Prime Moving ‘Sparked’ by eActros.

In-depth

19 Sep

In my nearly 20 years of writing about this industry, I’ve been fortunate to have driven just about every new truck to come onto the Australian market. These have ranged from small rigids to the most powerful prime movers. They have been powered by diesel, diesel-hybrid and electricity. And they all have a role to play in moving product from one place to another.

There’s absolutely no doubt that diesel will be with us for the foreseeable future if we want to move goods from one end of the country to another. Hydrogen is touted as a replacement for long distance transportation, but not until the infrastructure is put in place, and that will take some time.

Then there is electricity, a ‘dirty’ word in the minds of many old-school truckies, which is an interesting description of the cleanest form of propulsion available on the market today. Electric cars have come on in leaps and bounds since their introduction, to the point that no one seems to take any notice of a Tesla or Kia EV6 wafting silently past. And yet, there is a chorus of howls and derision when ‘electricity’ is mentioned in the same sentence as ‘truck’.

Electric trucks are not a replacement for your diesel powered pride & joy; rather, they are an additional choice of vehicle catering to specific roles within the industry. These roles do exist, because manufacturers are not going to pour $billions into a form of propulsion if they don’t have buyers at the other end.

Mercedes-Benz have led the charge – sorry about the pun – on the electric front, introducing the eActros rigid earlier this year, now followed by the prime mover version.

Initially a 4x2, the prime mover’s underpinnings are the same as its rigid sibling. That means three lithium-ion battery packs with a total of 336kW/h. In plain speak they deliver a continuous output of 330kw (443hp) with a peak of 400kW (536hp). Think of it like a turbo over-boost when needed.

**Side impact protection - just one of the safeguards incorporated into the eActros design.**

Those battery packs have a heap of automatic safeguards to prevent any mishaps –way more than you’ll find in any electric car running around. From auto cut-off of the high voltage upon impact from another vehicle, advanced cooling systems and individual protection of each of the battery cells, you’re more likely to have your petrol car catch fire than one of these. Charging can take from as little as 75 minutes with a 150kW charger, but I imagine many would opt for the cheaper 22kW portable charger which is going to lengthen the time by anything up to 12 hours. These figures are to go from 20-80% charge.

**Liquid cooling provides optimal battery performance.**

The two liquid-cooled electric motors are combined with a 2-speed auto gearbox and differential in the one compact (when compared to a Detroit DD16 diesel) unit. Termed eAxle, this drive system leaves plenty of room between the chassis rails for everything from more batteries to PTO’s.

There’s all the safety features such as ABS, Stability Control, Lane Keeping, Roll Control, Tyre Pressure Monitoring, etc that you’ll find in any Actros. As with the diesel versions the eActros can automatically brake for pedestrians and vehicles if the driver is distracted, using front and left side radars and a front camera. At speeds below 20kph the truck emits an audible warning so you can’t sneak up behind workmates and scare the bejesus out of them.

As required by European standards for heavy vehicles with trailers – but yet to be incorporated into ADR - the eActros prime mover features a High Power Brake Resistor (HPR) system. HPR means that any additional braking energy that can’t be fed into the batteries will be converted into heat and dissipated.

This ensures the truck has a ‘continuous braking system’ (not counting the service brakes). It means the truck will always be able to be slowed using the ‘engine braking’ electric motor retardation that slows the truck and captures energy to feed back into the batteries, even if they are full.

The driving experience in this truck is like driving any semi from the point of view of steering the truck, but there’s so much more. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the silence is golden! Until you’ve driven one of these things all day, you have no idea how much better you’ll feel after a shift in an eActros. It is literally chalk and cheese.

The interior is all M-B Actros class with clear, easy to operate led screens in front and to the left of you, feeding all the info you’ll need. The 2ng gen Mirrorcams with screens mounted on the A pillars beat the daylights out of any side mirror, full stop!

Press start and wait a tick for the system to check over all its safety features, twist the RH stalk into drive and simply press the pedal – no having to release trailer or cab brakes, it’s all done for you.

Sitting in one of the best seats on the market I head into the city and Port Melbourne – the type of environment in which these trucks will live. The turning circle is tight thanks to the 4x2 and its short wheelbase; a 6x2 will also become available down the line. I talked earlier about electric cars wafting by – that’s what you do in this truck, you simply ‘waft’ along and enjoy the serenity.

There’s a 5-stage intarder to feed charge back into the batteries and pull the truck up in double quick time. As an example, I’m coming down the city side of the Westgate Bridge and the battery level jumps up by 1% in the couple of minutes it takes to reach the bottom. And this is what happens all day – the amount of charge varies by how often you slow down V’s acceleration, pulling uphill V’s rolling down the other side and so on.

Daimler suggest a range of circa 200km as against the rigid’s 300 due to the extra carrying capacity and hence weight. Do I feel range anxiety? Not at all, and for two reasons: one is that these trucks will be used in situations where range is not a factor and two, I’ve spent a lot of time in electrified trucks in urban environments and have always been surprised at how little distance I’ve travelled over the course of a day.

Andrew Assimo is the Vice President Sales & Marketing, Operations, Logistics and Processing (AUS & NZL) at Daimler Truck Australia Pacific and says, “We think the eActros Prime Mover is primed for certain applications where full-electric operation is really important.

“Short-haul grocery delivery into built-up areas, such as supermarkets, is the perfect use for a single trailer zero-emission truck like the eActros Prime Mover. We are also getting a lot of interest from customers hauling shipping containers from their docks to their yards.”

I’ve no doubt that there will be many other applications for this type of vehicle. In time, the battery range will grow, but this truck is here now and will get a lot of work done in the right applications in urban environments.

The bottom line is that you’re not going to be forced into one of these tomorrow. And if you got a job where you were behind the wheel of an eActros prime mover day in/day out? Well, you’re going to love it!

One day you’re going to see electric trucks like the eActros all around town, just like you see electric cars today and, like today you won’t give them a second glance, unlike the looks I received on this test drive.

Mercedes have just won International Truck of the Year at IAA Transportation in Hanover, Germany – the world’s biggest truck show, with their eActros 600, the big brother to this truck with a range exceeding 500km. It will arrive in Australia sometime next year, when I’ll have the opportunity to compare it to this version.