SEA: It’s Electric. It’s Australian. It’s Bloody Good!

In-depth

13 Apr

Written By Graham 'Kermie' Harsant

♫♫ The Wheels on the Truck go round and round – ALL DAY LONG! ♫♫

1. PROLOGUE

2. THE COMPANY

3. THE PATH TO OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

4. THE TECHNOLOGY

5. THE FACTORY

6. PRODUCT RANGE

7. HOW MUCH AND WHO WILL BUY IT?

8. THE DRIVE

9. VERDICT

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1. PROLOGUE

If you’re reading this then you are into trucks. More likely than not you own one or three. 100% its diesel powered. And there’s a fair chance you’ll have read the word ‘ELECTRIC’ in the headline and thought to yourself, ‘yeah…nah’.

Well hang in there and have a read anyway, because this is an AUSTRALIAN success story in an automotive world which has, by and large deserted this country. Not only is SEA Electric making waves here but has expanded production overseas into the US and New Zealand and are exporting to many more.

The company is leading the way in electrification of trucks and buses (getting involved in cars as well), underscored by projects from Toyota. When Ford of America invites others to look at your product it’s fair to assume that SEA Electric is on the right trajectory.

I’ve broken this story into chapters so you can scroll down to whatever takes your interest….

2. THE COMPANY

SEA Electric Australia is a Melbourne-based automotive technology company. In a world-first, the company has commenced 100% Australian volume commercial production of electric trucks and are supported by a national SEA Electric dealer network.

Founded in Australia in 2012, CEO Tony Fairweather launched the company’s first EV truck prototype in 2017. Since then SEA Electric has been at the forefront of commercial vehicle battery-electric technology. The business has grown a global reputation for its innovative electric power system solutions for commercial vehicles.

In 2021, the company stepped up by launching the world’s first true range of all-new electric trucks, which are manufactured at the company’s base in Melbourne.

Tony founded SEA Electric to transform the light- and medium-duty delivery, logistics and work truck market. His design vision leveraged cutting edge mechanical and software engineering to create the SEA-Drive® power system.

Prior to SEA Electric, he spent five years as a Production Manager with Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) and then moved into Management Consulting with Mercuri Urval. Three years later, he capitalized on an opportunity to head business units within TNT Express (in two states), which provided full P&L responsibilities, and invaluable IR and HR experience. After four years with TNT, Tony was ready to explore his entrepreneurial side.

The first business he started was Patico Automotive, which imports, distributes, and supports a range of niche commercial vehicle brands in Australia and New Zealand. With more than 1000 units sold during this period, Patico is now producing some localized product for one of their brands, which is allowing further Australian employment and local component supply.

Tony holds a Mechanical Engineering Degree, a Master of Business in Enterprise Innovation, and a Master of Business Administration in International Business, all from the Swinburne University of Technology.

Tony is supported by Bill Gillespie, President, Asia Pacific Region. Bill has previously held senior positions with Hino Trucks, Peugeot, Nissan, Kia, Toyota and Daihatsu. He has an extensive background in the Australian automotive industry with experience working in various business development, automotive distribution and automotive marketing roles plus consultation roles in Australia. In that time he has also operated at an international level in Japan, France and Korea.

As Vice President Asia Pacific, Glen Walker leads the SEA Electric APAC operational activities including new product, design for manufacture, assembly systems innovation and product distribution channels.

Glen is an experienced senior executive in the automotive and transport sectors, having had an 18-year career at Kenworth Australia that included roles as Chief Engineer of Kenworth Trucks, and Group Operations and National Sales for Kenworth Australia. He spent 3 years on executive assignment with PACCAR in Seattle.

More recently Glen was General Manager of MaxiTRANS responsible for Freighter, Maxi-CUBE, and Peki brands and CEO of Sargeant Transport, a 130 prime mover and 200 specialized trailer fleet servicing MARS, McCain's, Fonterra, Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, and Metcash.

These men are supported by a staff of 50+ in Melbourne (soon to double), 70 odd in America and a smaller branch in New Zealand.

The marketplace has warmly received the SEA 300 EV and SEA 500 EV models, with the platform winning the prestigious Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia (HVIA) Product Innovation Award for 2021.

Adding to the credentials of the home-grown SEA-Drive® power system technology, it is now deployed on five continents, attracting significant international orders.

