel generator would work, but paying for 2 motors would be costly. For an electric truck to be practical, battery storage needs to improve. We need light weight batteries that can hold a lot of power.

UPS had a fleet of electric city trucks in the 60's. They had a 60 miles range and needed very little maintenance. For around NYC they were great becuase the trucks rarely drove over 40 miles in a day. The problem was they had no heat. Heat would use to much power. The unions demanded heat and the fleet was retired. There is definitely potential for short range use, but we need more improvements to batteries.

 

No heat,

That shouldn't be a big problem, a five gal. propane tank could provide lots of fuel for heat.

 

One thing I have not figured out, if NG is so good, then why not Propane also? 75% of propane is made from NG anyway, and you do not need special tanks to haul liquid propane like you do with LNG. That is why most NG trucks are only fitted with compressed NG tanks. Liquid tanks require special cooling. But propane does not. Both are "clean" burning. And it would seem that having tanks of liquid propane would provide greater range than compressed NG. And the infrastructure for propane is better than NG. Oh well. One of those little mysteries, I guess. T. Boone Pickens has sure buffaloed the government and the public.

 

Most propain u see is not liquid, it's a gas, similar to CNg. Mpg on Propain is worse....also if it gets below 30 it freezes.

 

CNG (and electric) will be, in the next 10-20 years, only for local things where the vehicle will be parked in the same place every night to be refilled/recharged. City buses have already switched over to CNG in most cities. It wouldn't be a surprise to see local trucks.

The problem is, the place that needs it most (the ports) run the oldest trucks without the resources to really switch them over. Diesel would have to rise for a long time with CNG/electric being much much cheaper on an end of life price comparison for people to switch.