While trucks have prominently been used in commercial, mining, farming, forestry, and industrial applications, the recent growth in sales has come from non-commercial truck use, in particular the 4-door pickup, a cross between people mover and cargo carrier. This expanded market segment has driven an interest in improving truck fuel economy and reduced emissions.
Much of that interest has focused on hybrid trucks, although Forbes (April, 2012) reports historically that “65% of Hybrid owners don’t buy another hybrid”. Among Prius car owners 75% will not buy another one, even though 49% of all vehicle owners in general would purchase the same brand again. The main reasons for rejecting hybrids – too expensive, and poor performance, the same two reasons why virtually no hybrid trucks are sold for commercial use. Further, the areas of highest hybrid loyalty are in southern Florida and Arizona. The reason – poor performance when driving in “real world” conditions including cold, ice, snow, stop and go traffic, and hills while using power demanding wipers, radio, rear defroster and a heater. In short, hybrids just don’t work as well as a conventional engine vehicle.
Unlike cars, trucks must be financially viable and perform in comparatively adverse work conditions which make hybrid/electric an especially poor choice. This explains to a great extend the fact that neither Ford nor Dodge, two leading North American truck manufacturers, do not offer hybrid powertrains.
So why is the government spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money supporting such a questionable technology? Batteries have 1/100 the power by weight as fuel, so electric can never be a universal replacement of the conventional engine. Why is the government spending more billions supporting corn based ethanol production which consumes more energy to produce than it releases, and depletes food stocks? Ethanol does emit fewer emissions per mile, but its lower energy content means that more has to be burned to go the same distance. Why were billions of dollars spent on fuel cells when the cost cannot be reduced, there is no fuel infrastructure and on-board fuel storage is highly problematic?
The ZED engine is that “disruptive innovation” which can replace the conventional engine because it can deliver a great increase in performance, and reduction in emissions, while being just another engine option installed in current vehicles, in current factories. No other green-tech engine can make this claim.
Its interesting to note that hybrid buses are suffering the same high cost, poor performance fate as trucks. By example, four years after buying more than 170 hybrid buses, each costing more than regular diesel buses, OC Transpo (Ottawa, Canada) could be forced to turn all of them into strictly diesel buses in 2013. David Jeanes, president of Transport Action Canada, says the hybrid buses are inefficient.
“There is no doubt that they have been underperforming. We thought we’d get a lot more fuel efficiency out of these hybrid propulsion systems than we have gotten. And at this point they’re running out of warranty and we know the component maintenance parts are really high cost,” said Coun. Diane Deans, chair of the transit commission. “Each hybrid bus costs anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 more than regular diesel buses. The city made the investment because it hoped to save on fuel costs. Instead, the city spent $1 million more on diesel fuel than it expected to last year”, Deans said. “It also cost more than $7 million to replace the batteries on some hybrid buses last year”.
Craig Watson, president of the local transit union states, “They didn’t follow up on what was happening in other properties such as Toronto. The hybrid bus has not been successful anywhere.
In contrast, the clean burning, powerful ZED engine can power a bus while delivering superior operating features such as quiet operation, and exceptional low speed torque at the same cost, or less, than current diesel engines.