3. THE PATH TO OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

The path to overnight success for SEA Electric – like The Beatles – was 10 years in the making. From commencement of developing the technology in 2012, it was 2017 before SEA felt the product (read electric drive train) was good enough to put into various chassis’. These included Isuzu, Hino, Ford Transits Vans, Mercedes Sprinter and even an old 1970’s Iveco ACCO.

My first sighting of their product was sitting in an Isuzu chassis at the Megatrans Show in Melbourne in 2018. The electric motor sat snugly between the chassis rails with a short tail shaft connecting it directly to the final drive – no gearbox here. In front of the motor sat the battery pack and my immediate thought was, ‘that’ll be a bugger to change over in the future when they wear out, with a pantech sitting on top’. There’s a couple of very good reasons for their placement which we’ll get to down the track.

“In 2017 the product was good enough to start putting it into various chassis platforms,” explains Glen Walker. “Fast-forward to 2020 and we moved to the next stage of our development which was semi-knockdown kits of truck parts imported from Japan and assembled in our factory.”

Distributed through a national dealer network, SEA is now like any other truck OEM in Australia.

Buying a truck and ripping out the diesel donk is a fairly wasteful exercise but Hino came to the party, prepared to supply CKD kits. And knocked-down they are, with chassis rails, electrics, wiring, cabs, etc all arriving separately. Those chassis rails for example need modifying to accept the electric drive and placement of battery brackets so having wiring looms already fitted would be counterproductive.

The supply agreement with Hino has also allowed SEA to negotiate dual franchises with dealers, creating a national sales and service network. “All of the dealers that we have chosen happen to also be duel franchised with Hino but we have separate formal agreements with those dealers. They are all very well-known companies from within the Australian transport industry. They represent a lot of different OEM brands across different facilities and sites within their networks. We are super honoured and super proud to have them representing our brand in Australia as well.”

This speaks highly of Sea Electric. They are talking and dealing with a bunch of serious professionals who would not take on the brand lightly if they didn’t see a future, along with the quality, the product and all the necessary infrastructure that goes along with that.

4. THE TECHNOLOGY

You cannot ignore the fact that an electric power system is actually a superior power source when compared with an internal combustion engine in many applications. It’s quiet, it’s smooth, it’s relaxing and the torque rush is invigorating.

The development may be complicated but the function is simple. You have a charger taking energy from somewhere – a solar array, a grid - into the battery.

That battery when called upon to release its energy, does so into the power distribution which decides how much goes into power steering, air conditioning, heating, power take-offs, vacuum pumps, et cetera. It sends the bulk of the energy into a major control which then controls the motor to produce the required amount of torque.

**A short tail shaft away from the dif**

A car-based electric power system uses a high-speed, low torque motor. In a truck you have a low-speed (3,500 max rpm), high torque motor. In a car there is a gear reduction prior to the differential to account for that lack of torque. The truck motor produces enough torque to go straight into the differential.

In a car you have a very high release of battery energy. In SEA Electric trucks there is a slow release of battery energy. In a car you have a very high voltage, mostly to support the higher speed of the motor. SEA products have medium voltage that supports the low-speed motor. It is the electric equivalent of a diesel - low revving high torque, low energy release.

It is interesting to note that a diesel engine is inefficient in that only 30% of the energy finds its way to the output shaft of the motor versus 95% of an electric motor.

5. THE FACTORY

In a back street of Dandenong South in Victoria is a factory proudly displaying the sign SEA Electric. It should also say, ‘Proudly Australian’. Of modest size, but about to double their floor space, SEA Electric is currently rolling an electric vehicle out its doors at the rate of one per week. Two more production lines will be going in and they expect to be at five or six per week before the end of the year.

I’m impressed with how quiet the place is, and how clean! (The floors are swept four times daily.)

Starting with the chassis which is modified to take the electrical components and motor, the production line progresses along six-build stations. Axles are fitted followed by electricals – both original Hino wiring looms and SEA’s heavy duty wiring, batteries and cabs. Every nut and bolt added to the structure is colour coded for a particular torque setting, every work station has work sheets and diagrams that have taken 2½ years to compile (by a couple of very young geniuses). The consequence of this effort ensures there is no loss of structural strength. Hino have ratified the changes to the architecture.

