Do you think it's all possible?

Mack trucks is working on a hybrid city truck.

 

This is the bridge between diesel and a fully electric rig. http://www.hybridsemitruck.com/

Tesla, http://www.teslamotors.com/ currently has the technology to make this and it's fully electric. The key is to find efficient drive motors and batteries that have a proportional weight ratio. It may end up instead of one big motor that several smaller motors on each axle or even hub might meet the power to weight ratio to make it viable for electric powered trucks.

 

the busses where im at are hybrid diesel/electric

 

This very same topic was brought up in an older thread; my thought was that a diesel-electric truck could be built (just like a modern locomotive).

 

Actually the locomotives are set up with diesel motors to turn the generators which power electric motors to turn the drives....A great setup for what they do as it eliminates a lot of drive line parts and breakdowns pulling that kind of weight.As far as fuel consumption they are inefficient as can be. I don't see how they could transfer that technology over to class 8 trucks and make it work out right because of constant acceleration and decelleration and weight restrictions you'd have on the class 8.Thats a really good idea and I'd like to drive one if they ever perfected it.Course it would have to come factory with a leslie train horn.lol

 

I was an Allison transmission tech for 5 yrs just before I started driving truck ...Allison has prototypes in developement the age of hydralic transmissions is coming to a end.... an is being replaced by electrical driven motors type transmission ....they have them in city buses all across the USA......

 

To answer your question, yes it is a very big possibility. Although I believe that it is a few years off though. Right now there are Natural Gas powered vehicles, this is one of the things that diesel manufactures are pushing. Granted they still can't go that far on a fill up and they have less power per liter than diesel, but it is cleaner burning. I still don't think that people are up for driving mini hindenburgs.

 

I would imagine the limitation today would be how to store the power (Batteries). It could definitely be done, but you would have to have a massive set of batteries to store the generated electricity. Trains don't get into stop and go traffic, and generally have pretty level tracks to operate on hence I suppose it would be a lot easier to adjust the generator's speed (engine) to generate the needed amps and no more. Constantly stopping and going would require a massive amp draw each time you needed to take off, thus the need for power storage in a big way.

The long and short is, you'd have to have an engine, fuel, and who knows how many pallets of 8D's to store power. The cab would weigh significant

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