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posted by martyb on Friday May 05 2017, @02:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the drives-like-a-big-tall-Tesla dept.

http://www.motortrend.com/news/workhorse-w15-4wd-plug-electric-work-truck-prototype-first-drive-review

Workhorse isn't the first company to attempt to put an electric pickup on the road, but it is the first to build one from the ground up rather than convert an existing truck. Phoenix Motorcars has been converting Ford E-Series vans to electric drivetrains for years and attempted, briefly, to do the same to a SsangYong pickup imported from South Korea. Via Motors has been converting Chevrolet Silverados and Express vans into plug-in hybrids for a few years now, but both graft electric motors onto the existing powertrain.

Workhorse has taken the idea a step further and is poised to beat the much-hyped Tesla EV pickup to market by several years. Like Tesla, Workhorse builds its own battery pack with Panasonic 18650 lithium-ion cells and mounts it fully under the vehicle, where it doubles as the truck's frame. Front and rear subframes, each with an electric motor, single-speed reduction gearbox, and a fully independent coil-spring suspension, are mounted to the frame. Up front, a BMW-sourced three-cylinder gasoline engine acts a generator producing 50 kW of electricity to charge the battery or drive the electric motors. (It never powers the wheels mechanically.)

Further down the detailed article:

It's obvious at first glance the W-15 is designed for work. A light bar with yellow hazard lights is integrated into the roof, and a sprayed-in bedliner is standard. A power export module is mounted behind a door on the passenger's side of the bed and puts out 7.2 kW-hrs, enough to easily power a job site. The export pulls power off the battery, and if you manage to drain it, the generator will kick on. Workhorse is working on a 14-kW-hr module that'll allow the truck to power a whole house in the event of a power outage.

The Workhorse company already makes hybrid trucks -- last paragraph from the article:

It's easy to be pessimistic about the W-15's future, given how many automakers have tried and failed to sell a hybrid pickup in the past. Even General Motors couldn't get the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra hybrids to catch on. Workhorse, though, isn't just a startup. It's been in the business for years. Noticed any UPS trucks with the word hybrid on the side in your neighborhood? Workhorse builds those, as well as trucks for FedEx, Penske, Ryder, DHL, and more. The company knows vehicle production, and it knows fleets. Moreover, it's the first company to build a dedicated hybrid truck rather than cram batteries into an existing vehicle never designed for them, and the advantages show in the truck's capabilities.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @05:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @05:50PM (#505036)

    > Old 32" non-flatscreen TV that still worked (I admit I didn't expect that one to go, but it did)

    When I got rid of ours (a 25" Trinitron) the young guy that came to get it said he would use it with old video games. Didn't have the lag of cheap flat screen TVs that he had tried. Note, this was ~5 years ago.