The electric motors, built to SEA Electric’s design and specifications, cover many applications. Those engines will find their way into chassis’ based on the Hino 300 or 500 models.

As well as assembly the plant also undertakes design and development. Batteries for example are designed in-house with production undertaken in China. Those batteries sit between the chassis rails, close to the roll centre of the vehicle for stability and also for protection.

**One battery becomes many becomes one**

Those batteries can be worth $100,000. Place them where fuel tanks would be, and an unsuspecting driver hits a bollard - there’s $50,000 gone! The batteries do not need to be thermally heated or cooled – a result of their slow energy release nature. SEA have tested their batteries from -20 to 55°C ambient temperature without any problems or loss of efficiency.

In one corner of the factory is a Hino bus undergoing electric conversion. Next to it is a Toyota Fortuna – being converted at the request of that car giant. When you have a company of that stature who are the world’s leading experts in hybrid car technology coming to a small Australian company, you realise that SEA Electric are no fly-by-nighters.

6. PRODUCT RANGE

Think anything built on a Hino 300 or 500 chassis, add an electric drivetrain and there you have the SEA Electric range.

GVM’s from 4500 to 22,500kg.

Power from 108kW to 350kW

Torque from 1,000Nm to 3,500Nm

Range from 225Km+ to 350Km+

Battery capacity from 88kW up to 220kW

A sub 4,500kg vehicle is about to go on the production line that can be driven on a car licence.

The City of Whitehorse for example are the proud owners of a SEA Electric Elevated Work Platform or ‘Cherry Picker’. No diesel idling away all day to power the lift (a great way to stuff a diesel donk). Ho heat, no fumes, no $2.oo per litre. I detail my experience of that vehicle in the Drive section along with dual cab and twin cab versions.

7. HOW MUCH AND WHO WILL BUY IT?

Let’s start by declaring that these vehicles are not cheap. When I tell you that a SEA Electric vehicle is around two and a half times the price of its diesel counterpart you may recoil in horror. Now let me tell you that SEA Electric’s products are like-for-like the cheapest in the world. Other manufacturers espouse prices 5 times the diesel equivalent!

That said, SEA recognises that their product range is not for everybody. Indeed their business strategy is holistic in that they visit prospective clients’ workplaces to ensure that infrastructure is available/possible.

“We talk to a customer before we sell a truck. Is there enough power available, for example? It is a very complex sale and we have to do a lot of mentoring. It is very detailed.

“We work with companies like Energy Australia and Jet Charge so that there is the support mechanism for that whole circular economy. We’re not just selling them the truck, we are actually selling them a truck that works and is scalable in the future.

“We had some guys come to us. They are building a huge facility and will be able have two or three hundred trucks. We asked them what the power supply is like. They are not sure so we do an assessment and they could charge maybe 30 trucks at peak. Had they laid the concrete it would have been a $3 or $4 million job to retrofit that power supply. So that was a worthwhile visit going to the prospective factory and connecting them up with other organisations about how to proceed.”

SEA Electric recognise that understanding the brief and the applications is an essential part of their business model. Get it wrong for Australia Post, Ikea, Woolworths, Linfox, et-al, and they will be chasing their tails forever. These are companies where ‘the first mile’ and ‘the last mile’ is an integral part of the business model and where electric comes into its own.

And it is businesses as mentioned above plus councils that are SEA’s immediate prospective clients. Think those cherry pickers, garbage trucks, local delivery – along with a corporate positivity/responsibility towards a Green ethos.

Transport NSW for example plan for their bus network to be all electric by 2030. That is 8,000 buses! Melbourne’s City of Yarra have six EV’s and are talking with SEA Electric about another 14. They are just one of some thirty councils who’ve come on board.

If all that sounds positive, Ford America Trucks invited SEA Electric over to look at their F59 chassis which is the backbone of those yellow school buses we see in the movies. “We only make 150,000 of those. Are you interested?”

“We flew all of our mechanical, software, electronic and electrical engineers to Detroit and within five weeks we had built one of those vehicles. It was an amazing effort. Ford was so happy that they put it on a stand in a truck show in March 2019.”

“Unbeknownst to us, one evening they invited all the local electric vehicle truck companies in America and a few from the Nordic regions of Europe to come have a look at our product and said what you think of this? The response was basically, ‘Holy crap! These guys have it right.’

“That’s what put SEA Electric on the map. Every one of our competitors that night said that we are the gold standard. And we have two to three years on them in terms of development. We actually have the safest EV rigid truck design in the world and that’s why Volvo and Hino and Ford trucks in America are building this design.”

8. THE DRIVE

It’s a lovely sunny day at Upper Beaconsfield as we arrive to sample three of SEA Electric’s products – An elevated work platform, pantech and double cab. These trucks are not brand new with two of the three still carrying Hino badges. They are all vehicles that have many kilometres under the belt and worked at the jobs they were designed for. Indeed, the Cherry Picker had to be dragged (with a lot of begging) away from its council-employed regular driver who was not happy going out to work in a diesel.

My first drive was in this vehicle. I’m met with a pretty much standard Hino layout which is no bad thing. The ‘gearshift’ has been changed, along with the info screen which now caters for electric consumption/regeneration details.

Turn the key and look at the above screen to check that the vehicle is on, because there’s no other noise to inform you. A couple of seconds later there is a very muted hum which is the power steering pump activating. The only other noise you’ll hear is the air-con outlets blowing air into your face.

Press drive, hit the pedal and acceleration is smooth and progressive – and quiet! Torque is there from the get-go and easily handles the weight of the Cherry Picker. Downhill, take the foot of the accelerator and the info screen shows regenerative power being fed back in to the batteries. Touch the brake pedal and it goes up a notch. Use the ‘Jake’ brake and regeneration jumps a country mile. All that regeneration has the effect of pulling the vehicle up at a rapid rate. You will only ever use the brakes for the last few metres before coming to a stop.

Hino has good build quality but who knows what rattles and squeaks lurk underneath the sound of a diesel engine. Also remember that it is SEA Electric who are putting everything together. The result of their efforts is that the cab is as tight as a drum.

I take the first bend in the road conservatively, cognisant that I have a fair weight placed high up. The truck stays well balanced and flat around the curve so I push harder through the next and next with the same result. Fore and aft movement is equally impressive. The placement of that 300Kg battery pack between the chassis proves its worth.

Coming to a T-section the truck virtually stops itself. I turn right up an incline and the acceleration is as good as on the flat. By now I’m really enjoying myself and when we get back to base I plead to ‘do the block’ again. There are a bunch of other journos waiting their turn, but they can wait a bit longer.

We follow up the Cherry Picker with the twin cab which drives exactly the same with possibly a touch more whirr from the power steering echoing from under the rear. I’m seriously nit-picking here.

Lastly comes the pantech and for the first time I wind the window down. A testament again to the Hino design, wind noise and buffeting from around the A pillar is negligent. This is when I really get to appreciate the power of electricity. Ahhh, the serenity!

Here we are cruising along at 70kph and I’m hearing the birds singing in the trees. A pushbike rider came the other way and I swear I could hear him a-huffin’ and a-puffin’. You are going to climb out of this truck at the end of a long day in a better physical and mental state, simply due to the lack of noise. I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d not experienced it.

The three trucks were pushed over a number of hours by a bunch of journalists who didn’t care about ‘fuel’ consumption. The fun in these things is putting the pedal to the metal and enjoying that rush of acceleration. Of course, sensible people who will use the trucks for their daily work wouldn’t do that – would they?

At the end of the day there was plenty of electricity left to get all three back to base, some 40 minutes away.

9. THE VERDICT

For their intended purpose these vehicles are ideal. No, you’re not going to rush out and buy one tomorrow, but your employer – be it a council, State Government, a Linfox, Toll, etc undoubtedly are, or will in the near future. If you are one of the drivers assigned to these vehicles you are going to love it.

Just as importantly, here we have an all Australian company who is at the forefront of commercial vehicle electrification. In ten years SEA Electric have come from nowhere to dominate in their field.

They have done it all without government support, which is a tragedy. If Government cares about building Australian industry, ingenuity, expertise and exports they should be backing businesses such as SEA Electric to the hilt.

To not only take on the world in this sphere but absolutely smash it is simply phenomenal. There will no doubt be some who will be sceptical of this type of motive power but you shouldn’t be. For that first or last mile delivery, for repairing power lines, fixing holes in the road and a host of other applications, SEA Electric will be able to deliver without any fear or range anxiety. The wheels on these trucks WILL go round and round all day long.

Electric is not coming. It is here!